Saturday at dad’s place. The weather was not so hot today, but still no rain. It is very dry this summer in New York. I slept in a lot today, according to my Apple Watch, getting just over nine hours of restful sleep! I must have been really exhausted.
We had an early breakfast or late lunch at eleven, veggie burgers on the grill. Then it was just a little relaxing at the house until at a quarter till three we needed to be on our way to Rochester to meet up with the family for a big dinner at Red Lobster.
The girls have been asking to go to Red Lobster with grandpa for months. And every day since getting back to New York they have been mentioning it. Dinner was at four with Aunt Sharon and Uncle Leo, my cousin Sara and her fiancee Jen and, of course, Dominica, Liesl, Luciana, dad and me.
After dinner we drove to a park in Chili with a great playground and the girls played for about two hours. They had an awesome time and played with all kinds of kids. It was a really good time to go to the playground.
After the playground we all felt like Abbott’s frozen custard, which is actually what we had been hunting for when we found the playground in the first place, so we drove all over until we found one, ate and then were off to home.
It is Friday in Peoria out on dad’s farm. I’ve been very, very far behind on SGL updates and today is just one of those lost days. We know that we drove out last night and that I spent the day working out of dad’s office to get writing and posting done.
Our last morning in Frankfort, again. Dominica made a big breakfast this morning. We have a lot to do today.
The first task of the morning is Dominica taking Liesl back to Herkimer to see the dentist again. She needed to get her last cavity filled while we were still in town.
This afternoon we were back in the car after Liesl’s dentist appointment and drove out to dad’s house where we will be for a while until we head down to Texas.
We got up around five this morning to see the Grices off as they loaded up into the Ford Explorer and set off of their drive to Texas. Even Luciana got up to see them off. Liesl slept through it all. Francesca and the crew were underway by ten minutes to six in the morning.
Since we were already awake we just got up even though it was a short night for us.
I did a lot of work getting the platform for MangoLassi updated today. It was handy being up so early in the morning.
I did a ton of email clean up today. This year has gotten me pretty far behind.
Luciana and I played some Minecraft together today. We rarely get time to do that.
I am working hard now to catch up after more than a month of getting behind on SGL updates. Once things get busy and I get behind, there is just no keeping up. Today is the last full day of the Grices being in Frankfort, they are leaving first thing in the morning to start driving back down to Texas.
Dominica, Liesl, Luciana and I are staying for one more day in Frankfort so that Liesl can go to her dentist appointment in Herkimer on Thursday before we head back to Peoria to visit dad. Hopefully he has had enough time to recover from our last visit.
The kids were pretty wild all day. The four littles are such a handful and now that the have been together for weeks they have worked up the frenzy of being together full time combined with getting tired of never getting time to themselves as well.
I spent most of the day working from the kitchen. Last night and today were very productive writing days.
For lunch today I walked over to Big Willy’s and picked up a pizza for the family while Francesca, Madeline and Emily had sneaked off to Nicky Doodle’s in Utica for ice cream.
For dinner tonight the whole family went to Denny’s in Herkimer. The kids were out of control, as you would imagine. They get worse and worse as the summer rolls on. But dinner was nice. Dominica and I both got healthy dinners of grilled salmon and vegetables. Liesl has been asking for Denny’s all week, even though we have been there a few times so she is happy.
Liesl Loves Denny’s
After dinner we drove to Schuyler and went to Dave’s Diner for ice cream. Yes, the Grices went twice today, again. The place was packed because it is cruise night, which doesn’t really mean fancy cars or anything but just means that people park poorly and rev the engines of beat up old pick up trucks to get them to peel out. It’s a very sad affair, but draws a lot of ice cream eaters, apparently.
On the way back to the Toccos’ we stopped at Dominica’s grandfather’s house for just a little while so that the Grices could say goodbye before leaving tomorrow morning to drive back down to Texas. The little kids were totally out of control tonight and Liesl ended up hurting Dominica by jumping into her nose and almost breaking it. So Liesl was very upset on the way home.
Once home, tension was a bit high and Liesl could not calm down so she and I took a walk around town. We walked up to the village park with the fountain on Main Street and sat there for half an hour and just talked. That helped her a lot.
Getting back to the house everyone was playing Pokemon Go for maybe twenty minutes. After that, all of the Grices were in bed, they have to be up by five in the morning.
Dominica and I were not ready for bed yet. We set up in the living room with The Wolf Among Us from Telltale Games. We did not make it through the first chapter, but we did make decent progress and are excited to have this game to play. It looks like it is going to be very good.
