June 23, 2015: Celebrating Luciana’s Fourth Birthday

Dominica was the first one up this morning.  After she was up, Luciana got up and sneaked into the room where I was sleeping and climbed into bed where Dominica had been to snuggle.  After a little bit, Liesl got up too, came in and snuggled next to Luciana.  They both fell back asleep there and got another hour or two of sleep, on their own, even after I got up.  They were so adorable.

Today is Tuesday and we are out on the farm in Peoria with dad.  We are having Luciana’s fourth birthday party today.  She had a little party when we were in Spain, just the four of us.  Then last week she had a party in Frankfort.  And today we are having a party at dad’s.  So Luciana has made out pretty well on parties this year.  She might have had to have waited for them but they came in abundance!

Luciana has been anything but patient for this party.  She has been talking about little else since several weeks before we left Spain and to some degree since her birthday in April.

Everyone came over today.  Sharon and Leo, Jeremy and Rachael, Sarah and Steven.  So there were eleven of us for Luciana’s party.  This birthday was Play-doh themed which is what Luciana has been asking for and boy did she get a lot of it.  She was very excited.  She and Liesl (and several adults) played Play-doh all afternoon.

We had a big cookout, that had to be moved indoors because it was raining, with burgers and hot dogs and, of course, a cake.  Luciana had a very nice birthday.

I had to work today, of course, as it is the middle of the week.  After work this evening Liesl and I got down to more Broken Age.  She did great, again, and completed the First Act of it.  The story is great and she really knows how to play it.  She moves through it really quickly.  Much more quickly that I would have.  It is so much fun to watch her play.  And she is so snugly when she plays.  She sits right next to me with my arm around her.  I really wish that we had a good video game setup to take with us when traveling as the gaming is such a good way to spend time together.

June 22, 2015: Liesl Plays Broken Age

Monday morning on the farm.  Everyone slept in a lot today, especially as even the girls were up very late last night.  We took it easy today and, of course, I had to work a normal day so it was really just me working from dad’s office while dad played with the girls.  Dominica has been addicted to some new book series for the last week or two and is out of commission until she finishes it.  We really did not get any interaction from her today.

After work this evening dad set up his laptop attached to the “big” forty two inch television down in the basement and got a wireless keyboard and mouse so that Liesl could try playing some video games down there.  Liesl has been begging to get back to playing Broken Age for a long time. She and I put in maybe thirty minutes, an hour tops, playing Broken Age in the kitchen in our home in Spain several weeks ago, more than a month ago probably, and have not had a chance to even fire it up for a moment since.  Steam is awesome about syncing your game status up to the cloud so we were able to switch machines and play it on dad’s laptop without losing our place in the game.

In the interim, Liesl has found Broken Age videos on YouTube and has been watching them a lot.  She loves the game and is so excited to play it with me.  It was probably around nine in the evening when we got it hooked up and dad joined us for a little less than an hour to watch Liesl play.

It was awesome how little Liesl needed me for the game.  She took control of the mouse and snuggled next to me on the couch in the basement and played the game on her own.  She really did not need me at all, it was amazing.

Liesl and I probably played Broken Age until one in the morning.  We were having a great time.  We both love the game, the story is really engaging and interesting.  The graphics are beautiful and there is quite a good selection of voice actors in the game too including Elijah Wood, Jack Black, Jennifer Hale and Wil Wheaton.  Pretty surprising when you suddenly hear them.

Liesl can hardly contain just how excited she is to be playing this game.  She has been waiting for so long and is really enjoying showing off just how well she is able to play it!

We had a great time playing it this evening and are going to make an effort to play it again tomorrow too.

June 21, 2015: Father’s Day Brunch and Visit

We have a very busy day today.  It is Sunday and this morning is Dominica’s grandfather’s 90th birthday brunch as well as it is Father’s Day.  We were not up and moving super early, but we were up earlier than we might have been.  My girls were quick to come up and tell me “Happy Father’s Day.”

We pretty much got up and were all working right away on getting ready to go into Utica to the Radisson where we are having the birthday brunch.  We had to shower, get dressed, get some packing done, get the kids ready, etc.  It is always a big production.

At the Radisson we had a private room for the party but the brunch food was just from the main brunch room, which is a really nice, big brunch in downtown Utica.  There were a lot of people there and a good sized selection of food.

While we were eating, Dominica wiped Liesl’s mouth with a napkin and it knocked out another tooth!  This is her fourth tooth out in about four weeks!  This is crazy.  My poor little girl has almost no teeth left.  She has no way to eat anything.  I was helping get plates for people when it happened and when I came back to the table Dominica and Liesl were already running off to a bathroom to take a look at the tooth and clean Liesl up so I missed it happening and found out a bit later what had happened.  Liesl is now only one tooth behind Garrett which is seven months older.  She apparently has a rather mature jaw.

Dominica’s cousin Glen and his band played several songs at the birthday brunch which was pretty cool.  Their best was a cover of Whitney Houston’s “I Just Want to Dance with Somebody.”  Apparently they play around town a bit.  Dominica and I were talking that we should take some time to go see them perform sometime when we are around.   Who knows when that will work out, of course.

After the party we went back to Dominica’s parents’ house, packed up the Acadia and set off to drive out to dad’s for the week.  This is the first that dad will get to see Dominica and the girls since before we left for Spain.

The drive is about three hours.  Dominica talked to dad on the drive and they worked out to meet at the Omega Grill in Geneseo for dinner on the way there so that we would not need to worry about figuring out food later on.  Just makes things a lot easier.

It was early evening when we got into Geneseo.  We ate dinner and then we were back to dad’s house.  The girls, as always, are both super excited to see dad as well as to tear his house apart.  They love that they can go into the cupboards and locate all of the toys and take them out.  For days Luciana has been saying how she is going to get the toys out from the closet as soon as she gets into the house.  They have a complete inventory of the toys that they keep at grandpa’s house in their heads and know where each and every thing are.

We stayed up pretty late.  The girls had a lot of energy.  These visits are always very tough for dad.   He is not used to our schedules.

June 20, 2015: Swimming in the Backyard

This is my last weekend day in Frankfort.  We are heading out to my dad’s tomorrow afternoon and then the weekend after that we go down to Waverly for the Fourth of July and from there I will be leaving, with Liesl, to drive down to Texas.  We have been so busy since being back in the US, we are just constantly moving from one place to another over and over again.  We get practically no time to stop and relax and take stock of where we are.

Today Dominica’s dad set up the inflatable pool in the back yard and the kids went nuts playing out there all day in the pool, with squirt guns, with their bikes and just running around.  Somehow they have just unlimited energy to burn off.  They played in the pool for a really big portion of the day and had a ball.

I worked most of the day but did get some downtime and was able to relax to some degree.

This evening, after dinner, no one felt like going out for ice cream except for Emily and I so the two of us went to Utica to get Nicky-Doodles on our own.

June 19, 2015: TGIF

Finally it is Friday, although with how busy thing have been at work that does not really imply that today will be a light day or that there will be time to relax over the weekend.

Long day of work but was able to do some relaxing late in the evening.

This weekend we have nothing much planned for tomorrow, although catching up on things that need my attention is at the top of the list, then on Sunday morning we have Dominica’s grandfather’s 90th birthday party after which we are driving out to the farm for the week.