Grand Rapids Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: I made zucchini/blueberry muffins and other randoms
Drive-thrus are awesome. They are a modern luxury I really truly appreciate.
I figured out which coffee shops in my area had drive-thru. On the days that N had a hard time taking a nap, I would load him in the car and drive around with my latte while he slept! Thankfully, we have outgrown that!
How come?
Too many choices, too many websites, and it's so darn expensive and I need 2 cars. Blah.
I also feel like car rentals have become an extra headache. And it's so hard to find deals! I do like that you can usually reserve them without having to pay for them, though.
We ended up booking one of our Hawaii cars through a random Hawaii discount car rental site. I'm still not 100% confident that there will be a car waiting for us when we arrive.
It's very hard to find deals! But I do like that we don't have to pay now. It's still a PITA.
I hope your car is waiting for you in Hawaii...hehe.
Have you ever tried bidding on Priceline for cars? Supposedly this is a good way to find deals. We tried it once -- for Vegas -- but it didn't work. We kept raising our bids, until finally it got to the point where we might as well just book directly through one of the major companies. Priceline didn't accept any of our bids.
Yeah, with a similar outcome to yours.
I'm kickass at finding rental car deals.
Molly, do you have Traveler's Plus through your BG? If so, that can be a great resource for good deals.
No. We used to and I miss it! But we only had it when we got it for free. H told me it's like $30+/month. I don't want to pay that.
Here's a funny (to me) one:
LOL. He's wrong. It's $59 per year or $49 if you choose autorenewal.
I've used it most for rental cars with big savings--either through their reservation portal or by using some of the coupons and discount code. The savings on those rentals alone would probably come pretty close to paying for it I used it for a recent reservation for my housemates where they saved $80 off other rates.
Mira, I'm glad you had a great weekend.
I can also relate to breaking down at goodbyes. Since school started I've had one (out of three or four), tear-free weekend. It's hard, plus I'm sure you're still extra emotional because of James's birth.
Good luck hosting Thanksgiving and yay that everyone will come. Can they help you cook some of the items? Also, can you pare it down to just the necessities? What about getting easy-to-prepare/reheatable/ready to serve items? I bought mashed potatoes from Boston Market one year and they were amazing.
Pumpkin spice lattes are back at Starbucks. I must get one even though they are so bad for me.
I promise I didn't read your response before posting mine!
If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times...great minds!
Yay!
Okay, explanation of how we're going to VA instead of AZ...
Basically every one of our plans for AZ just didn't work. I'm going to call it epic timeshare fail. The truth of the matter is we should have figured this out months ago when we first started talking about it but we went round and round over what to do.
The final plan was contingent upon using my FIL's timeshare for Sedona and ours for Phoenix. We found out last week that FIL's timeshare didn't have anything at all available that week. So my backup plan was to do a few less days, and stay the whole time with our place in Phoenix. Then the unit I wanted (and needed based on how many points we had) wasn't available for the full range of days we wanted. I felt that it didn't make sense to spend so many airline miles for a four day trip.
L doesn't want to spend any money on plane tickets right now, so that limited us to driveable places or places we thought the miles bang for buck was good.
This place in VA is only 7 hours drive from L's bff in Ohio, so we figure we'll visit him for a day (and bring him with if he wants). We will probably just chill. I'll cook a lot of good comfort food and it will be kind of nice to be sort of holed up in the woods with nothing to worry about. I'm also glad that this trip will only take five days which means more of my break will be spent at home with the kitteh.
Molly, I'm glad to hear you liked it. We're a little apprehensive, tbh.
Ha! Nice.
Molly, your VA trip sounds nice. A relatively easy, low-key vacation will probably be nice after your semester.
And thanks for the heads up on the pumpkin spice lattes! I didn't realize that they're out. Yum.
Ugh. H just called. BG cancelled one of our reservations. (Apparently you can't book 2 rooms during the same week using bonus time.)
They cancelled the reservation AFTER sending us a confirmation AND taking the money out of our bank account. How nice.
Also, I almost just choked my H through the phone. He can be such a jerk when he is stressed.
I haven't, only Fountains, which I really like.
Is that where you're headed next?
It's weird that the system let you make the reservation. Yeah, only premier members can use "friends and family" bonus time.
Is there a combined unit that will hold everyone--like a combined three bedroom? That will give you a little bit of a workaround.
Only 2 bedrooms available at Sunshine and we have 11 people in the group. I guess we can use Friends and Family for about $20/night more. Not the end of the world.
I'm annoyed that it allowed me to make the reservation and took my money before figuring it out that we aren't allowed to do that. Boo.
And yes, Sunshine is our next destination. I wanted to do Fountains, but they only allow 6 people in the room. We have 7 in one group and 4 in the other, and Sunshine is 8 capacity. They just remodeled the rooms (granite and ss in the kitchen) so it should be nice. I'm bummed about the pool though. I love the Fountains pool.
That's cool that they let you pay extra for F&F bt. I didn't know that. They are always looking for new ways to get owners to spend cash
Still annoying that the system didn't catch it when you were making your reservation.
The Fountains pool is nice. I really want to go back sometime when I'm not feverish and miserable the whole time. I came down with the flu the last time we were there.
Sunshine sounds nice--I hope you have a great time.
Tonight starts 8 months of bowling league for H. Literally once a week for the next full eight months.
I absolutely hate it. Why does it have to go on for 8 freaking months? So dumb.