Sheep Guarding Llama

Tuesday. Today is our only day without guests, where I am actually home. Tomorrow I have to work in Tyler, Texas so will be away much of the day. And the girls have a birthday party to attend in Addison.

Rather quiet work day, overall. It’s like a Monday since it was a holiday weekend. So very little going on.

This evening, Luciana asked if we could try Mediterranean food for dinner. We were all in the mood for a change of pace, so this worked out pretty well. So around seven the girls and I went to Tasty Greek and got some dinner. I got the falafel gyro, and the girls got the vegetarian plate with all kinds of new stuff to try.

The girls tried hummus, tabouli, baba ganoush, falafel, dolma, spanikopita – they tried a lot of stuff. Overall, they did not like most of it. But they liked some, and were middle of the road on some. Hummus was the big winner of the evening.

After dinner we went to Walmart for a while so that they could shop for a gift for Juancho for the party tomorrow. They are looking for a Lego set to give to him.

Monday. Today is Memorial Day and Monday. Kat is still here today, but going home this evening. We all made it a traveling vlogging marathon day. I started the day watching some Karl Watson and did probably two episodes (which are decently long) while doing some walking before everyone was up.

Once everyone was up, we put on Kara & Nate and ended up watching seventy episodes (yes, actually seventy episodes) during the day! This is our longest YouTube day, ever. We are around the end of their first year of travel at episodes 199 to 269.

For food today we ate in the late afternoon and had veggie hot dogs, potato salad (sans onions), and a pineapple upside down funfetti cake.

Liesl’s big thing today is that she spent the day paying Sonic Forces and managed to finally complete it late at night. She started it yesterday pretty late in the day and essentially did it all in one day. Pretty impressive, it is neither an easy nor a small game.

I am attempting to prep for Europe, which is coming up very soon, by walking today while we watched our shows. I try to do this a bit every day, but way more today since it was basically a free day. Today I did over twenty thousand steps before it was time for bed! Twenty thousand is pretty good. I have proven that my new Sketchers are broken in and will do just fine for the trip. And I am in shape for all of the walking. And the new AmazFit Stratos watch is working out really well for me. The battery is holding up well, and using the watch works well.

Sunday. We were all pretty knackered this morning after a late night of everyone hanging out last night. So a very slow start to the day.

This morning I got to see how my watch measured my sleep last night. Very interesting stuff. Supposedly I sleep for just over two hours of deep sleep, and more like four hours of light sleep. That will be very interesting to track over time.

I’m also enjoying seeing how much more I walk each day than I had assumed previously. I keep moving a lot. And it measures my heart rate and I have feared that my resting heart rate was not good, but it turns out to be between sixty and seventy two which is great. I have also learned that I was correct that when I eat my heart rate skyrockets, which is what makes me feel so awful after eating a meal of any size.

Liesl and I played some Spirits of the Wild together today. She has gotten pretty good at this game and beats me most of the time now. But I hold my own.

This afternoon, we got out Oregon Trail and Dominica, Kat, Liesl, and I played a long game of that for the first time ever. Liesl has been so excited about this, she bought it with her money from my dad that she got for Luciana’s birthday. Liesl has become our board game addict. Luciana spent most of the day playing video games with her cousins.

Liesl won the first game that we ever played of Oregon Trail. Dominica and Kat tied. I came in last.

Saturday. Kat is here all day today. I did some light work this morning. The thing that I have been waiting for today is my new travel watch (and Dominica’s) to arrive. We had pondered what to get because my plan had been to get a Huawei, I have been wanting one for a month, and at the last second Huawei and the US government have had this huge run in and getting one right this morning seems like a really bad idea. So I decided to carefully look for something else.

Kat had forgotten that she was supposed to teach today. So she had planned on hanging out all day, but got a call and had to run to the school to teach all afternoon. So we did not see her again until evening.

What we decided to order is the Huami AmazFit Stratos for me and the AmazFit Bip for Dominica. They came this morning and we spent a few hours watching travel vlogs and getting the watches set up. So far we are pretty happy. Mine is big and works well with my wrist, which is what I wanted. I need a large watch for my arm or it looks weird. Dominica’s Bip is cute and works well for her. Mine is all black, her’s is cinnabar red-orange.

We decided to get the watches as part of our general travel safety equipment. By having a smart watch is means that most of the time that you are able to keep your phone either in a pocket or better, in your back pack. That means free hands for safety, better alertness for safety, far less likely to leave your phone behind somewhere by accident, and the weight can be put on my shoulders rather than pulling my pants down which is always the biggest challenge that I have to long walks. We also get improved pedometer, heart rate monitor, GPS, and so forth. And they look cool.

This afternoon we did a bit of cleaning around the house. Then this evening Kat returned, and Nick, Corey, Rachel, and Tim all came over to hang out for the evening. Like we had for much of the day, we spent the evening hanging outside in the atrium. The weather was great. Nick brought over Miller Lite and we had some beers.

For dinner, we were split on what people wanted. So Tim, Nick, Corey, Rachel, and I ran out first to Quinlan’s and picked up shrimp baskets and hot sandwiches for one group, then went to Taco Bueno and got burritos for the other group. We ended up split half and half, basically. All great food.

Friday. Officially a work day, but things were crazy slow today. It might as well have been a vacation day for me. We were able to relax for much of the day. It was nice. This should be a really nice weekend.

Nick texted from Mexico and said that they were flying back today and wanted to have a party at the house tomorrow. So we are planning on a group coming over tomorrow night. Last chance to really see everyone before a couple of months away with travels. Only about a week until we are “in motion” until essentially August. For all we know, we won’t even make it back until August. It is going to be a long time in Houston, New York, on the road, and Europe.

This evening Kat came over. She is going to stay for the weekend since it is a long, holiday weekend. So mostly just a chill evening hanging out with her. Kat, Liesl, Luciana, and I played some Suspicion tonight as well. The girls have really gotten into board games, and gotten really good at them.