December 19, 2015: Uncle Scott Watches the Kids

I got up this morning and the Internet was still out!  This is pretty ridiculous that being in Texas, in a major metro area, in a super expensive resort area, on the most expensive high end strip of that area that our Internet access is less reliable than it was in Spain, Panama or Nicaragua and our power is no better than those!  This is the longest that we have been without Internet access for this entire year.

Dominica and Francesca came down to Galveston to pick me up this morning and we went to breakfast at Miss Kitty’s.  There they said that their power and much of the power around was still out and that they were running with all of their appliances having have to have been moved to different outlets and whatnot as only some outlets had power.  Unlike me, they had Internet access, but unlike me they did not have power.  So they were struggling this morning to make the food.

We all got breakfast and coffee.  Excellent food as always.  Not a big crowd today, but we were not alone either.

After breakfast we drove south on the island to an area that I have never been to before.  I have really not taken the time to explore Galveston Island, I probably should before we leave here.

We spent an hour or two shopping at a neat beach store down there.  I shopped for a while then hung out with the owner, Steve, for a long time while Dominica and Francesca continued to shop.  It is a huge store that I would have never guessed was located where it was.  Full of really interesting stuff.

We returned to the Grices’ for the afternoon.  It was the middle of the afternoon by the time that we got there.  I brought the Asus ROG with me and hooked it up in the media room and I set it up to get downloading again.  Other than our Internet access being out, downloads at the Grices’ are no faster than they are at our condo.  Speeds in the Houston area just are not very good.  Even if we were not using shared Internet access at the condo it would still take us a full month to download all of our games!

Garrett got addicted to playing HexCells today.  Liesl tried to help him.  They are adorable gaming together.

For dinner, as it is Saturday night, we went down the street to the Toccos’.  We got Mexican tonight, it was awesome.  I got the most amazing tuna steak fish tacos.

I love this picture of Clara (left) and Liesl (right) sitting at Joe’s Bar in his house cracking nuts.  You can just picture them doing this when they are fifty, too.

Clara and Liesl Cracking Nuts at Joe’s Bar

We pretty much did dinner and then everyone took off right away.  Francesca and Dominica had wanted to go back to the house early and have me bring the kids later so that they could wrap presents and try to get some of that done.  I offered instead to take all six kids out to the condo for a sleep over.  That way the girls could wrap all night instead of just getting an hour or two.  They thought that this was a great idea.

So after dinner all six kids loaded into the Toyota Sequoia and I drove them all out to Galveston to hang out for the evening.

Once at the condo we set up the Steam machine and Madeline set about playing Back to the Future: The Game with all of the kids watching.  It was a very successful evening.  Everyone loved the game.  I had to make food for half of them even though we had just come from dinner.  But other than that, everyone gathered around and watched the game.  A perfect way to wind down the night.

Emily was the first one down.  She took the guest room and was asleep and Clara went in and joined her very early, almost as soon as we started the game.  Luciana tried to hang on for a while but only got about an hour before falling asleep on my lap in the living room.  I carried her in and put her to bed in her own bed around eleven.

Garrett stayed on the couch with Liesl and Madeline but fell asleep at some point and slept there all night.  Madeline played the game until just after eleven when she went to bed moving Clara out to the couch with Garrett.  Liesl came in and snuggled with me.  She acted like she was wide awake but she passed out immediately upon getting into bed and by a quarter after eleven she was down for the count.

I got ready for bed and played my evening allotment of The Enigma Express on my iPhone before falling asleep.  Dominica texted me just before midnight to see if the kids were asleep.  I was already nearly asleep.  They had not gotten nearly as much done as they had meant to tonight.  It took them hours to get set up and moving on the wrapping.  They have a lot to do tomorrow, too.