Saturday. Dominica managed to make contact with the people who are renting us the condo on Galveston Island for the month and they do not have anyone else renting the condo at the moment and were happy to just extend us at the same daily rate that we were already paying for our month there. So we are going to be able to move into our own place tonight and be out of every one’s way. This is a really big relief for us. It really stresses Dominica out being an imposition on everyone and it makes it really hard for all of us not to have our own space to do our own thing, set our own schedule, etc. We are very excited to be getting into the condo and the upside is that while we lost time at our place in Nicaragua we gained it at our place in Galveston and it was mostly the time floating around in different parts of Nicaragua that we had to give up so we are actually gaining, not losing, longevity and stability by being back early.
The girls and I had to be up early this morning, the alarm was set for seven thirty but I was actually up and getting ready before seven. Dominica stayed at the hospital last night with Francesca and I needed to get Emily to her football game at school quite early. So I got the girls up and out the door very early. They were terribly groggy. Liesl actually dressed herself in Luciana’s clothes, which we did not realize until it was too late, and she had to spend the early part of the day in ridiculously small clothes. She is so goofy. Both girls struggle to figure out whose clothes are whose at the best of time and they were exceptionally tired when getting dressed this morning.
Madeline was awake to watch the kids and Garrett had just gotten up and Clara was still asleep when I dropped Liesl and Luciana off at the Grices’ and picked up Emily to drive her down to Dickinson. I had to have her there by a quarter after nine which meant leaving the house at eight thirty.
On the way back from dropping off Emily I stopped at the Taco Bell in Dickinson, right off of I45, and picked up breakfast for Dominica and I and drove it back to the house.
Bennie, Francesca and Dominica got back right after I returned from dropping off Emily. So that was getting close to ten as it takes about twenty minutes to get to the high school from the house.
I set the kids up with my laptop hooked up to the television in the “media room” again today. They loved it so much yesterday and were asking for it again today. Garrett, especially, was interested in getting to play more games on it. This is still my HP Envy that we have been using in Nicaragua that only has the anaemic Intel GPU and not a discrete NVidia or Radeon. So it is pretty bad at games but can play some of them.
We ran over to the Toccos’ place and gathered up all of our stuff and got packed up so that we could move everything to the condo. Since we did not have the kids with us at this point we were able to load up the little green Spark with all of our luggage and take everything in a single load – just barely. That car is just a little bit too small for moving us around.
On the early side we ran down to Galveston and dealt with getting checked into our new home at the Victorian Condos. It was a quarter till one when we got our keys and into the condo. We are so lucky not only to have gotten in early but also that our two and a half bedroom condo is absolutely ideal, possibly the best unit in the entire complex, with amazing waterfront views. We sit right on the beach, basically, and the view from our living room, master bedroom and balcony is right onto the gulf. Standing even in the kitchen you look at the water, it fills the view. This is an amazing spot. Another perfect home find from Dominica.
We were barely moved in for twenty minutes when we started talking about potentially reserving this place a year in advance for December so that we could get the same deal or better and know that we would have a place that we love like this and not have to worry about it. Having a great place to be able to come back to year after year and knowing the area would provide a tiny bit of stability, even if it is only for a month at a time, in our very hectic lives. This place is just perfect. It turns out that there is a restaurant on property too, a diner. That is going to make things really easy for us.
Our location is pretty ideal. It is super fast and easy to get here from the mainland and we are right in the middle of things with food and shopping options within easy walking distance and lots of stuff that we pass on our way on and off of the island, too. This really could not be better. I think that my dad is really going to like his room here too, although his room does not have an ocean view. The layout is a master bedroom that has ocean views and a television, a second bedroom that has a sideways view onto the ocean and no television, two bathrooms and an alcove, rather than a room, with a bunk bed that the girls are going to use. The kitchen is small but very functional. There is a decent balcony off of the living room with two chairs outside. The living room is very comfortable and there is a television there. Internet is complex-wide wifi.
We spent a few hours moving in and getting settled without the kids. That made things much easier. Then we headed back to the mainland but swung into Best Buy on the way to see if they had the Amazon Fire TV, which they did not, but they said that the location up by Hobby had it in stock. We decided that we needed something for the condo and we needed a diversion for everyone so we drove around a little and managed to get the Gaming Edition of the Amazon Fire TV and then went back to the Grices’ for the afternoon.
We needed to pick up Emily from the high school after the football game which ended up being around seven. What a long day for her – she had to be at school, on a Saturday, from nine till seven. That is longer than a normal working day and that’s after a week of school and takes up nearly all of her time to do things like homework.
Dominica rode with me to pick up Emily in Dickinson and on the way back we stopped at Panera Bread and grabbed dinner for the family. We took that back to the house, ate rather quickly and hit the road to go down to the condo with the kids. Dominica is staying with us tonight, the only time for the last few days and she will not be staying tomorrow so this is our one family evening.
We stopped at Walgreen’s on the way to the condo and did some shopping for basic necessities so that we would be able to function in the condo. Then once back we had a very short evening that mostly consisted of setting the girls up with the laptop so that they could entertain themselves with Disney Princess video games while I worked on getting the Amazon Fire TV hooked up and working in the living room on the television. This is the first that we have had laptops or anything here so we had to get the Internet working everywhere, but that was not too bad. The signal is okay and the speed is not horrible, but it is not fast either.
There was not enough time for the slow Internet to get things loaded onto the Fire TV so we set some things to download and hopefully it will be usable tomorrow.