Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

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.

It is Monday morning and this begins our final week in Frankfort with the Grices.  It’s another slow, relaxing day.  Just working on posting and whatnot.

This evening I went and picked up some craft beers from the store up the street.  Everyone was sitting around outside this evening enjoying the weather and the new, fenced yard.

 

We tried going to a local restaurant near dad’s place that on Facebook said that they were open but when we got there appeared to have gone out of business.  That’s pretty common with restaurants in that location so we were not surprised although it was very annoying to have driven there and found out only after arriving.  That hurts all future businesses because we start to trust less and less that things will remain in business and so don’t bother to try them out because even if Facebook or whatever says that they are open, that’s just something that they didn’t bother to change when the business failed.

So back to Geneseo again to the Omega Grill because at least it is open.

Luciana has been putting on magic shows for everyone.  This remains her favourite toy year after year.

Luciana has been doing a lot of drawing while we are at grandpa’s house.  She is showing it of on the fridge.

Tonight we drove back out to Frankfort late at night.  We will be out there this week and dad will get a chance to recuperate from having the grandkids around.

It is Saturday on the farm.  This morning I found Liesl watching YouTube in the kitchen with her iPad propped up on the oven.  Today is the first day that the girls have had their iPads back since December when we packed them away with dad into storage.  They have been living with nothing but the Kindle Fires all of the time in the interim.  They love their iPads and are excited to get to use them again.

For an early lunch today we went to the Omega in Geneseo.  First time for Dominica and the girls there in a long time.  The family pictures are still up on the fridge, though, even if a lot of the staff is too new and has no idea who we all are.

Dominica has been obsessed with playing Pokemon Go these past couple of weeks and the girls were all into seeing what all Pokemon were hiding at the Omega.

This afternoon Share and Leo came over to the house, then Jeremy and Rachael did as well, bringing over baby Olivia so that we could all meet her for the first time.  The girls have been so excited to get to meet their new baby cousin.  They have been asking and asking for months.

We had a nice afternoon all visiting at the house. Dominica managed to get Olivia to sleep, even.

The girls got set up with their Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles memberships today.  They are so adorable.