Matt Snader (from our church) took his family to Hawaii and asked us to house sit for them the two weeks they will be gone.
We said sure, we’d love to! There’s nothing like house sitting to break up the winter and give you something new, plus while we aren’t living in our cabin Andy can work on finishing out the interior without little people under foot.
That and Matt’s have a large five bedroom, four bathroom house with a full basement. We would pay through the nose in rent if we’d decided to take a family vacation in a house like this for two weeks. As it is, we live here free of charge and feed their chickens and dogs while we enjoy the spacious house and the jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom.
I’ve always thought it was great fun to house sit for people. You get to experience a different lifestyle without committing to it. For example, it’s fun to have a huge kitchen for a while, but I’ve found I prefer my small one. Less wasted steps!
Also, more space to run around does not particularly mean happier children. I thought that with all the room and the toys to play with, they would play happily for hours, but they got bored here even more quickly than in our little cabin – until they remembered to use their imaginations again. The children played Moose Hunting today and for the first time since moving here on Sunday didn’t need constant involvement by me.
I feel like I’m living in that children’s story about the country mouse and the city mouse trading houses. Like the mice discovered in the story, a different house was nice for a little bit, but soon they couldn’t wait to scurry back to their own home.