We all slept in rather late this morning. Liesl and Luciana were actually the first ones up and out of bed but Dominica was right behind them and dad was right behind her. I was only ten or fifteen minutes later.
We did not do too much this morning. We got dad set up with a Steam account and he bought his first two modern video games: Age of Empires HD and Tropico 3. Both of these were in the Steam Black Friday sale so were only a few dollars. He is going to try out some video games to see if he enjoys them so we wanted to have him start with two very different types of games to see what he may or may not like.
Art and Danielle stopped up this morning. I bought Danielle’s iPad Mini 2 (with Verizon WWAN option) as I have been without a tablet for quite some time – several years since I gave my original iPad to the girls. I have been wanting to get one for me to use. I got to use a company one for several months last year and it was awesome having it. The Mini is better for me, I just don’t need anything too large. I am really excited. I am going to be traveling a bit in December and possibly in January and who knows what we are doing in February so having good means of being online and having a really mobile device to use while traveling will make things much better. It is good timing for us to get a new tablet.
We went down to Aunt Sharon’s at noon so that the girls could play with the kittens that they have: Pico and Toby. They are very cute. The kittens were very playful and the girls had a lot of fun getting to play with cats for the very first time.
After the cats we went to Brian’s USA Diner for some “lunch.” I got a garbage plate there, I was craving another one after having the one last night. They are so good. I miss them living outside of the Rochester area. We had a really nice lunch and then it was back to the house.
The girls opened their Christmas presents from grandpa this afternoon since they are unlikely to have a chance to see him before Christmas actually rolls around.
The girls took a long bath together this afternoon – Luciana got a new Barbie bath play set for Christmas and both girls were very anxious to have a chance to play with it. Both of them are still so focused on imaginary play and just love being able to play that kind of stuff together.
We spent a lot of time just hanging out in the living room relaxing. Liesl was pretty focused for several hours on building her new Lego beach house set. It’s a really nice one. Dad got it for her yesterday for her birthday. She is loving it. Luciana played with several different toys. We mostly got time to visit.
Around seven, dad settled in to the office and started playing Tropico 3 which he bought earlier today. This is the first “modern” video game that he has played. So this is going to be a pretty big experiment to see if he enjoys where games have been going over the past thirty years! Things have changed a lot since he was last playing video games regularly on the ColecoVision that we got when I was in second grade!! I am writing this paragraph sitting in the same room that he is playing the game so I have no hindsight to give me a view as to how he likes it.
We did dinner of Thanksgiving leftovers, mostly baked ziti, and then it was time for a few science experiment with Liesl’s new science lab kit. She had a lot of fun with that and Luciana helped out as much as she could. That probably lasted an hour or more and I managed to get several videos taken and uploaded to YouTube tonight.
After the science experiments, Liesl and Luciana played for a little while then dad set up the theatre in the basement and he, Dominica, Liesl and I watched Journey to the Center of the Earth which Dominica and I have seen but dad and Liesl have not. Liesl really enjoyed it. Luciana came downstairs but grabbed the white iPad and took it into the girls room and said that she wanted to watch her own shows. She wanted to be near us but did not want to watch the movie with us. By the time that we checked in our her about halfway through the movie she was already fast asleep. This week was really exhausting for her.
We finished the movie at eleven thirty and everyone was off to bed.