December 29, 2017: Video Gaming Day in Houston

Friday. We are still in Houston, but heading back up to Dallas this weekend as there is a freeze coming and we need to be there to make sure that the pipes do not freeze in the house.

This morning Dominica started playing Dragon Age 2.  Her dad joined us in the upstairs living room at Francesca’s house and we watched her play for a few hours.

Today was a big video gaming day for all of us.  Dominica games almost all day with DA2.  Luciana played Skyrim this evening and managed to level up twice, which is pretty good for her.

Later on this evening, Liesl really wanted to play Minecraft: Story Mode with us watching.  So she started from the beginning and played it in our upstairs bedroom and we watched what we could.  Dominica and I packed while we watched since we will be traveling tomorrow.

The kids are going to stay down here in Houston for the week while Dominica and I go to Dallas to deal with the house.

December 28, 2017: Completed Skyrim

Thursday.  Got up and fired up Skyrim on the Steam laptop in our upstairs bedroom.  This is where I will be today.

The kids are all having fun playing with their cousins.  They don’t need us around at all.

Tonight, after a few years of playing and booking about two hundred and seventy total hours against the game, I have “completed” Skyrim.  There are still a lot of side missions and expansions that I can play, and after taking a break I am sure that I will happily return to it and play through them.  I want to get as much out of the game and universe as I can, but I have completed all of the core and main quests and have moved the main story to completion.  Overall, it was pretty good, although I feel like my involvement and interaction with the game world was much too shallow, as is often my complaint in games of this nature.  The whole “I’m a nobody” and a few minutes later “I’m the saviour of the whole world” all combined with “I have no impact on the world and no influence” is too weird.  But the game is overall pretty fantastic and I enjoyed it a lot.

December 26, 2017: Helping the Kids with Toys

A quiet day to recover from Christmas.  Helped the kids with their new toys today, they have so many things to play with.  We had to get a lot of them packed up and into the car just so that there was room to move around the house.  Dominica and I are able to stay in Houston for a few days because the incredibly cold weather that we have been expecting in Dallas is going to hold off until the weekend.  So we get to relax a little bit.

December 25, 2017: Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone!  We had our traditional Christmas at the Grices’ this year.  We managed to sleep in a little more than usual, but not much.  We had our regular marathon of presents and were exhausted by the middle of the afternoon, as usual.

The girls had a really nice Christmas and love all of their stuff.  Luciana had an extremely “crafty” Christmas this year.  She has really gotten into arts and crafts as her “thing”, she calls it DIY stuff.