December 31, 2016: Wrapping Up a Rough Year for Planet Earth

This is it, the end of 2016.  It’s been a rough year here on earth.  This is the end of two years of continuous travel for the Miller family.  Very hard to believe that just over two years ago we packed up and left New York to begin our process of becoming full time travelers.  Two years on the road and in two weeks (and a day) we will be on the plane bound for Rome, Italy.  Our first time in Italy south of Tuscany.  We can’t wait.  And I have been working like crazy on my Italian.  I’m on day 44 of my streak with DuoLingo.  I can’t wait to see how much I am able to understand in Italy itself.

Dominica and I got up around eight.  I did some writing this morning and actually managed to pump out several articles.  It was a productive morning.  MangoLassi set a new traffic record this month, too.  Busiest month ever, that’s awesome.  Dominica went to the salon this morning at ten thirty.

When Dominica got home we went out to The Egg & I in Plano for brunch.  I got the holiday hash (without meat) and she got the crab cakes Benedict.  Yummy.  It was nice to get a quiet brunch to ourselves.  Rachel was still asleep until after brunch so she did not come with us.

After brunch Dominica and I did some shopping at Kohl’s in Carrollton and got a load of new shirts for me which is great.  I have been needing some.  And we got a pair of stylish boots for Liesl so that she can be twinsies with “aunt” Rachel.  I showed Liesl a picture of them over text with Emily down in Houston and Liesl said that she liked them.

We hit the liquor store while we were up near The Colony and grabbed a few bottles for the gathering that we have planned at the house this evening.

It was probably four when we got home.  We got to hang out with Rachel for a bit and do some casual cleaning.  I have also been working on removing unneeded games from our Steam gaming laptop so that it is faster and more able to handle indexing everything and to make it possible for the kids to actually find games that they are interested in playing as the number on there is just overwhelming.

Dominica’s mother has gotten addicted to Steam, just a week after getting her new laptop that “didn’t need to be able to play games.”  So now that their laptop is not even a fortnight old, they are looking at ordering a gaming laptop for her father so that he can play online games with the kids.  He bought thirty four games on Steam already today.

We had a pretty small, low key party this year.  Only about seven people stopped by and some people were asleep by half past might and by one thirty it was just Morgan and me left awake and we did all of the cleaning up and were in bed by two thirty.