Sheep Guarding Llama

It’s Friday and my first full day in the Carrollton house in three years.  Waking up here was… odd to say the least.  It is so bizarre being back in this house after so long.  It’s so familiar, it still feels like home, but it is also so foreign.  But very little has changed, other than the furniture all being moved around, it mostly feels like I was just here.

I had the house to myself today.  Rachel and Shawn were both at work all day.  That worked out fine as I just set up in the bar area with my laptop and worked for the day as usual getting my writing and posting done.

For lunch I drove down to where Rachel works and met up with her and her friends Melanie and Ashlie and we had lunch at Mi Camina or “Fake Fernando’s” as it is know the group for some reason.  I had the fish tacos, they were pretty good.

This evening we just hung out at the house once Rachel and Shawn got home from work.  Rachel had to work late so was not home until around seven.  She had originally thought that she was going to be able to leave work early and be home closer to two but that didn’t work out.

Thursday.  This evening I am going to drive up to Dallas to visit friends there, check out the old house and see what is going on.  Rachel and Shawn have been living at the house since we saw them last year in Europe but none of us have seen the house for three years!

This evening I went and got the Spark inspected so that I can register it in Texas again.  That’s a huge ongoing challenge for us due to how Texas handles car inspection and registration.  Today is my first time driving the Green car since December so I had no requirement to inspect or register it yet since we were out of the country and state.  But now that I need to move it, it needs to be inspected.  It needed an oil change anyway, so that wasn’t so bad.

So I wrote and posted all day.  We ran some errands and kept ourselves busy.  We got the car all ready but I didn’t end up leaving League City until eight in the evening because Dominica kept making me stay for something later and later and didn’t make dinner until very late.  So it was many hours after I intended to leave that I managed to actually get out onto the road.

It was dark by the time that I left League City, it is a long drive to Dallas.  I made good time, though, even in the little green Spark, as there wasn’t all that much traffic.  So I sped right along and did okay.

When I was going through the Woodlands, Chris texted me to let me know that he was at the house hanging out with Rachel.  I guess he had been assuming that I would be up there much earlier than I am going to be.

It was around one in the morning when I got to the house.  Getting through Dallas was tough as I don’t have Toll Tags any longer and the roads have changed a lot and I just don’t know my way around well any more.  It has been just a few weeks why of three years since I have been in Dallas!  Totally crazy.

It felt so weird getting back into town.  I’ve not been in the area and can barely remember the streets around my own house.  So weird.  I even made a few wrong turns in the winding streets around the house.

Shawn was still awake having just gotten home from work at Cafe Brazil and let me in and made sure that I was all set up with what I needed and got the air conditioning vent opened up for me in the guest bedroom (Liesl’s room) so that it would not be so hot.  There is a bed and everything for me ready to go.  So straight to sleep for me.

It’s been over a year since I’ve seen Shawn, I last saw him (and Rachel) in Spain up in Jaen just before we left to head off to Norway and they were preparing to go to Barcelona.

It’s Wednesday.  I’m still in the back room being as productive as I can be.  I have been getting a lot done and I was home “alone”, just be babysitting the little kids or some combination of them, for most of the day.

I have been working hard for a few days now to start getting caught up on SGL.  I am two months behind and going crazy trying to get to the missing days so that I can get things posted.  I have been writing posts now and then since the end of May but unless I have every day, I cannot get them posted.  So they just sit in my drafts folder waiting to get published. So at some point there are going to be an awful lot of them.

The plan, currently, is that I am going to drive up to Dallas tomorrow evening and spent the weekend at the house.  Three years without getting to see it at all, this should be very interesting.  I really wonder what it looks like up there.  I’ve missed out on a lot of things.  I can’t believe how long it has been since I have seen everyone.

I was working at my laptop all day.  Nothing exciting to report.  Colton might be coming home tomorrow.  The little kids continue to have so much fun together.  This is the final week before people start going back to school so this is their last chance to get all of the energy out of their system.  They will not be together like this again until Christmas.  It is too bad that except for long school holidays there is just no time for them to all be together.

We are considering the idea of going to Mexico in the early fall.  It is close and easy and cheap.  Going to Europe feels like it will be too much cost and effort for too little time.  So we are thinking that if we do Mexico and maybe Belize in the fall, and save Italy for the winter, we will spend less and get more time in Italy, plus finally get to spent real time in Mexico and add Belize to our list, none of us have been there at all, yet.  And likely we will get to see Guatemala just by the nature of being in the area.

 

It is Tuesday in Houston.  Last night we discovered the hedgehog running around the house and Dominica managed to capture it and get it back into its cage.  This morning we found out that this is a normal hedgehog activity around here and that they let it run around at night and just catch it again in the morning.  Hedgehogs are weird.  That explains why the hedgehog was not too happy with us capturing it at night.

I spent the day locked away in the back room writing, as usual.  I am pretty happy with the setup, though.  I am able to get a lot of work done and I don’t feel like I am in the way or being interrupted all of the time. And the new laptop is still kicking all kinds of butt.  This is the best laptop or desktop setup that I have ever had.  Ubuntu Linux on this powerhouse of a machine and using my Christmas Logitech mouse that Liesl got for me as a present is all working out very well.

The kids played together all day long.  They had so much fun that they totally missed that they had access to the second episode of Minecraft: Story Mode.  They did not play it at all today, even after Liesl had played through the first episode three times yesterday.

I watched the kids for much of the day, again.  There were trips to the hospital to see Colton and many trips out for Pokemon Go driving.  And Francesca had a meeting at work that went until very late so dinner was not until around nine thirty.

Our first day in Texas since December.  It feels so much like we were just here, but it was way more than half a year ago.  We left just after Christmas and we have been all over the world since then.  Like a dozen countries.  Such an odd feeling.

Dominica and I were both awake pretty early this morning.  Britt did not go to the hospital last night, but was ready to go pretty much first thing this morning.  I was barely set up in the bedroom with a desk and my new laptop (which is so awesome) before Joe and Britt came by to drop off the dogs on their way to the hospital.  This is the first that we have seen them since being pregnant any amount, we last saw them at Christmas, of course, when they announced it.

While they were there at the house, Joe stepped on my foot on accident and broke my big toe nail, bending it backwards in the middle and it bled quite a bit.  That hurt some.

Francesca bought Minecraft: Storymode Episode One on the Playstation Three, this morning, and the kids played that much of the day. Garrett played it through and the three little girls watched him play.  After he completed it, Liesl played through the game two more times on her own.  She apparently really likes it.

Dominica and Francesca went to a local park and drove around catching Pokemon most of the day.  I stayed home and watched the kids.  With the laptop set up in the bedroom, it is not too bad.  I am able to be productive as long as they are being good.  Although the dogs got out of control a bit today, I had to clean up after them a few times.  We even had an escapee, Indy got out under the fence in the back but Garrett found him out front and brought him in.

The four littles had a lot of fun playing together all day.  They were nuts.

Dominica and Francesca came home and made dinner.  We had taco salads.

Right after dinner, Dominica, Francesca and Bennie went to the hospital as things had not continued to move and the decision was made to do a C-section.  So they got there just in time to see the new baby, Colton Tocco, right as he was born.  Emily and I stayed home to watch the kids.  I told the little cousins that they had a new baby cousin and they exploded with excitement and marched all over the house for at least an hour.  It was absolute mayhem.

The adults could not spend any time at the hospital, once Colton was born everyone was ushered out and sent home. Nothing to do there.  So they were back home very quickly and we more or less managed to get all of the kids off to bed at eleven.  We are all feeling pretty tired today.