January 19, 2019: Dallas Fast Food Exploration

Saturday. This morning Paul discovered that the back windscreen on his Ford F-150 truck was shattered. It was not broken into, so very unlikely to have been done by a person. We have no idea what might have happened. Our best guess is that we got hail during the night or something like that.

This morning was bitterly cold and there was a crazy amount of wind that went on all day. So cold, and the noise of the wind just never stopped.

All of the adults were up by around eight. The kids did not sleep in much longer.

This morning we tested out Liesl’s new video game that she got for Christmas: Cluedo. The classic Clue boardgame made into an online video game. It worked really well and looks like it will be a really fun way to play Clue. Liesl, and all of us, will be able to easily play on our own, or online with people. Garrett has it too, but has not tried it yet. So likely they will play online with each other a bit. It makes it way easier for the kids to do the game as they don’t have to keep track of so many things.

It was cold today, so we decided that the zoo trip was going to be for tomorrow and today we would just hunker down in the house. Somehow, the day just flew by, it was as if the middle of the day never happened. Dominica and I spent most of the day just hanging out with Francesca.

In the afternoon, Dominica and Francesca went grocery and clothes shopping for a few hours. I got “called in” to work and had to do two hours of Sage support and updates. No big deal, but very time consuming. But glad that I was able to do it and did not have to bother any of the staff to handle it. Rodrigo had been doing other work early this morning, as well.

The four kids did a ton of making slimes together, under Luciana’s guidance. This went well for a while, but eventually they got out of control and I was finding bits of slime on the furniture and put a stop to the slime making. Then we discovered food dye all over the floors, Paul and I were quite unhappy at that point.

The kids played a bit of video games today, too. Garrett and Liesl both did some Clue. Luciana played some Slime Rancher with everyone watching. And a few other games, too. Clara played a bit of Minecraft on her tablet.

At some point, Clara declared that they were going to have a dance party in the new bathroom because it was like a club.

For a lot of the day, Liesl seemed to want to be apart from the other three. She hung out with me for a while in the living room while there were off playing. And for a long time when they were all in my room playing the other three were on the floor together and Liesl was just curled up in bed on her own watching videos on her iPhone.

For dinner tonight, Francesca and I made a fast food run to help her to explore Dallas area food options. She is not here very often and has never been down to Addison. The Grices wanted to try In and Out Burger and there is one quite close to us there, and another quite close in Plano that we often see. So she and I drove down to Addison where she was amazed to find that we had every restaurant that you could imagine all in one place, and very close. She had no idea that we had a Magic Time Machine, she goes to San Antonio to go to that!

We went to In and Out and got food for Clara and Paul. Then we went to Taco Bueno to get food for Francesca, Dominica, and me. Francesca has never been to Taco Bueno and got carried away ordering four to eight times as much food as she could possibly eat; she was determined to try everything. I got my usual bean burritos. Dominica got party tostatas that turned out to be far better than what she normally gets at Taco Bell. So this will be her new stop for that.

Then we went to Taco Bell for Liesl and Garrett. Luciana just had pasta at home while we were out getting all of this.

Then we came back home and the kids ate in my room while playing with Shopkins (even Garrett was okay playing with them) and Dominica, Francesca, and I watched The Golden Girls for a while. Paul spent the evening in his office playing video games on his own mostly.

Tried to get the kids and everyone to bed by eleven thirty. Lots to do tomorrow. The zoo is going to be so cold. I think that with so many people we are going to drive down rather than taking the train, even though the train goes straight there. Ten dollars to park will be cheaper than the cost of the train tickets assuming that it is Dominica, Francesca, me, Liesl, Luciana, Garrett, and Clara. Paul does not enjoy zoos so is definitely not going. But I think that everyone else is planning to go.