Snuggle Bunnies

Last night we were a family of snuggle bunnies. We've had our house invaded by the guys fixing our furnace and air conditioner unit. They started yesterday with removal of the old unit and that left us without heat. Of course it was the coldest night of the surrounding days, going down to 30 degrees, go figure. But we survived without any frost bite.

We decided to all sleep down stairs in the guest/play room. I always have the pack-n-play set up in there for Noah anyway. I just changed out the sheets for Lauren and Matt and I took up residence in the spare bed. This room gets full sun all day so it is one of the warmest in the house. We were hoping it would stay warmer with all of us in it, and it wasn't too bad. The house was 60 when we woke up this morning but under the covers was nice and cozy. Annabelle woke me up around 4:30 and Lauren was sleeping soundly, so I didn't disturb her. But by 5:40ish she was stirring so I put her in between us in the bed where she slept until 7 (well 8 since we were suppose to spring ahead today).

All in all it wasn't a bad thing, in fact it was neat falling asleep while I was listening to her soft breathing. She feel asleep pretty quickly for not being in her bed, and I went to bed at the same time as her watching a show on the laptop with headphones. Matt, bless his heart, stayed up cleaning the kitchen and doing other odds and ends chores. He said he attempted to play his video game but fell asleep on the couch instead.

I'm looking forward to heat coming from the vents again and I'm praying they get the furnace up and running before heading home today, but I enjoyed snuggling up together and all sleeping together in our cozy little spare room. To think that it wasn't that long ago that some families lived like this- all sleeping in the same room.

That brings me to a topic I've been discussing lately with a few friends. I've been talking about how big house are these days and how I find it unnecessary. My mom's house growing up had a living room, kitchen, and dining room downstairs, with three bedrooms and a bath upstairs. There was a finished "family" room in the basement too. But the house wasn't that big at all. My dad's house was a ranch with three bedrooms, a bathroom, living room and eat-in kitchen. It also had a finished basement adding an extra bedroom. Again not very big either. We survived just fine.

Now a days people have such huge homes. I don't have a desire for a big home. I know the home we're in isn't our "forever" home but when Matt and I talk about our forever home we only add two things- a garage and/or a basement and a dining room. We have zero storage in our house right now. Just closets. Having no basement or garage makes storing Christmas decorations and stuff like that hard. I want a dining room, in addition to an eat-in kitchen like we have now, for entertaining at holidays and hosting parties (like birthday parties for kid(s). In fact, I've redesigned the house we are in now (in my head) and when I do that we loose the spare room down stairs and gain a dining room.

I think my desire for a smaller house also has to do with the fact that I'm not a big spender. You pay so much more to heat and cool a big house. To maintain it and decorate it. The smaller the house the less stuff. My one friend has a beautiful home, but they have this huge foyer, which has a two story ceiling. To me it has an "aww" or "wow" factor to it, but it is such wasted space. I don't consider that living space and you pay all that money to heat it, for what? So people can say wow when they walk in. You could add a whole other room to the upstairs if you didn't have it.

I also like the fact that a small home brings a family together. When we were growing up at my dad's house (high school time) we only had two TV's in the house and one of them was in my parents room. My sister and I never went in there, so if we wanted to watch TV at night, we watched it with the family. My step-mom always said that there isn't enough family time as it is, at least we can all be in the same room watching the same program. Looking back, I liked that. I'm sure I fussed at the time that my dad was watching something stupid and I wanted to watch something else, but I got over it. So, on top of never desiring a big house, we also have no intention on allowing our kids to have a TV in their room. Oh, one last point. Smaller house = less to clean!!