Sheep Guarding Llama

Monday, our first full day with the Grice kids here.  The house was crazy all day.  Although they really did all do a good job of entertaining each other.  So other than being loud and running around like maniacs, they were pretty much out of the way all day.  Which was good as there is so much that we needed to do today.

Our first order of business was normal work, which was super busy.  And dealing with some house stuff today.  The house in Peekskill goes onto the market tomorrow, officially.  We are super excited about that.  The AC froze up on the house today, which is a big problem.  Apparently the renters are not aware of how an air conditioner works and have been driving it a bit too hard.  So we were dealing with that today, too.  We have lots of laundry and packing to do since we want to leave first thing in the morning tomorrow.

And I ended up having several calls this morning as we try to deal with all of the things for MangoCon.

I had to get an oil change for the Nissan today so that it is ready for the drive tomorrow.  The place that we use is basically next door, so that was easy and I appreciated the break to my day that it gave me.  Fifteen minutes of just relaxing and doing my DuoLingo lessons.  Thirty nine day streak on Spanish now!  And day two of Mango Languages Spanish as well.  I’m glad that I found that.

While getting the oil changed we learned that the Frontier FIOS was moved to the new house and that Rachel was going to come to get the router from the house this afternoon.  Um, just a little bit of a problem there.  That the service and the hardware was going to leave the house was just a little bit of a surprise.  We had no idea that that was going to happen, we thought that both were part of the house and no idea that they would move.  Argh.  So in a panic I had to run home and deal with getting Internet service switched over to us.

Because we are leaving first thing in the morning, we were unable to do anything about the Internet today.  So that is actually going to get turned on on August 1st, when we get back to Dallas.  So we have to time our return trip for that to work out.  What a pain.  So much to go wrong while we try to deal with that.

And, of course, we had to switch over the power, too.  That I was able to get scheduled for first thing tomorrow morning.  So, in theory, that will be all transparent and we will not need to be home to deal with that part.  Fingers crossed.  So much “stuff” to handle and, of course, it has to coincide with us needing to travel to New York for MangoCon.  How many things could all be happening at the same time.

Dominica took all four of the kids to one of the Carrollton splash parks today.  They had a great time.  Luciana tells me that this one is not as nice as the one that we took them to last time, however.

Early bed time here tonight.  We have a long drive to do tomorrow.

Liesl was up at seven this morning so that she could get all ready and be waiting for her cousins to arrive from Houston.  She has been looking forward to them visiting for a long time.  Luciana would have been up as she tried to go to bed at ten last night so that she could wake up and be waiting for them, but she was unable to fall asleep and so was still sleeping when they arrived.

We leave for New York in two days.

Francesca and Emily brought Garrett and Clara up, but were just staying for the day.

Dominica and Francesca went out shopping for a long time this morning.  They brought home Taco Bell breakfast.

Saturday.  Today is Rachel’s moving out day.  After more than two years of living with us, since our time in Spain in the Spring of 2015, she is heading off on her own.  We are going to be a little like empty nesters.

We were all up relatively early today.  In fact Anita and Tab were here first thing this morning.  Of course Rachel was not packed, almost at all, yet so there was tonnes of work to be done.  Brandon and Estella arrived before too long.  So before ten we had a full house of people and soon the U-Haul was here.

It was a full day of packing and loading the truck.  I was super busy with work all day working with Jeremy on one project or another.  So I was at my desk releasing software or troubleshooting a SaltStack bug all day long.  By the end of the day we had positively identified a major, new SaltStack bug.

It was mid-evening when Rachel and Shawn finally left with their truck.  A lot of stuff is still in the house.  Rachel left the atrium full of furniture, lots of the kitchen and more.  She’s supposed to be back tomorrow for another load of smaller stuff.  Even a desktop computer is still here. And, of course, her dead Mazda RX-8 is still sitting out front.  Today was the logical time to get it since it is the only time that she has a truck with which to tow it.  So we suspect it is never leaving.

Our house is now empty, completely empty.  Rachel took all of the furniture so we don’t have a single thing in the living room or the one bedroom.  It looks like we don’t even live here any more.  It’s amazing how little we own or have here.  We didn’t really realize it until just now.  But we have lots of space now.  The house has been packed full of stuff.  I don’t think that Rachel had really put two and two together as to how much stuff she has.  All of the public space in the house was overpacked with her furniture and her bedroom was packed floor to ceiling with her stuff to the point that her bed was covered in stuff and there was nowhere on the floor to walk.  The room, closet and everything have been totally full.  And a lot of our master closet, too.  She easily has significantly more stuff by herself than the four of us have all together.  It’s a new house now.

This evening, Liesl and I played The Journey Down: Chapter Two which I think is a bit better than the first chapter that we finished a few days ago.  Liesl played the game in the living room while I worked in the dining room and helped her from there.  Luciana put herself to bed at ten in the hopes that falling asleep would make it seem like her cousins are here earlier.  They are expected to arrive at the house around ten tomorrow morning.

Today the game Castaway Home Designer released and as the game that it follows, Castaway Paradise, has been one of our biggest video game hits we decided that we really wanted to support the studio and encourage them to make more games so we bought it for the girls on release day, got it downloaded, and let them play.  They really like it.  It reminds them of some portable games that they really like.

This is our last day with Rachel living at our house in Carrollton.  She is moving out tomorrow.

Rachel got up at around one in the afternoon and shortly thereafter took Liesl and Luciana to go swimming at Shawn’s apartment around the corner.  Their last time going swimming there.  The girls always have so much fun on these outings without us.

I discovered Kool-Aid in the fridge tonight.  That’s a pretty neat find.

Found out tonight that Rachel is taking nearly all of the furniture that is in the house that we thought had become ours since someone living in the house had left it there, and that would be our house that they left it in that they had been living in for free that we were paying for.  But whatever, we don’t really want the furniture anyway, so didn’t mention it.  I expect that Rachel is sure we don’t want it and thinks that she needs to move it to get it out of our way and while it is a surprise, she would be right.  It is our only furniture at the moment, but it isn’t like we want to keep it around, either.  So, at the end of the day, I’m sure that it is good that she is taking it.  It is all nasty and in terrible shape and we’d be hoping to be replacing it very soon.  We just wish that we could replace it right now.

We just figured out that we do not own a microwave!  How did that happen?

 

Thursday.  Day 35 of my DuoLingo streak.

I was up moderately early this morning after getting so little sleep last night.  But I got a good night of rest.  So feeling better.

Dominica played some Book of Unwritten Tales with the girls tonight while I was stuck working until midnight.  They are working their way through Chapter Four, at this point.  The girls were very excited to get some game time with Dominica.  And they still really love this game.  It’s really one of the best games for kids.  Great story, acting, graphics, goofy, not too much reading, etc.

Rachel is really into the packing now.  She is moving soon and needs to get things packed up or that will be rather a problem.

I like the new NTG ad that went on social media today.