Francesca and the kids left Houston around five thirty this morning to drive up to Irving. It is about a five hour drive and she was trying to get out of Houston before rush hour really began because that could easily tack one to two hours onto the drive time.
It was cooler this morning but extremely humid. Major storms hitting to the south and east of us plus another major storm system pounding the central midwest around Iowa and Nebraska. Francesca got stuck driving in horrible storms all day long. We only got a few minutes of drops in Irving today so I was still able to just walk into the office.
The Grices arrived around ten thirty. Dominica spent the morning trying to get the house ready. I came home from work and they were all in the pool. It was very overcast and threatening to rain so there was no one else out there at all.
I walked over to Jersey Mike’s and picked up subs for everyone for lunch and walked back to the pool where we ate. Still, the heat isn’t too bad but the humidity is just crazy today. While we were eating a few sprinkles started to come down so we hurriedly packed up and went back up to the apartment.
I had to deal with our credit card being turned off over lunch today. We travel so much and do so much online shopping that we are constantly setting off the alarms with the banks. What a pain that is. I explained that Dominica would be traveling for the next several days so they hopefully will not turn it off on her while she is out on the road.
I walked back to work, risking the rain. It was a busy afternoon at work but I managed to get home at six so that we could get ready to go to La Cima. Our dinner reservations were for six thirty but we were not able to get everyone ready in time for that. We arrived around seven.
Liesl is now officially used to the club. We got into the elevator and she said “Cima, Cima!” She said it again when we walked into the club.
Dinner was insanely hectic. It did not occur to us that we should have gotten a private room with so many people – we had enough to fill some of the rooms to capacity! So we were in the main dining room at a huge table.
Dinner, with so many people, ended up taking way too long and Liesl just could not stand it. She was so ancy from the very beginning and by the time that we had our main courses we were walking her around trying to keep her occupied and before I could finish I had to take her down to the ground floor lobby and play with her there as she had decided to start screaming. It was just too much for her having family visiting and swimming for a while, only getting a short nap then having a really long dinner at La Cima. A private room would have made all of the difference.
It was quite late by the time that we got home from the club and all we did was feed Oreo, walk him and try to get everyone off to bed. That took forever, though, and Liesl would just not fall asleep. It was around midnight before we were able to get to sleep which is going to be awful tomorrow as everyone has to get up at four thirty in the morning so that they can get on to the road to get driving to New York!
Their plan is not to make it all of the way tomorrow but just to go as far as they can before night and then get a hotel and go the rest of the way on Friday.