And there’s Jack! I had to include him. He was super excited to partake of my leftover reuben sandwich after our yummy trip to Culver’s!
We’re located in the Midwest, so our summer season is very precious to us around here! We get 3 very short months of summer and they are not to be wasted. Now’s the time to get all the prep work done so when Memorial Day rolls around, we are off to our amazing tiny park model!
Two of the biggest things we had to figure out before we went tiny for the summer was cell phone use and wifi use. As Website and Media Designers, it is absolutely necessary for us to have a strong wifi connection and great cell phone service. Here’s my little cell phone story from last year…
My phone service is with TMobile. I love them. I’ve been with them for 14 years. Their customer service has always been great and they’ve gotten me through a few jams along the way. Do I want to leave them? NO! But I have no choice. You see, last year, when we arrived at our vacation destination (prior to buying our tiny park model), I noticed that I was continually losing cell phone service. I’d be in one part of the town and it would work, but as soon as I crossed the street, my service was gone. And guess what was on that other side of the street… you guessed it, our campground where our tiny park model is! I had a terrible time getting text messages to the kids who had stayed back home. I couldn’t place phone calls at all, but occasionally, I’d get a phone call that would come through. On the boat? Forget about it! No signal at all!! It was the absolute most frustrating thing ever! As the summer continued, I dealt with the lack of cell phone use by ultimately striking a deal with the campground owner’s internet service (paid, of course), and they helped me out with some extra time to use the service… Very nice of them! But it was inconvenient and I spent most of the summer texting with Bobby’s phone. Which, by the way, was a bit spotty with Sprint too! It was clear that we needed to solve that issue before the next season rolled around!
So after all of the cell phone nonsense, we decided we’d like to install a wifi connection of our own. We researched every single possibility. You have to understand, Bobby is a research MASTER. So research, we did! It came down to HughesNet. They were our ultimate answer! We called them, ordered the service, had a technician come out and…….. You guessed it, it wouldn’t work! We’d have to cut down the big pine tree that provides us with lots of shade in the hot summer months. Well, I certainly didn’t like that idea. So we ended up with no wifi connection either before the season ended up there. This was turning out to be a very frustrating technology relationship. But I knew this resourceful man of mine would find the solution…
Well, after HOURS of research, multiple phone calls, proposals, business representatives, retail representatives and even more research, we reached our decision… VERIZON WINS!!! Verizon has the best service in the area where our campground is. They’re buying out our contracts (and there are multiple with as many people as we have in our house). They’re giving us new phones. They’re giving us a hot spot for the tiny park model, so we can work and have wifi. They’re giving us a 360 degree camera that Bobby is completely PUMPED about getting). AND THE BEST PART… It’s saving us money!!!!!!!!! We went to Verizon today, ready to commit, and they didn’t have the phones we wanted, so we’re going back tomorrow.
We are on our way to living tiny comfortably with the ability to work, make money and continuing to talk to you awesome people!!
UPDATE!
Today is March 24, 2017 and we have finally completed the transfer of our cell phones! It took a bit longer, since we had to get all the kids to the store to make the transfers. This is us on Friday night, getting it all finished. We do know how to have fun on a Friday, don’t we?!?! We’re just glad it’s done and we’re on the road to save money.
