June 21, 2015: Father’s Day Brunch and Visit

We have a very busy day today.  It is Sunday and this morning is Dominica’s grandfather’s 90th birthday brunch as well as it is Father’s Day.  We were not up and moving super early, but we were up earlier than we might have been.  My girls were quick to come up and tell me “Happy Father’s Day.”

We pretty much got up and were all working right away on getting ready to go into Utica to the Radisson where we are having the birthday brunch.  We had to shower, get dressed, get some packing done, get the kids ready, etc.  It is always a big production.

At the Radisson we had a private room for the party but the brunch food was just from the main brunch room, which is a really nice, big brunch in downtown Utica.  There were a lot of people there and a good sized selection of food.

While we were eating, Dominica wiped Liesl’s mouth with a napkin and it knocked out another tooth!  This is her fourth tooth out in about four weeks!  This is crazy.  My poor little girl has almost no teeth left.  She has no way to eat anything.  I was helping get plates for people when it happened and when I came back to the table Dominica and Liesl were already running off to a bathroom to take a look at the tooth and clean Liesl up so I missed it happening and found out a bit later what had happened.  Liesl is now only one tooth behind Garrett which is seven months older.  She apparently has a rather mature jaw.

Dominica’s cousin Glen and his band played several songs at the birthday brunch which was pretty cool.  Their best was a cover of Whitney Houston’s “I Just Want to Dance with Somebody.”  Apparently they play around town a bit.  Dominica and I were talking that we should take some time to go see them perform sometime when we are around.   Who knows when that will work out, of course.

After the party we went back to Dominica’s parents’ house, packed up the Acadia and set off to drive out to dad’s for the week.  This is the first that dad will get to see Dominica and the girls since before we left for Spain.

The drive is about three hours.  Dominica talked to dad on the drive and they worked out to meet at the Omega Grill in Geneseo for dinner on the way there so that we would not need to worry about figuring out food later on.  Just makes things a lot easier.

It was early evening when we got into Geneseo.  We ate dinner and then we were back to dad’s house.  The girls, as always, are both super excited to see dad as well as to tear his house apart.  They love that they can go into the cupboards and locate all of the toys and take them out.  For days Luciana has been saying how she is going to get the toys out from the closet as soon as she gets into the house.  They have a complete inventory of the toys that they keep at grandpa’s house in their heads and know where each and every thing are.

We stayed up pretty late.  The girls had a lot of energy.  These visits are always very tough for dad.   He is not used to our schedules.