Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Dad has been playing the hidden object, or more appropriately as it appears to now be known a “hidden object and puzzle adventure” or HOPA, game based on the Castle television show.

I spent the morning alone trying to get work done out at the condo in Galveston.  It was a shorter day, I was only really out there during the morning and by early afternoon I packed up and drove up to League City where we will be spending the holiday.  I am staying there tonight to make things easier to deal with.  I had not been planning on bringing the new video game system but Dominica said that I should bring it so I packed that up at the last minute, as well.

This evening we went over to the Toccos’ for dinner.  The kids were rambunctious, of course.  Very excited about tomorrow.

After dinner it was back to the house and time for the pajama elf to dole out the new pajamas for the night.  Luciana and Liesl got very lucky that their pajamas just happen to come with matching pajamas that perfectly fit their new build-a-bears.  They were so excited and thought that that was the coolest thing.  Little did they know that it was a coincidence.  Sadly, Clara’s pajamas did not come with a matching smaller pajamas for her build-a-bear.  No one even thought about this as none of it was planned nor were the bears expected, it was just how the pajamas came.  But Clara felt like she was missing out and was very sad, understandable.

Dominica and I ran to Walgreens and hunted around in the last minutes before they closed and Dominica managed to find a holiday dog costume of a Santa outfit that looked like it would fit Clara’s build-a-bear.  We brought it home, hid it in all of the wrapping, called Clara out and she was thoroughly convinced that the pajamas had just been overlooked in her over-zealousness to open her Christmas pajamas and was as happy as a clam.

The laying out of the presents went until well after midnight.  It was, as always, very exhausting.

We were all very tired when we finally got off to sleep around one in the morning.  Dominica and I slept in Garrett and Clara’s room while the kids all piled into Madeline and Emily’s rooms so that they would be isolated.

I meant to sleep in this morning but we had gone to bed so early last night that I was awake just before five.  I checked the clock and then thought about how long I had been asleep and decided that yes, my body had gotten a full night’s sleep and it was ready to get up.  So get up I did.  I went out into the kitchen and got to work doing some posting and stuff and checking up on the downloads.  Yes the video game downloads continue unabated.  Day after day, hour after hour, more and more games download and still there is so much more to get!  At this point we have something on the order of seven hundred games downloaded onto the Asus ROG laptop between Steam and GOG.

It was several hours, around nine o’clock, when the next person was awake and that was Luciana.  She beat Dominica by at least half an hour.  So I got her started on her day with her breakfast, bathroom routine and set up doing stuff in the living room.  Dominica was up before long and Liesl had to be woken up around ten.  She was not happy to have to get up at all.

The girls did their Advent Calendar, it is almost done.  They love the Advent routine and the Playmobile calendar that Dominica’s mom got them is a big hit.  They love all of the toys that come in it and it works with their other toys and stuff.  It’s perfect.  They are so excited to get up and do it every morning.

It was easily ten thirty or later when we packed everyone into the Spark and I drove them up to League City to drop them off.  We stopped quickly at the McDonald’s drive through around the corner to pick up breakfast to eat in the car on the drive.  It was a quick trip, just unloading the car and off again.

I had to make a stop at Fry’s today.  It turns out that Liesl had been out shopping and found a wireless mouse at Five Below and told Dominica that she had to get it for me for Christmas because she knew that I really needed a mouse so that I can get work done, which is very true.  The mouse at Five Below is the cheap one that we already have that does not work well, though.  So Dominica had told her that she was going to order me one instead.  But, in reality, picking out a good mouse is something that needs to be done carefully and probably in person.  So Dominica sent me to Fry’s today to see if I could find a good travel wireless mouse that would meet our needs.  It is so sweet that Liesl has been demanding that I get a good mouse and has been looking for one.  She has mentioned a few times that she was concerned that my Christmas present was not going to arrive in time, now I understood why.

So after thirty minutes or more of checking out every mouse that I could, I finally decided on a forty dollar Logitech Bluetooth travel mouse.  I like that it is Bluetooth because it means that I will not have to deal with a dongle and that is always a problem when traveling.  Those things are way too easy to lose.  We do not need an additional one, especially not one for an expensive mouse.  And the travel model was quite small, which is pretty important for us.  It’s very special that Liesl put so much thought into this gift.

From Fry’s I drove back home and settled in for my quiet day at the house.  I got some writing done today, lots of game downloads, some work on the games, some posting and I managed to get caught up on SGL posts which is pretty important as next week is going to be very hectic and then we are off to Greece and traveling when behind on the blog is always very bad.

In between working on other things I managed to beat the video game HexCells Plus this afternoon.  That’s the second of the HexCells Trilogy of games.  Only HexCells Infinite is left for me to tackle and I made it a long way through that this evening as well.

I ended up staying up well past midnight as I was getting writing done.  I often do my most work late at night.  The fog was around all day but after ten or so it got really think and by midnight you could barely see the cars on the road.  It was quite warm during the day, eight one degrees this morning, but cooled off quite a bit tonight.

Lost Internet access a little while after midnight which was super annoying.  I did get a chance to chat with a buddy living in Thailand right now, though.

Up until two in the morning.  Got the entire Nancy Drew video game archive collection set up to download through the night.  I am hoping that Liesl likes these games, there are more than twenty of them.  I am hopeful that somewhere in all of these new games that there are some gems that the girls will really enjoy.

Eight days until we fly to Istanbul.  Our time is rapidly diminishing.  Because of everything going on here and Christmas coming so quickly we have this feeling like we are just hunkered down in Texas and will be here for a long time. But we are just a week and a day away from needing to be fully packed, on our way to the airport and off for most a year in Europe before returning to New York, not Texas.  We won’t be returning to Texas for a full year, or so the plan goes.  This is our first time on our travels where we are going to be away from the US for even a complete three month stretch, let alone almost six months!  Our longest was when we were in Spain for two and a half months, plus a week in Norway and a day in Ireland.  It was just under three months.  Nicaragua would have been nearly as long but we returned a little early.  This will be longer than both of those trips combined.  There is so much mental and physical planning to do.  I’m not sure if we are really going to be ready or if we are just going to panic and run for the airport at the last minute.

I am home alone this morning.  Dominica and the girls spent the night at the Grices’ so that I could get some time to relax and get some things done on my own.  It is very hard to be productive when everyone is around all of the time and you don’t have any quiet space.  This actually works out quite well.

It is a nice, foggy day on Galveston this morning.  Much like yesterday.  I have the door and many of the windows open.  It is sixty nine in the house, just about perfect.  And the light is soft and white.  I can see someone surfing in the roiled Gulf while I write.

The video game downloads continue.  I was right when, several weeks ago, I predicted that I would need the full month in Texas to get the games that we wanted.  We only have a week to go and are definitely not going to be able to get everything, but certainly have been able to get enough.  We have tons and tons to play, that isn’t an issue.  Now just making sure that we have the selection that we want.  I suspect that once we are in Greece for a week that the girls will start playing games quite a lot.  They are both such avid gamers.  We are so happy that they have started to play games all of the time rather than watching YouTube or whatever like they used to.  So much more interactive.  They still loving watching YouTube shows about games and learning about their games from that, but that is a pretty good use of YouTube.  They use it to learn about games that they want to play and about how to play the games that they have.

I was home alone until five forty when I hoped in the Spark and drove up to League City to have dinner with the family.  Nothing fancy tonight, just cooking at home.  Something simple.  Vegetarian fake turkey and green beans with potatoes.

The kids had apparently begged for popcorn and a movie night.  So the little girls and Emily sat in the living room and watched Cinderella, the live action version.  I sat in the media room where I could see Liesl on the couch sitting with Francesca and I watched reruns of The Drew Carey Show on Laff.  I’ve not seen that show in easily a decade!  What a great show it was, too.  Luciana started the movie but was tired and asked to go to bed almost immediately.  So she was in their bedroom at the Grices’ sleeping most of the time that I was there.

After the movie was over we packed up the kids and drove back down to the condo.  It was an early night for us.  Luciana was so tired, she was straight t bed and asleep in minutes.  Liesl was up for thirty minutes, tops, but did not want to go to bed but we sent her as everyone needed to get sleep tonight.  Dominica was the most tired and was in bed before I could even turn around.  I managed to get myself to bed in about an hour.  I put in twenty minutes of playing the Enigma Express on the iPhone before I fell asleep.

It was easily only ten when I nodded off.  A very early night indeed.

Tomorrow the plan is to sleep until everyone wakes up.  Then I am going to drive the family up to League City and drop them off.  Dominica is hoping to do this around nine.  I know that more realistically it will be closer to noon.  Everyone is tired and getting sleep is important.  I will be home alone again tomorrow all day and they will spend the next two nights at the Grices’.  I will join them on Christmas Eve in the afternoon and spend the night there that night as well as it just makes Christmas a lot easier to deal with logistically when we don’t have to drive half an hour or more in the morning after waking the kids up to get up there to celebrate.  Way easier to already have us all in one place.