Sheep Guarding Llama

Thursday in Dallas.  Dominica was supposed to drive up to Dallas this morning but logistics in Houston made that not happen and then when she was finally able to leave Houston this afternoon a big storm hit and she was going to have to drive for hours in a storm so she bailed on that idea and decided to just hold off coming up to Dallas until tomorrow. At least tomorrow she will be able to leave first thing in the morning.

I got up this morning and had some time to write and post before needing to get the minivan all unloaded.  I unloaded the van into the garage by around noon and drove down to the airport to drop it off.  I waited there for a while and Rachel came from work and picked me up and we drove up to Joe’s Crab Shack on Route 35E and had lunch before she dropped me back at the house and returned to work.  She had thought that she was going to get off of work when we were done with lunch but ended up working until after six this evening.

So I had the afternoon and evening to myself at the house.  Some quiet time to get things done.  I have no car and won’t have one until Dominica arrives tomorrow.

This evening Rachel came home and made dinner and Shawn joined us late in the evening.

Today is the “moving day” for us, moving our stuff from our storage unit in Houston up to the house in Dallas.  I spent the morning working on writing and posting, as usual.  Then had my call at twelve thirty.  From there we ran up to Hobby and Dominica dropped me off to go pick up the minivan that we rented from Enterprise.  We got a red one this time.

I drove back to the storage unit while Dominica and the girls went home and I emptied the entire storage unit into the minivan.  It fit just about perfectly.  It was super hot and I was terribly sweaty from doing that.  But it is done and I was able to go to the office and close out the unit so we don’t need to pay for it any longer.  That’s $30 per month that we don’t need to be spending there any more.  Not a huge deal, but it adds up and it covers the cost of the rental car long before the end of the year and will “make” money after that.  There were so many cockroaches in the storage unit, it was really nasty working in there and at least one giant one made it into the car but I was able to get it back out again, thank goodness.  That would have been just awful.

From there I drove back to the house and we loaded up more stuff from the house into the car. Several suitcases and some other stuff.  The van is very, very full.  Passenger seat all the way up, all seats laying down.  We could fit some more stuff but it is comfortably full.

I was off pretty much right away after showering.  It was early enough that I missed a bit of the rush hour traffic and that that I got caught in really was not all that bad.  I think that the fears of Houston rush hour are very much overblown.  It’s crappy on I45 to be sure, but it isn’t the end of the world to be in it or else so many people would not be in it.  Traffic slowed a lot but kept moving and most of the way things were moving quite well.  Far less traffic than I would have guessed that there would have been.

Once out of Houston I made good time through the emptiness of Texas.  It was getting dark when I get up to Dallas.  But it was not super late.  Rachel and I got a few hours to hang out before bed.

Dominica had to be up super early this morning to take her parents to the airport at six.  She got very little sleep.

Today is my last day in Houston until, most likely, Christmas.  I was busy all day.  Madeline, Dominica and Liesl went to the mall and went to get a haircut for Liesl who has never really had one before.  One time, when she was about three I would guess, and we lived in the house in Carrollton, Dominica took her somewhere to get a trim but it was just the tiniest of trims and that is where the lock of her hair that I keep came from (Luciana still has never had a hair cut at all to this day) but it was at most two inches from the bottom of her hair and nothing else. Today is a real hair cut with the hair getting much shorter in the back and getting bangs in the front under Madeline’s direction.

The new haircut is adorable and makes Liesl look even older.  She loves it.  It went really well.

After dinner tonight, Emily and I made a run to Sonic for our last ice cream together of the season.   We won’t see each other again until Christmas.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.  Emptying the storage unit, driving up to Houston.  Dominica and the girls think that they are going to wait another night and come up on Thursday morning instead.

Monday.  Today Dominica and I had to go to the outlet mall where Madeline works (but Madeline was not there at the time) to go to the Sketcher’s outlet store so that I could get some shoes as we can only buy them when we are in the United States due to my foot size and my old ones are really worn out.

We took a really long time looking for shoes but finally found me a pair of sneakers, much like my old ones, and a pair of more casual shoes.  My foot have continued to grow and I am now in a fourteen, instead of a thirteen!

Dominica looked for shoes but was not able to find anything that she wanted even going to another store as well.

It was incredibly hot today.  Very uncomfortable to be outside.

This evening Liesl requested Panda Express, again.  So I went out and picked that up for our family.  Tonight is the last night for Dominica’s parents in Texas.  They are heading back to New York early in the morning and Dominica is driving them.

I had almost no sleep last night so went to bed very early tonight.  Dominica decided to sleep on the couch because she had to be up so early to get her parents off to the airport.

This morning was up early and cleaning all morning, mostly for Francesca and   Dominica and their dad came to help, too.  Dominica’s aunt and uncle were coming to see the new baby and were going to be spending the day at the Grices’ and so it was a few hours of getting the house ready this morning.  No easy task with six kids all over the place and two giant dogs (and a hedgehog.)

The Internet has been just terrible for us while in Houston.  It is out constantly.  Easily five to ten times per day.  I can’t wait to get back to the third world where the infrastructure is more stable.

Family visited for much of the day so things were a bit hectic.  But they really only stayed until mid-afternoon.  So the evening ended up being pretty relaxing.