Sheep Guarding Llama

Tuesday and our last full day in the United States for six months until we get back to New York in June!  So much to do.

The entire morning was spent packing.  Dominica ran out and did some early morning shopping for things that we were going to need just quickly on the island.  I’ve been working on feeding the kids and eating nothing but what is left in the house.

Dominica managed to get three donation bags of stuff together this morning!  It’s amazing how much to donate we keep finding.

The packing went on until fairly late.  It was after two when we headed out from the condo to run to the storage unit up on NASA Road One.  We had been hoping to have left more like ten this morning!  This messed up our planning a bit.

On the way to the storage unit Luciana had a bathroom emergency and we had to stop quickly.  Fortunately we were passing by Fry’s at the time and just swung in.  We had wanted to stop there anyway so this was not a tragic loss of time.  We wanted to get 64GB Micro SD cards for the Fire tablets that were arriving today. This stop ended up taking a full hour between taking some time to location the requisite cards, getting through checkout and then a massively long and drawn out process to do a price match that ended up backing up the store’s checkout capacity dramatically.  But, in the end, we got a great price on the exact cards that we need for our Fires that arrive today.  Liesl and Luciana have 40GB of storage on theirs and Dominica and I have 72GB on each of ours.  Far more than we are used to in our iPads which only one of which had 32GB and the rest had even less!

So now it was well after three thirty before we got to the storage unit.  At least the storage unit process did not take long and we found most of the things that we needed to find while we were in there.  The one big problematic thing that we have not managed to find is the power cord to the Netgear ReadyNAS unit as we had things that we really wanted to be doing with that and cannot because we cannot power it on.  So that is a project that hopefully we get to tackle sometime this summer.

From the storage unit we went to the Grices’ and arrived just as they were getting back to the house after having made a run to Sonic which was having a promotion because of the Houstons having won a game and so there were free drinks.

We hung out there for an hour or two before getting dinner which turned out to be from Sonic.  Sonic is making out well on us today.  Their free drink promotion got us all thinking about them, I guess.   Dominica and my Amazon Fires had arrived so we were busy setting those up as well.  The new Micro SD cards worked great and I managed to get a lot of games downloaded.  I am hoping that I will be able to use the Fire on the flight tomorrow and maybe knock out a game or two during the long time in the air.  I probably got a dozen games installed, mostly casual hidden object games, that are free from the Amazon Underground.

While dinner was being organized I watched the Disney Channel movie Pants on Fire which was surprisingly good.  It is on Netflix.  Silly, of course, but well done and I like the actor who stars in it.

After dinner Dominica and I decided to run up to Bush Intercontinental and rent a car for tomorrow that we can just drop off at the airport.  This will make the logistics tomorrow much easier for everyone.  We had both been independently thinking about renting a car for this for a while so when I suggested that we do it tonight she was ready to go and we just ran up and did it.

Emily came with us as we drove the Chevy Spark up to the airport.  That is a very long drive.  Traffic was heavy but not bad and we made good time.  Once at the airport it was rather a pain to find the car rental place and we had to do more than a full lap before managing to get there.  Now that we know where it is it will not be bad to use in the future, at least.  It is a completely separate complex on its own disconnected from the airport.

We thought that we were going to be able to rent from Enterprise but they were down to only exotic cars left and a Corvette was not going to meet our needs.  We shopped around but National was by far the best deal.  We got a Chrysler 200 full size for $70 as they were out of midsized cars.  Hertz was starting at $140 a night.  Dollar and Thifty at $82.

Dominica and Emily drove back in the Spark and I took the 200 back to the Grices’.  We were only there a few minutes. Dropped off Emily, gathered up the kids and drove back to the condo.  It was around ten when we got back.  Of course we forget to take the parking pass out of either the Spark or the Sequoia so we had to stop by the office and get another one.  When I did that a guy from North Pole, Alaska was just checking in.  We talked for a minute and he mentioned that he was originally from Ashtabula, Ohio.  Small world.

Luciana fell asleep in the car but Liesl was wide awake.  Both girls asked for sandwiches but Luciana fell asleep after just one bite.  Liesl ate two full sandwiches.  This morning, out of the blue, Liesl asked for a mayonnaise sandwich.  She has never had one before and never mentioned one.  But today she asked for one.  Very odd.  Tonight she had two more!  What a kid she is.  You never know what she is going to come up with.  Between the girls tonight and me this morning that finished off all of the bread that we have in the condo.  Small victories.

While packing Dominica found the Mallo Cups that we bought somewhere yesterday.  I rarely see them and the girls have never had them.  It will be a long time before there is a chance for that again so Liesl and I ate the pack tonight.  This is Liesl’s very first Mallo Cup.

MangoLassi broke the two million views in a single month mark tonight.  And it is only the twenty ninth day of the month!  This is a huge milestone for the community.

Liesl stayed up playing until just after midnight.  Dominica packed all evening.  Our bedroom was completely full of stuff needing to be packed so there was no way for us to go to bed until a lot of extra packing was completed or else we would have nowhere to sleep.

The video game downloads continue tonight for the last night.  We really did time this well and we are basically down to some “mop up” duty of the last straggler games that we are unlikely to ever get to but it is nice to have just for “completeness.”  We managed to run out of time as well as storage all at the same time.  It all worked out just about perfectly.  What a project that has been getting the gaming ready for us to travel to extensively.  The girls asked and asked for games while we were in Panama and Nicaragua and we have been promising them that we would have a real game system to “fix all of the problems” with things that we could not do all of this time that we really had to make this work during this window of opportunity.  But it really seems like it has and we are in great shape heading back to Europe this time.

I caught Rachel via Steam Alerts playing the goofy “Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective” that we got for her.  So silly, yet so fun.

Found out that dad has been playing “Blue Toad Murder Mystery Files” and is about halfway through the seasons now.  Dominica and I love that game.  Dad is way ahead of us now, we have had no time to be playing it.  It’s that perfect mix of casual but not trivial, funny but still has puzzles and a plot, fun and family friendly that makes you happy to play it.  It’s not the best game ever but it is very close to a style that I want to play more and more of.

Got my iPad Mini cleared and ready to ship to dad.  We are sending him that iPad to use as his from the girls is on its last leg (he has to have clips on it just to keep it from falling apart) as we have switched over to the lighter, smaller Fires.

Got to bed around one this morning.  Tomorrow is going to be a tough day.  Tons to be done and then going into epic amounts of travel.  We are going to be completely exhausted by the time we get onto the plane and then just the first leg of the flight is twelve hours!  This is, by far, going to be our toughest travel adventure ever.  But we get to say that in a single go we are flying from Texas, over the eastern US, over north Africa, all the way past Europe to the Asian border.  That’s something, right?

Monday.  The home stretch of preparing for the trip has begun.  We have mostly been ignoring the trip, up until now, trying not to think about all of the things that need to be done as there has not been a chance to have done them… until now.  Now the panic sets in and we are racing to get everything done between today, tomorrow and a little bit of time on Wednesday.

Dominica ran out to Target and Academy to do some shopping early this morning and then packed and prepared to pack for much of the morning.  Then in the very early afternoon we drove up to the Grices, dropped of Liesl and Luciana in exchange for Emily and set out running errands with Emily.  The first thing that we needed to do and by far our key objective for the day was to find me a replacement head strap for my CPAP facemask as mine is nearly completely dead and being in Greece with it is going to be a bit risky.

We started by going to a CPAP dealing in Clear Lake that I had called this morning and they said that they were unlikely to have the exact part that I needed but that they could identify it and call their warehouse in Stafford to see if they had it there, which they assumed that they would.  So since Clear Lake was close to League City, we started there.

They were right, they were able to identify the part and did not have it.  They called up to their warehouse for me and got confirmation from the tech there that I could go up and buy the headstrap there.  They had it available and even were able to give me the price.  It’s a long drive out to Stafford but it needed to be done today so we raced straight over there getting up there around three thirty.

We had a bit of an adventure.  The warehouse tried to pull a bait and switch on us, not realizing that I had an expired prescription and no matter what they did I could not buy a new face mask (straps can be sold in Texas, but masks cannot) and in an attempt to raise the price from $35 to $180 they ended up creating a situation where they were unable to sell me anything.  It was all fake and Dominica figured out the failed logic, and I figured out the bait and switch and they caved and sold us the part, as promised in the end.  It turns out that we bought the part from the same store that I got the CPAP from in 2010 or 2011.  So while it was many hours and a bit of a fight to finally get them to sell it to us we have what we need and are good for the journey.

We returned to Bay Area and hit the DXL store there and picked up two belts for me.  My old ones are all dead.

Back to the Grices around five thirty.  Dinner was Mexican tonight, those amazing tuna fish tacos that I had a few weeks ago that were so amazing.

We hung out at the house until around nine then came home for an evening of packing.  Lots to be done.  We have Francesca’s big Toyota Sequoia tonight that we are going to use tomorrow to take a big load to the storage unit.

I remembered to check Origin tonight to get Dragon Age II downloaded for Dominica and discovered that the Game of the Year Edition of Dragon Age Inquisition had finally released and was in their holiday sale!  So I grabbed that and got it downloading.  Dominica is going to be so excited.  Dragon Age Origin is her favourite video game of all time and now she has the entire trilogy to play.  I’m never going to get to use our new gaming system now.

Today is the closest thing that we have to a last day of relaxing in any way.  It is Sunday and Dominica’s mom’s birthday. So we are heading up to the Grices’ on the early side and spending the day there.  After today we have to be totally focused on getting ready to travel back to Europe.  The deadline is rapidly approaching.

We headed over to the Grices’ this morning and managed to be the first to wish Dominica’s mom a happy birthday (other than her dad, of course.)  It’s always a bit of a competition.

Shortly after arriving, Dominica, her dad and I went to the movie theatre to see Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens.  It was long and overall, I did not like it.  They both did.  Dominica thought that it was great.  I felt like it was an incredibly cheesy and predictable remake of the original movie combined with ridiculous and pointless character cameos.  It’s everything that I was worried that the new movie would be.  There were no surprises and nothing original.  It doesn’t feel like it carries the story forward but rather felt like a phoned-in half-assed money grab to exploit the fan boys.  It is better than the first three movies, of course, but that is an incredibly low bar.  I’m sure most people will like it and I must say that the new main star that they got is a very good actor and he did an excellent job but the movie itself isn’t true to the Star Wars universe and makes a mockery of the fans.  I’m saddened, but not surprised.

I had planned to avoid the movie completely but Liesl had decided that she wanted to go since she is seven and I had gone to see the opening day of Star Wars VI: The Return of the Jedi with my parents when I was seven.  But as we were walking out the door Liesl changed her mind because she did not want to give up time playing with her cousins.  So I was going to cancel but Dominica yelled at me so I went, but I think that I would have been happier skipping it.  I’m just so utterly disappointed.  So much potential and so much time to get this right and I’m not sure that it could have realistically been worse given the money, time and expectations.  Sure it technically could have had bad actors, made no sense and had bad effects but realistically the cast and effects were a given.  But the writing, directing and direction that they are going are basically as bad as I feel that they could be.  Maybe I am just jaded.

We got back and Emily and I did a Sonic run for food.  While we were gone Francesca baked the cake too.

Tonight we set up the new projector and gave it a trial run.  It works great.  Very easy to use.  We hooked it up to the gaming rig and projected it onto a side wall and Francesca spent the evening playing the point and click adventure game Alter Ego.

Christmas is now over.  Now it is time for us to start thinking about all of the things that we need to do in the very short time that we have between now and when we fly to Greece.  Only four days until we leave!  Now that we are not focused on Christmas we can start to focus on worrying about that.

Once the girls woke up this morning we had a long talk with Liesl to figure out what had happened last night with the dogs.  Garrett similarly had an isolated talk at the Grices’.  It turns out that there was a lot of misunderstanding and Clara had accused them of things that they had not done and they did not explain last night like they should have they got in way more trouble that was needed.  Kids.

We are going over to the Grices’ today but first we needed some breakfast so we went to Miss Kitty’s  to eat before leaving Galveston.

Off to the Grices’ where we hung out for the rest of the day.  It was a calm, relaxing day for all of the adults.  The kids were all excited about playing with all of their new toys so that kept all of them entertained with each other for the rest of the day.

Dominica and Madeline decided to go to the movies to see on of the Hunger Games movies, I do not know which one.  I don’t follow those at all.

Francesca and I set up the gaming rig in the living room, hooked up to the big television and she played Amnesia: The Dark Descent for a while.  We banned the little kids to the bedrooms to play and Emily came out and actually joined us and watched the game.  We played for most of the evening until it was pretty late.

Christmas morning came way too early.  I was very tired when Dominica made me get up.  I was barely in time to get out of bed before the girls were awake and running out to see their presents.  The adults skipped breakfast today and we got to opening presents on the early side.  The Toccos came for the first little while as well but Joe had to work so they left after an hour or two.

Present opening went into the late afternoon.  It was a long one this year, we moved pretty slowly without any set end time to motivate us along.

The big gift for the Miller family from Dominica’s parents was a new, extremely portable, high end Optoma 720p projector which is freaking awesome.  It is so tiny and light.  We are going to love traveling with this.  We often have houses without a television or at least without an HD one and having something that we can always use for playing video games or movies will be really nice.  Between our new gaming rig laptop, the bluetooth stereo speaker and now the projector we are really ready for high end, portable gaming.  We are so excited.  Dominica and I have been talking about getting one of these for a long time now.

Liesl ended up getting two of the one thing that she really wanted: a little stuffed unicorn.  Of all things, our seven year old only asked for one thing for Christmas, a $5 stuffed animal. What a silly girl.  Well her cousin Clara got her one without knowing that Liesl had asked for it.  And Dominica had gone hunting, a lot, to find the right one for her.  Liesl was pretty excited to have two of them and loves them both and says that one is the mommy and one is the baby.

After the presents were opened we relaxed for a bit and then went over to the Toccos’ to visit there when Joe got home from work.  We did the Santa grab bag there for the adults, the kids did theirs at the Grices’.  While we were doing the grab bag Liesl and Garrett got in a lot of trouble upstairs with the dogs and they spent the rest of the night in isolation to be dealt with tomorrow.  That ended our night early and instead of staying at the Grices’ tonight we went back to the condo so that we could get some sleep and talk to Liesl in the morning about what had happened.