I was up pretty early this morning, at seven thirty which was only about five hours of sleep. I was surprised myself when I woke up so early. But I made the most of it. I got out of bed and took a shower.
Luciana was up before anyone else. She came upstairs and banged on the bathroom door telling me that she had a tummy ache and needed to get into the bathroom. So I rushed out.
Dad was up not too long after that and eventually Dominica was up. Liesl was the last of the Miller clan to awaken and when she did her hair was so crazy that everyone was just dying. It was hilarious and stayed crazy like that for much of the day.
Dad showed me the research that my Aunt Sharon has been doing on the family tree via Ancestry.com. She was able to find a bit more today and so far has the family traced back to Bern, Switzerland in the 1560s. But that was enough to provide some family roots and we have a little information about the family all of the way back to 1200, now, which takes us back to before the founding of Switzerland itself and to the first few years of the city of Bern which was founded in 1191! So it appears that my family’s time in the Bernese Oberland predates the city of Bern itself, most likely, as the earliest recorded family member out on the farm on Yoder Hill is very unlikely to have been born there to parents who had just moved there. Likely they had been there for some time. It even appears that I have at least one family member who was involved in the crusades as a knight! It will take some doing to tie all of that part together, though.
We got the Acadia unloaded of its boxes this morning and got the little green Spark moved into its winter home in the barn. So that is that, we are down to just a single vehicle now for the indefinite future. Our plan is that the Spark will be our summer car while we are in New York. We also got to check out the new storage unit that dad and my Uncle Leo have been building in the barn. It is not completed yet but should be before our moving truck comes up and will be of a fair size. It is about twelve foot by eleven foot and five inches “square”. It is a pretty major project that dad is undertaking.
I got to speak to our renter today and we have things worked out. Things are far from ideal but far from the disaster that they easily could have been. We will have a little extra time in the Peekskill house for the packing now. Our renter will have lots of time to do their painting and whatnot before they have to be in the house full time. We are losing several thousands of dollars but at least the amount that we are losing is capped and a known amount and will stop soon. So while it is far from the outcome that we wanted, it is only so bad. We are very thankful that we have a solution, at least. Everyone is mostly happy.
For lunch today I drove around the corner to The Farmer’s Wife. We finally figured out who owns it, it is two sisters who grew up just up the street from me. We all rode the schoolbus together when we were little. It is two of the neighbours that I actually know quite well. So when I went down to pick up the food one of them was there and she knew who I was straight away even though we have not seen each other for almost exactly a quarter of a century! We talked for a little bit and I got to meet her husband too.
The special of the day was baked fish sandwiches and seasoned fries. So we got three of those and we picked up the local East Bethany Chevre goat cheese from First Light farms which we discovered at Thanksgiving when we were last up visiting dad. It is the best goat cheese that we have ever had and are so delighted that we are able to get it here.
This evening we decided to go to the Wyoming Inn for their Friday Night Fish Fry which dad had said was his favourite. We have not been there since they reopened. My Aunt Sharon and Uncle Leo decided that they would join us around six.
It was very cold when we headed out to go to dinner. About twelve degrees. We all piled into the Acadia so that we could get by with just one vehicle. When we got to Wyoming, Dominica pointed out that this was her first time being back there since our wedding! That is crazy. We are always so close, it had not occurred to me at all that she had never been back. I had done quite a bit of work in town in the year or two after our wedding but Dominica was never involved in any of that and the restaurants, bars and inns in town all closed up and went out of business shortly after our wedding so there really was no reason to return for a long time. So this was an odd trip for her.
There was almost no parking in town. There was quite a wait to get into the Wyoming Inn and that caused Academy Street to be nothing but cars everywhere. That town needs some municipal parking although heaven only knows where they would put it.
Dinner was awesome. We got the fish fries and they really were great. We were very glad that we went. By the time that we left dinner the temperature outside had dropped to five degrees. Dominica couldn’t stand waiting to get into the car and managed to strain her back from the stress of standing outside in the cold. As we drove back through Pearl Creek the temperature was as low as one degree!
After we got back to the house dad put on The Water Horse for Liesl and Luciana. Liesl picked it out after I had run several movie choices by her, none of which had met with her approval.
I skipped the movie so that I could get caught up on SGL, get a video posted to YouTube, get some posting done, etc. Luciana ended up bailing on the movie halfway through and went to bed and made me snuggle with her for one episode of Blues Clues. Then she got up again.
The girls were up too late. Luciana was over exhausted by eleven twenty when we finally had to make her go to bed.
Finally the girls were in bed by eleven thirty. Liesl came upstairs to tell us that Luciana’s iPad had died and so she would put Blues Clues on her iPad for Luciana to watch. She said that she was sure that that was what Luciana would want to watch and “how could I do anything else, her iPad is dead and she is crying.” Liesl really is just so sweet to her baby sister.
Dominica and I watched Rick Steves’ Travel Tips for Spain in bed to wind down for the evening.
We will be driving back to Peekskill in the morning. We are not sure what time we are going to be leaving. I suspect that we will be hitting Brian’s USA Diner on the way south for breakfast before we leave.