Sheep Guarding Llama

Today was mostly uneventful.  Everyone was home this morning but by early afternoon, shortly after I had started work for the day, Dominica, the girls and their Aunt Brittany all went out to see Madeline and Emily’s tennis match so they were gone all afternoon.  It was a quiet day for me.

It was around six when they got back home, maybe later.  I ended up working pretty much all evening and so did not even get dinner.  I was never really hungry for it and it never really came up.

This evening Dominica and watched Sleepy Hollow and are nearly caught up.  It was late when we started so we only made it through one and a half episodes.  It was on the early side when we got off to bed.

It is Monday, everyone is back to work.  Nothing much to report here at the Tocco house in Houston.  Relaxing morning then worked all day.  Dominica has been super busy working on the plans for the trip to Walt Disney World with the family coming up in a few weeks so that has been taking literally every moment of her days since we have been here and looks like it is going to eat up all of her time until they go.  She has been so busy with that that she completely forgot about doing school with Liesl today!

Francesca and Emily came over early this morning to get back to watching movies today.  We ended up spending much of the day trying to figure out how to hook things up so that we could watch the movies that we wanted.  It ended up being a pretty big waste of time, by the time we actually got to watch something.

We ended up only squeezing in a single movie today, Fred Astaire in Daddy Longlegs which was well done and pretty entertaining but a little big creepy since it is about a guy wooing a high school student one third his age.  It’s hard to tell how much they intended for the film to be a bit odd or if that was just still so normal in its day that it wasn’t a big thing.

By the time we had watched the movie it was mid-afternoon and Francesca had to get the kids back home and get to bed because they have school tomorrow.

We just watched some television and called it a night.

I had insomnia last night and only got about one hour of sleep.  I laid in bed but gave up on falling back asleep around four in the morning.  I got myself out of bed and came down and sat in the kitchen using the laptop all morning.  It was kind of nice getting four or five hours in the quiet, I have not had that in a few weeks.  Not since before I left California.

Today continues the weekend-long, Gilmore Girls-themed, classic movie marathon for Francesca, Dominica and me.  Francesca and the little kids, Garrett and Clara, came over very early, before I had even seen Dominica get up, and got the movies started.

The first movie up this morning is Valley of the Dolls which I did not join the girls to watch. They are attempting to only watch movies that none of us have seen and that were watched on The Gilmore Girls.  But mostly they watched really bad movies on that show and the good ones that they watched are very well known movies that we have all already seen, especially Dominica and me who are cinema buffs.

The girls ended up going through movie after movie, including All  About Eve that they started, made it part way through, and then gave up on.  They did this, starting and stopping movies, much of the day.  I was busy doing some work and running errands, including getting Madeline and Emily from tennis practice at one point, so I missed most of it.  I was confused as to how they were going through so many movies so quickly – it was because they were watching less than half of them!

When I finally settled into the living room to join them we watched part of Carousel.  I was so confused as to why they were picking the movies that they were picking because they were almost all movies that were predictably going to be really bad – movies that we had mostly avoided for a reason over the years.  But they were attempting to only watch movies watched on The Gilmore Girls and only ones that none of us had ever seen which was a pretty big limitation.

After this point we said that we just had to try some good movies, this could not go on.  So we got Francesca and now Emily too to watch Doris Day and Rock Hudson in one of our all time favourite movies: Pillow Talk.  Everyone liked this one and we have now convinced everyone that watching movies because they are good is better and if we have already seen them can still be okay.

It was bed time after that.  All day and only one good movie to show for it.

Today is the last day of my fourth week of the new job.  That’s nearly a month done already, it really feels like I just started.  Things seem to be going well and I still love it there so that is a good sign.

The weather was great today.  Dominica took the girls outside for a lot of the day so that I could have it be a bit more quiet, they love to play loudly when I am home.  They like to play imaginative games, which is great, but they just talk and talk to act out their games and it makes it extremely hard to actually do any work.  But today was gorgeous.

For the past two weeks, the north east has been getting slammed with record cold weather.  Meanwhile, here in Texas, we have the windows open and are spending time outside enjoying the perfect weather.  Not even jackets or fleeces needed.

This evening Francesca and Emily came over and surprised Dominica with Chinese take away and snacks like from a movie night on the Gilmore Girls so that we could all do a Gilmore Girls themed evening.  Francesca wanted it to be a surprise so I had to convince Dominica not to eat dinner without telling her that food was coming.  Not an easy task.

We looked at the list of movies “watched” on The Gilmore Girls and selected Easter Parade (1948) as our first movie to watch.  It was one that none of us have seen before.  But before we could get started there were minor child logistical needs and Francesca had to disappear for quite some time to get Garrett from a failed birthday party at the mall and then to get Madeline from her tennis event.

While Francesca was gone, Joe fired up the hot tub at Liesl’s request.  Liesl has been talking about getting to go into the hot tub for weeks now.  It was warm enough today and Joe was home early enough that we could do it.  It took about an hour to heat up while I continued to work.  Then Dominica watched the girls while they played in the hot tub for a while.

At one point a downpour came so I ran and got suited up and went into the hot tub with Liesl and Luciana.  Unfortunately the rain stopped very quickly.

We were in the hot tub for probably close to an hour.  It was very relaxing.  I can’t figure out why no one else joined us, it was very nice.  We had a great time just hanging out, the three of us.

Once Francesca finally made it bad, a few hours later, we fired up the movie, got Luciana off to bed, and settled in for Easter Parade.  The movie was pretty good, Liesl even joined us and watched most of it.  Emily tried but fell asleep.  Dominica was drifting by the end.  Francesca and I made it through the whole thing.  It was okay but a rather week first movie pick of a regular series of classic movie nights.  It was struggling to hold anyone’s interests, even with Fred Astaire and Judy Garland.

After the movie, Francesca and Emily went back home and Liesl went off to bed.  Dominica and I attempted to watch an episode of Sleepy Hollow but Dominica was unable to keep herself awake and we had to abandon the effort.  So it was only just after eleven when we went to bed.