Sheep Guarding Llama

Big driving day.  I was up at seven thirty this morning.  Everyone was very tired and not ready to get up and out the door as quickly as we had originally planned, but I had built in enough time for that, so it wasn’t a problem.  Dominica was up around eight and that’s when we started packing the car.

We got on the road at ten.  About the latest that I had originally scheduled as being reasonable.  It is fourteen hours of road time to get to Indianapolis and I really wanted to get in pretty close to midnight.

We had a pretty good drive today.  The weather was good, the kids did great, and McDonald’s offering breakfast all day is just about the best thing ever.  We eat a lot of Egg McMuffins sans meat, these days.

It was a long day of driving but we made pretty good time.  We were very tired by the end of the day, of course.

We arrived in Indianapolis at three in the morning, but I did not get to sleep until well after four thirty.  We stayed at the Comfort Inn and Suites in Plainfield really close to the Scale offices that I will be visiting tomorrow.  A great location and we got a really good price on the room.

Monday.  This is it, last day in Dallas.  What a week do we have coming up!  Today we are in Dallas all day, but lots of packing and stuff to be done before we can leave early tomorrow morning. Tomorrow we are driving to Indianapolis where we are spending the night.  Then all day Wednesday we are going to be hanging out with Scale in Indianapolis.  Then staying there another night.  Then on Thursday we will drive to Canton, Ohio and see the family and spend the night there.  Then Friday morning we will get on the road and drive to dad’s house which is only five more hours away.

We did some box sorting this morning while we waited for the kids to get up.  Liesl slept until maybe ten.  Luciana actually slept till more like one in the afternoon! It was crazy.

Once they were both up we got them ready and went to Waffle House for lunch.  Liesl has been asking to go there for a while.  Lunch was good and the girls just ate and ate.  Luciana ate a full thing of eggs, and Liesl ate a full thing of hash browns and they split a waffle.

We came back home and after not too long Chris came over for an hour or two and we talked business.

Today is my big “catching up on SGL” day.  I am finally fully caught up which has not happened since, at best, sometime in June.  Sorry everyone for how busy things have been.  Will do my best to keep up although September is looking like it is going to be insane.

This week is all about travel.  We get to NY on Friday.  Then Saturday Maria arrives from Panama!  Then things are very busy as we prepare for MangoCon which is only about two weeks away!  Then from MangoCon it is right back down to Dallas.

Tonight was a lot of packing and cleaning.  Rachel was not around most of the evening because she was at a choir audition.  I ran out and picked up Indian for Dominica and me.  Liesl wanted Taco Bell, so I got that for her.  And Dominica and I made mac and cheese for Luciana.

Dominica was actually the first one up today.  Then Liesl.  Then me.  Luciana and Rachel were both still asleep around noon!  We wanted to get lunch at Denny’s but it is always a challenge getting the kids moving and ready.  It took forever but eventually they were up and Chris met us and Rachel followed along too and we all went up to our old Denny’s on Frankfort to have a very late breakfast or early lunch there.

Chris came back to the house to hang out after lunch for a while.  Rachel had to go work on shoe and dress shopping, she is at under a week to the Miss Texas competition so is pretty busy.

Chris hung out for an hour or two until it was mid-afternoon.  We had heard a rumour that our Dungeons and Dragons game was going to be on for this evening but it was never clear.  We spent a few hours trying to coordinate that.  At first it was going to be two in the afternoon, then it was like six and it finally ended up being eight thirty, which is pretty late for getting started on a Sunday night, but we did the best that we could.

We had a fun game. We ordered in pizza from Joe’s where Dominica and I used to get Italian take out often when we lived here three years ago.  We didn’t have the full group but did pretty well with Rachel, Shawn, Dominica, Nick, Gerald and Melanie.  Only Tim, Mike and Will could not make it and we were able to make due pretty well with what we had.

We played till about midnight and called it a night.  Not nearly long enough to really get into it but I think that it went decently well.

I woke up at six this morning and was way too warm as there is no air conditioning in Luciana’s old bedroom because the vent there is broken.  And I was sleeping in the tent with the girls so it was extra warm.  So I got up for a bit, used the bathroom, took a shower and felt a little better and went back to bed.

I might have slept for another two hours, it is hard to say, but I got super warm again and really felt sick this time.  Ended up being sick, just a little bit, all morning till maybe eleven.  After that I felt fine.

Dominica didn’t get up until closer to eleven.  She felt fine all morning but around two got even sicker than I had been and ended up basically going back to bed and staying there more or less all day.

So that was pretty much our entire day.  Even Rachel was a little sick, but was out shopping nearly all day as she prepared for the Miss Texas competition which is just next weekend.  She is down to the wire and still has a lot of outfits to prepare.

I started watching Friends tonight on Netflix.  I’ve seen the show now and then and probably saw the whole first season when it was new, maybe.  But I’ve never really sat down and watched the show even though I always liked it.  I was never in love with it but always enjoyed it.  So now I’m giving it a chance that it is on Netflix and I can actually watch it in order so that it makes more sense.

Dominica skipped dinner but I was feeling well enough to eat so had food delivered in from Panda Delite which turned out to be excellent.  I had the spicy orange shrimp and loved it.  Liesl got the chow mein, but they didn’t deliver chow mein but chop suey instead, as many American Chinese restaurants do, so she didn’t want any of that.  Luciana got sweet and sour shrimp and loved them.

Dominica managed to leave around ten this morning to do the drive up to Dallas.  She has the little green Spark loaded up with as much as she could fit and the girls with her.  It’s Friday so I had plenty to do this morning before she arrived.  I was up early and wrote and posted all morning.

At eleven twenty Shawn picked me up at the house and drove me down (because I have no car) to Mi Camina (or Fake Fernando’s as people here call it) on Route 12 where we met Rachel, Melanie and Natalie for lunch.  Same place that I had lunch with Rachel, Ashley and Melanie two weeks ago.  I had the fish tacos again, they are still quite good.

After lunch Shawn and I stopped by at a home automation and audio shop that is by appointment only near Trinity Mills and made some connections that I might need for getting the house set up in Carrollton.

I was only back at the house for maybe an hour before Dominica and the girls arrived.  We had maybe an hour before they were all hungry so we went up to the “new” Rockfish on Josey for dinner.  Dominica has been missing that place as much as I have. I am very happy to get to eat there again.

We got back to the house and ended up having a bit of a house party this evening.  Not a lot of people but some friends came by, including Melanie that Dominica has not yet met, and how out until around three thirty in the morning.  Melanie helped the girls build a big tent to sleep in in Luciana’s old room.  So I ended up sleeping in there with them tonight.