Sheep Guarding Llama

Wednesday.  Did a lot of writing today trying to get caught up, at least a little, on SGL.  Worked on that much of the day.  Got some Zoho tools, like Zoho Chat and Zoho Email set up today to see how they would work for a small team project as well.

We had a bright and sunny day today.  Liesl decided to camp out in front of the atrium door in a sunny patch, like a cat, to do her homework.  It was so warm that we had the windows open today.

Today we managed to book our apartment home in Noto, Italy where we will be staying all winter!  Our plan is to spend a week in Rome on the way there so that we can see the city since we have to fly into Rome anyway before going down south to Sicily.

Rachel came home super late tonight and opened champaign so we had an impromptu champaign and pajama party at the house.  Estella ended up coming over this evening to drop something off and stayed while all of us watched most of a season of Coupling.

So my Aunt Sharon has been doing some geneology work and has discovered that I am related to New Netherlands founding father Joris Rapelje. He is my great grandfather back ten generations.  He is also my first link to some French heritage.  And since he and his wife were married and departed from the Spanish Netherlands after being run out of France by the Catholics it gives me a tie to Spain as well.

What is really interesting about this find is that she tracked Joris down and had no idea who he was.  He, and his wife, are both people that I have studied previously in my history studies but did not know that we were related.  I knew who it was the instant that I heard the name.

What makes this even more interesting is that I am descended from Joris through my mother’s mother’s side and Aunt Sharon’s husband Leo (George Leo Richardson) is why she found Joris, because he is descended from him as well.  That makes Leo and I tenth cousins!

I played video games with the kids today.  I had plans to go out with Shawn tonight, but he has broken ribs from playing football over Thanksgiving and fell asleep so I never heard from him.

Monday.  It was a busy day even though there was not all that much going on around the house.  We had a nice rain this morning, but not so much that we had to worry about the house flooding like it did last time.  Just a nice rain that gets the ground wet.  We had the windows open so it was a perfect morning for laying in bed for a while.  Just how I like it.  Probably sixty degrees out and a light rain, heavy enough that you can really hear it.

After we had been up for a bit, Dominica sent me out to get breakfast and coffee.  We are completely out of coffee at the house, we suspect that Rachel and Anita were drinking it heavily last week while we were out of town, and needed some pretty badly.  So I drove to Cafe Brazil on Josey and did a take out order of vegetarian migas for Dominica and me, and pancakes for the girls and got some coffee for us.  While I waited there I worked on my DuoLingo.  I’m on an eleven day streak at this point and trying hard to keep it up.  I’m feeling very good about my Italian progression and I don’t want to lose the momentum.  I’ve learned as much Italian in the last two weeks as I have ever learned of Spanish.  So I’m pushing pretty hard.

I worked on writing and posting all day today.  Dominica and the girls worked on school and when she could she watched some of the new Gilmore Girls mini series and looked for apartments and houses on Sicily.

Rachel, whose wallet has been missing for a week almost, had her grandmother find it in her driveway today.  So she plans to go down to Corsicana with her mother tonight to get it.  She rode into work with Melanie early this morning so will be home earlier than normal tonight.

Tonight’s big “news” was that Aunt Sharon was doing a bit of genealogy research and discovered that the shared ancestor that my uncle Leo and my mom have is none other than Joris de Rapelje, the famous teenager of whom I’m been telling stories about for many years who he and his wife were on the first boat (the Unity) to the New Netherlands colony in 1624 (four days after their wedding) and become the most influential (DNA wise, anyway) of the thirty founding families of the colony and subsequently New York in general.  He’s a historic figure that I know well and was pretty amazed to have suddenly found, out of nowhere, that I am directly descended from.  So this makes my attachment to the colony even stronger and takes me back to both of the first two boatloads of settlers.

Joris was also important because he is from Northern France but was run out by the Catholics there because he was a Cavinist and so fled to Holland with his wife from Paris (or bride to be as they did not get married until they were four days from getting on the boat to leave.)

It’s also a little interesting that Leo and I are tenth cousins (I think that I got the count correct) as we are the ones that line up generationally, rather than Leo and my mother.  I’m the eleventh generation born in the New World from this line.  So Liesl and Luciana are twelfth generation (and line up with my cousins on the other side, Sara and Jeremy.)

I was supposed to go out with Shawn to Quinlan’s tonight, but he fell asleep early as he has not been getting sleep recently due to his two broken ribs.

Tonight Dominica and I spent an hour or two playing Overcooked with the girls.  We really enjoy playing the game together, but boy do we get frustrated as it is so intense and it is so hard to keep the girls focused.

Later on Luciana watched videos and Liesl played Ankh: Anniversary Edition on her own most of the remainder of the evening.

Rachel got home late, not long before midnight.  But she has her wallet back.

Because there was a party at the house last night, we all sang to Liesl at midnight to wish her a happy birthday.  She loved that. There must have been twenty people singing to her.

The girls were up late last night playing all of their new video games, so they, along with us, slept in late this morning.

Today was a “spend the day with the girls” day.  We hung out some during the day but once everyone was awake, Liesl really wanted us to play video games.  So we broke out Overcooked which she has been so interested in and we played for over two hours as a family.  The game is super fast paced and is like a casual time management game combined with a strategy game combined with a four player cooperative single screen experience.  It’s well done and very intense.  We managed to get up to around the third chapter playing it today.

Liesl played a bit of Slime Rancher as well on her own as that is a one player game that she has been wanting for most of the year.

Liesl had lots of calls today. Her first day to really be “on the phone” all day. A new thing for her as she has her own iPhone now.  She got her first traditional phone call today which was from Dominica’s parents.  And my dad gave her her first FaceTime call to her own phone.

Luciana was very anxious all day to give Liesl her birthday present that only came from Amazon around seven this evening.  Liesl got the premium version of Stealth Elf for Skylanders Trap Team on her iPad.  She has been asking for this for months and was super happy to get it.

Once the present was opened we had to all get ready because we were going out to the Magic Time Machine down on Belt Line in Addison to celebrate Liesl’s birthday dinner.  We didn’t realize how early they were going to close so we ended up in quite a rush to get there.  We left the house after eight and they close at nine.  Whoops.

We got in and were the last table to be seated.  The place was nearly empty.  It was very quiet but the girls had a great time and want to come back again.  The food was good and the atmosphere was perfect for girls their ages.  Liesl said that it was the best birthday dinner that she has ever had.

Once back home, around ten, we dropped off Rachel so that she could watch The Walking Dead and then we came home for a quiet evening.  Liesl played a lot of Ankh: Anniversary Edition for a long time, long after we had gone to bed ourselves.  It’s the third of the Ankh series that she has played, but the first one to have released.  So she is learning the background story of the other two that she has already completed.   Although she really does not remember those much as they were so long ago and she was so young.

Today is Saturday and our Pot Luck House Party.  That means that most of today is about cleaning.

Actually the early part of the day was Dominica and Rachel chilling while I worked on posting and writing for much of the day.  The weather was perfect so they sat outside just enjoying the atrium for much of it.

There was a lot of cleaning to do today.  Rachel raked the entire atrium, which ended up being like four garbage bags full of leaves, which I then burned in the fire pit in the back yard.  That took over an hour, but worked well.

The girls moved the back yard furniture into the atrium today so that there would be a place to sit there.  Rachel and I tried to move the terrible old armoire that has been plaguing our living room for a long time out to the curb but once she tried to lift her side we knew that that was not going to be happening.  So hopefully Chris can help me get that out of here tomorrow.

The girls did most of the cleaning, I was in the office getting work done the majority of the day.

Around six Dominica sent me out to go grocery shopping at Walmart which was rather a sizable endeavor as the list that she gave me was impressive.  I did well, though, and while it took me a while to track everything down, track everything down I did.  I was pretty proud of myself.

I got back home and unloaded the groceries and then got the television and gaming system in our room moved over to the girls’ room so that they could play video games tonight.  Because it is Liesl’s birthday tomorrow and since they have to be on their own a bit tonight, I bought them the two big games that Liesl has been asking for from Steam so that they could play them tonight: Slime Rancher and Overcooked.  I also downloaded and got a few other newer games ready for them to check out tonight like Barbie and Sisters Puppy Rescue and Shelter 2.

Then it was time to shower and by the time that I was out a few people had arrived for the party.  We turned out to have a good crowd tonight.  Of course none of the people who had RSVP’s on Facebook came and loads of people who did not, did.  So weird.  Millenials I guess 😉

The party went well, running till six thirty in the morning!