January 5, 2015: Our First Quiet, Normal Day in Greece

We slept until after noon today.  I woke up with bronchitis.  Just great.  This is going to make for a very rough week.

I got up and got right to work posting and getting SGL caught up.  Don’t want to get behind now that we are in Europe again.  I’ve already gotten all of the European stuff updated and am only catching up with the holidays in Texas since yesterday so all of the stuff in Crete is detailed and quite accurate as it is being done on the spot.  Texas I am doing my best to catch up.

Dominica went for the living room gaming rig this morning after having completed three whole games yesterday and started playing the super casual clicker title Among the Heavens.

When she went to take a shower, I switched into the gaming seat and got in maybe an hour playing Fallout 3.  The game froze on me many times and made in nearly impossible to play so I eventually gave up.  I have too much work to do anyway and I was spending more time at the kitchen table on Dominica’s laptop than playing the game anyway.

Today’s big project, besides normal posting, was getting SGL completely caught up and I managed to make it, too, which feels great.  There has been so much to write about for the past week that it really needed to be done now and could not wait and has been hanging over me so I wanted to get that done today.  Now dad is going to be busy reading this for days!  These are some very long posts.  And, at his request, there are pictures on most of the posts as well.

The video game rig was engaged for the entire day.  Almost none of which was from me.  I got to play maybe half an hour late in the evening, but that was all for me.  Liesl and Luciana took over and used it nearly all day.

At one point Dominica and Liesl were both sitting next to each other on the downstairs couch playing games on the Fires, it was adorable.  Liesl and Luciana are really loving their new Fires and do not seem to miss having access to their iPads at all, which is so awesome because the Fires are so much lighter.

Speaking of which, the shipment of the laptop that was too big to bring with us and the three iPads that we are not bringing with us all made it to dad’s house today.

I spent the majority of the day drinking tea and running to the bathroom to blow my nose.  This sinus and bronchial infection is really kicking my butt.  I was tired after being awake only eight hours!

Dominica and I made a small run to the corner shop today, just a few basic supplies before they closed for the day.    They were already out of bread so we need to find more tomorrow.  It is a very small shop and our variety is going to be exhausted very, very quickly.  Dominica is beginning to research ways to make things out of lentils.  I have been hoping that she would learn to make homemade veggie burgers for years so maybe this will be what pushes her over the edge.  I like the fresh made ones so much more than the store ones.  And they are healthier, too.

Dominica made vegetable and pasta star soup for dinner.  Luciana did not get up until six this afternoon (yes, really six!!) Just in time to have a little time awake and then join us for dinner. She finally caved after a night with no food and she ate last night’s lentil stew that she had refused all night to eat.  Then she ate the soup.  It took a lot of work but we made good progress today.

I showed Liesl the new game The Secret of the Magic Crystals which is a bizarre horse raising game amount a meteor that fell to earth, turned into magic crystals and turned horses into unicorns or something of that nature.  It was a deal that I found on Steam sometime in December and had set up for her but no one had actually played yet.  She loved it and played for three and a half hours today!!  Luciana played some Minecraft this evening on Dominica’s laptop, too.

Later on Luciana decided to try Castaway Paradise which I had shown to the girls when we were in Nicaragua but Liesl had not been interested and Luciana was curious but had mostly overlooked it.  This time they were both hooked.  Luciana played for almost two hours while Liesl watched.  Then, just before bed time, Liesl got to play for about half an hour as well.  This game is great because it is made for kids but forces Liesl to read everything on the screen for both her and for Ciana so she gets a lot of reading practice in while they play.

The jet lag continues to plague us.  I am not sure that it is getting any better.  Our schedules are so skewed.  It is much like it was in Spain, again.

I have forgotten to mention, thus far, what a disaster it has been that we do not have enough North American to European power adapters.  First of all, we simply do not own enough of them.  Secondly, all but two that we own are two prong, not three prong, and that is a problem in and of itself. Thirdly, only half of our adapters came with us and only one of the three prong ones.  So right now we can only plug in the gaming rig, my work laptop or the projector at one time.  That is a bit of a problem.  And of the two prong adapters that are here there are not nearly enough to handle charging all of the Kindle Fires, iPhones and other things that need to be plugged in every day.  So everything is on a rotation and things are not getting charged when they need to be.

We got the girls off to bed around four.  Not much of a victory.  It is such a struggle when you get up so late.  We are attempting to adjust our sleep schedules but it is not working well at all, especially with me being sick and needing any sleep that I can get.

Tonight Luciana decided that she wanted to sleep with Dominica and me because Liesl has been sleeping with us and she has not.  Liesl was very sad because she hates sleeping alone.  She wasn’t upset that Luciana got to sleep with us, only that she was then alone.  So I set her up with a bed of blankets on the floor next to me and now both girls are very happy.