Sheep Guarding Llama

I really slept in this morning.  It was after ten when I finally got up.  Considering how early I went to bed (just after midnight) this was a lot of sleep for me.  Dominica was up just a little bit ahead of me.  She, Francesca and Madeline are going out shoe shopping this morning.  Madeline needs tennis shoes (literally, for tennis) and I need dressy walking shoes for Europe because sneakers really don’t cut it there, although my new ones are pretty decent.

Luciana, as usual these days, got me out of bed demanding her chocolate milk right away.  It is like her coffee.  She is a bear until she has it and the moment she gets it she turns back into a little angel.  I wonder if she gets low blood sugar during the night or something.

Liesl slept in, probably until eleven.  She came right downstairs and watched The Simpsons with her aunt and uncle.  Then the girls played together on the stairs with their toys, being so good, all morning and into the afternoon.

Liesl came and asked me if she could do Ooka Island, her early literacy home school program, which she did for at least an hour at the kitchen table with Luciana watching her.  It is so awesome that they choose school, quite often, as their desired activity all on their own.  How many kids voluntarily choose school on a Sunday?  Liesl also asked me if we could do computer school later today!

Dominica was out shopping for about eight hours.  It was pretty crazy.  Around six she called to have me get the girls ready and to drive them over to the Grices’ so that they could watch Peter Pan and have dinner.  They had picked up baked potatoes from Joe’s BBQ for everyone.

It took me at least half of an hour to get the girls out of the door.  We got over there and popped in the movie and ate dinner.  The baked potato was very good.

I left everyone there and came back to the Toccos’ so that I could get some work done in the quiet, which worked out well.  I was expected them to call around seven thirty, maybe eight at the latest, for me to come and pick them all up as they were only going to watch the movie and come straight back over to the house.

While everyone was gone I managed to do a MangoLassi user cleanup task that has been needing my attention (or someone’s) for months.  I had to go through six thousand user accounts and delete all but two hundred and sixty of them that were legitimate, human users.  Rather a bit of manual work.  All cleaned up now, though.  Hopefully I did not delete any real people.

It was nearly ten when Dominica had me come pick everyone up.  We got straight back home and got the girls off to bed.  Once the girls were in bed we caught up on The New Girl and The Mindy Project and then Dominica was tired and was straight off to bed.

I stayed up for a while.  I have an odd schedule this week and shifting to being up late will be good for me until late in the week.

This ends our next to last weekend all here together as a family.  Next weekend is our last weekend in Texas before the family heads to Florida.  Hard to believe that our time in the US (for this cycle) is nearly over!

Dominica pushed me out of bed this morning around six.  So I just got up at that point.  No reason to just stay in bed if I was not going to sleep.  I was pretty awake at that point so it really didn’t matter.

Dominica was up around seven.  She went downstairs and made herself coffee.

Francesca and the little kids came over just before ten so that she, Dominica and Brittany could begin work on their t-shirt assembly line getting their custom shirts made for their upcoming trip to Walt Disney World.

It is still cold here, much colder than normal.  There is still ice going on up in Dallas.  Nothing like that here, but you still need a jacket to be outside which is much colder than normal.

Dominica sent me out to Staples to get ink for their assembly line.  $200 of Epson ink.  Ugh.  I grabbed Sonic on the way home for my lunch.

They managed to finish the shirts today.  That was a big project.

Joe and Bennie were in the tavern most of the day.  The clear coat has been applied to everything in there now so it really looks like a finished pub.  There is Blue Moon on tap now too, just tapped yesterday.

I had to drive the guys to the sports store to get new darts as they have the dart board set up in the tavern now.  While I was there Dominica had me do some shopping for my sneakers.   I managed to find some Sketchers that I really like, they only barely look like sneakers.  Much less “athletic” and more casual sneakers.  This is my first pair with memory foam in them.  I am interested to see how well that works.

We had a big dinner this evening that the girls cooked.  Joe and I spent the evening bartending.  Everyone loves having the bar in the house.  It fits about six to eight people comfortably drinking too.  It is less “completely” as a bar than our bar in Dallas but more contained (it is its own room with closing doors) and can seat more.  We could only seat four and always treated it as a place to stand.  This is a full bar with bottom rail and seating for a lot of people.

After dinner everyone started leaving in little groups.  We ended up just putting on YouTube and watching Fail Army and Honest Trailers.

It’s Friday!  Slept in late this morning.  Luciana was up at a normal time, around nine.  Liesl did not get up until half past noon!  She has not been getting enough sleep recently. We have been noticing her being pretty grumpy for days and we are not surprised that she needs a lot of sleep.

Dominica went out to do some shopping this morning.  That always takes her three hours at least.  It’s always a rush for her to get back to the house before I start work around noon.  I have a video conference call at noon every day to be on so she tries to be home to keep the kids occupied during that.  Otherwise they would be bopping into the call talking about their toys or chocolate milk or something.

Dominica got back and I worked all day.  Nothing too exciting.

This evening we ordered “in” dinner from Cheddars which Dominica and Francesca went and picked up for everyone.  We all ate and the food was pretty good, although my salmon was very overcooked, and then it was time for a movie.

Tonight’s movie was The Glass Bottom Boat with Doris Day.  Everyone liked it.

After that we watched the first episode of the second season of Father Ted.  Everyone enjoyed that too.

We also watched the Rick Steves Season Eight revisit to the Cinque Terre in Italy.  Brittany has been watching the original one but has not seen the current one (post mudslide.)

Then it was off to bed for everyone.

It is a quiet Thursday here in Houston.  Dominica did school with the girls today, it was a very rough day for that, though.  Both Dominica and Liesl were very tired and Liesl was not in the mood for the anything other than her math class and they ended up fighting for much of the day.  It did not go well at all.

Work was fine for me.  Very quiet.  I am all set up now with a full office space in the “den” area on the second floor in the back corner behind the pool table.  I have a folding plastic desk set up and my desktop and 27″ monitor set up again.  It is so much more comfortable to work now.  And I am out of the way and not just set up in the middle of the house which was pretty awful for everyone.  Now I am really out of the way and in my own space.  My desktop is also cabled in so many fewer network issues now too.  I have a feeling that I will start being a little bit productive again.  Working with nothing but a laptop, on the kitchen table, with only the small laptop screen is not a good way to get things done.

Thirty nine years old.  Happy Birthday to me.

I slept in this morning until nine thirty.  That was like ten hours of sleep.  I never do that!

Dominica was up early today and went to Target to do some shopping before the girls woke up around eight thirty.  She was gone until a quarter till noon.  Mostly utilitarian shopping, nothing exciting or of note except for a cute, pink rain slick for Liesl.

Luciana was up with me for most of the morning.  She woke up while I was in the shower.  Brittany had gone to work very early in the morning.  Joe was still around and Luciana taught him how to make her chocolate milk for her; she was excited about that.  He was off to work before I saw him, though.

Liesl was a sleepy-head today and slept until eleven thirty!  I have no idea what wore her out so much.  Apparently she really needed some sleep, just like me.

Liesl’s second math textbook arrived today and she was so excited to get to work on her math class some more.  She was actually screaming and jumping up and down, she was so excited to get to do more of her math class.  It is amazing how much she loves learning.

We didn’t do too much today.  I worked all day and Dominica and Liesl did school.  After work was over we had dinner and then some cupcakes that Dominica had picked up.  A very quiet birthday.