Friday. This morning Dominica was up and packing first thing. She wants to get right on the road down to Houston to avoid the worst of the traffic. They are heading down for Easter.
Before she could leave, I had to run the Nissan to the corner and get the oil changed. That only took ten minutes.
Dominica and the girls said their goodbyes at just past ten and she was on her way down to Web Chapel, over to 75 and off to Houston. Her drive went fine and they had arrived by three.
Paul and I did a lot of work today, mostly paperwork rather than house renovations. That is mostly being saved for tomorrow.
After a long day of work, we were worn out and decided to go out and get dinner in Garland at seven. Then Jenn came out to hang out this evening, have not seen her in nearly a year.
We got back to the house around midnight. Very tired.
Thursday. Today is all day plumbing. Jim was over around eight this morning and got right back into the plumbing work in the guest bathroom. It’s a major undertaking to get right and there is a lot to be done. So the water was off by the time that I was getting started this morning. Luckily I managed to brush my teeth before it was shut off, but that was about it.
We had the water off for most of the day, until maybe one or two. Jim worked on the plumbing until just after six this evening. But then it was done and now it is time to begin work on the tiling! Much to be done, but this is when the real progress happens.
Had a meeting this morning to keep me busy.
Today’s project was migrating our Zimbra email server from its old hosting in Paris on Vultr to our Los Angeles colocation facility with Colocation America on our high availability Scale HC3 cluster.
Wednesday. Today we are scheduled to start the plumbing work on the guest bathroom. And since Paul was unable to drive down yesterday due to the bad weather up in Oklahoma, he is heading down today.
So this morning it was just the Millers. We did a lot of work around the house to get ready.
There was bathroom maintenance to do that Paul wanted done before he returned. And I had a busy morning of normal work.
Paul stopped at Choctaw on his way south and won about $300 while having lunch, so he called it a day and got back on the road! Jim arrived early in the afternoon and set right to working on the plumbing in the guest bathroom.
Paul arrived shortly after Jim which was perfect so that he could oversee the entire operation.
Liesl and Garrett played Age of Empires 2 this afternoon. Liesl is getting decently good at that game. We are so proud.
Plumbing of the new shower was fun today. It went on most of the day. And I was sent outside to do a test and when I turned on the house water to test for leaks it blew and water sprayed everywhere.
For dinner tonight, it was Walmart take home and bake pizzas.
Ciana in the Office
The girls are enjoying their temporary accommodations. While their room is being painted, Liesl and Luciana are sleeping in my office on the air mattress. They are enjoying themselves, it is a fun diversion for them.
Liesl wanted to read tonight but Luciana did not, so we took a break from what we have been reading and set to reading Alexander Lloyd’s The Book of Three, famous for being the beginning of The Black Cauldron.
Tuesday. This morning we were ready to start the final coat of paint on the girls’ room. It is nearly done.
We got a lot of rain here today. Paul was supposed to be driving back down from Missouri today, but because of the extensive rain system stretching between here and there he has had to put off returning to Dallas until tomorrow. It was bad enough that there were tornado warnings all across Oklahoma.
It was a long day of painting today. But the girls’ room is now Tahitian Breeze and we think that they are going to love it.
Tonight the girls and I read chapter nine of Dragons of Autumn Twilight. The first book in the Dragonlance Cycle.
First task of the day is getting the girls’ room painted. We had most of the first coat done yesterday, but could not finish it all because there was spackling that still had to dry before we could paint it. That was dry today, so some of the room got its first coat and some got its second this morning.
With the white Kilz primer on the walls, the room is easily twice the brightness that it was before. The difference is just incredible. This was so worth it. It’s a whole new room. We can’t wait to get the girls moved back into it. They come in every few hours to see the progress.
We managed to get a hold of Jim today, our plumber. He’s now scheduled to stop by on Wednesday and get the shower plumbed up for us so that we can actually get the bathroom useable and not just pretty. We’ve been trying to reach him for days, ever since we figured out that the plumbing had to be replaced, so this is very good. Paul will just be arriving tomorrow night, late, after driving all day, so we will barely be getting back to the bathroom heavy duty work before Jim gets here, anyway.
Liesl went out into the courtyard and did some gardening today. She is carefully taking care of our new plants out there.
The girls did some gardening in school today, planting seeds to grow herbs and veggies with some little educational growing kits that we have.
Liesl and Luciana Planting Seeds
This is the first time that the girls have planted their own seeds. Liesl has been asking to do this for a while. They are loving all of the gardening stuff that we have been doing. Liesl is especially excited about having gardens and getting to work on them outside.
Newly Planted Herbs and Veggies in Kitchen Window
This afternoon we finally finished all of the priming work that needed to be done in the girls’ room. It just needs to dry and we can start putting on the first coat of the Tahitian Breeze colour.
At seven Dominica went out to Walmart to pick up pizza and some other items. Luciana loves Walmart pizza, it is one of her favourite pizzas. And it is cheap, so that’s a pretty good deal, in reality.
The girls Facetimes with their cousins and played video games this evening. They played Roblox and Age of Empires 2.
We watched some more crazy British home builder shows and then it was time to paint again. This time for real.
We worked from something like nine until midnight doing the entire first coat of Tahitian Breeze paint on the girls’ walls. We did the whole room in one go. The girls are so excited, they really love it. They keep coming into the bedroom over and over to see the progress and just keep raving about how it is exactly the room colour that they wanted.
Finally got the girls into bed at half past midnight so that we could start reading Dragons of Autumn Twilight. We did two chapters of it last night, which means that we are starting on chapter nine tonight. Liesl is really loving it, she is so excited to be reading at night regularly again.
Paul will be arriving tomorrow. We expect that he will be on the road very early, like around six in the morning. His drive should be an hour or two shorter this time now that he knows not to drive past us out into central Oklahoma before making his way south. There is no need to go through Tulsa, let alone Oklahoma City, to get to us. That’s just silly. It is a straight shot south from US 44 coming out of Joplin to get into Dallas. So we will likely see him in the middle of the afternoon. Hopefully we can get all of his task list done for the bathroom before he gets here. He left us with a lot to do before he returned so that we can be productive and get it done as quickly as possible.
