Sheep Guarding Llama

We got up this morning and Francesca met us at Waffle House for breakfast.  Everyone else was sleeping in a bit and recovering from Christmas.  After breakfast Dominica and Francesca went out to look for a cake for their mother at Kroger since tomorrow is her birthday but since she is traveling tomorrow we are celebrating her birthday today.

I took Liesl and Luciana and drove them over to Francesca’s house to hang out with their cousins.

Later today Dominica and I made a run to Best Buy to pick up our Christmas present, the GoPro Hero4 Black.  We had gotten a gift card for it so that we could buy it ourselves.  Everyone has it for the exact same price and we wanted to get it in hand as soon as possible so that we could start learning about it and figure out what all we are going to need before going to Europe with it as we know that we are going to need all kinds of gear for taking good videos.

Our first thing that we know that we need is a memory card for it.  Because the camera is a 4K camera it needs a faster memory card than normal cameras.  Best Buy tried to sell us a 64GB card for $199!  I looked on Amazon and they had an even better card (higher end, faster, same manufacturer0 for only $99 and the exact same card for $75.  So we opted not to buy one at Best Buy.  What a rip off they are.  If you are not buying something price controlled, they are insanely overpriced.  They really don’t think much of their customers.

We got home and looked online and checked the cards tested and recommended by GoPro themselves.  Amazon had those for only $44!!  Boy did we save a lot of money.  So we will have a memory card so that we can start using the camera on Tuesday.  Today is Friday.

Brittany is sick today, probably with the same stomach bug that Emily had a week ago and that Brittany’s dad got last night.  It appears to be making the rounds.  So she was home sick all day because of it.

Joe joined us at Francesca’s in the evening after work.  For dinner we ordered out from Kelly’s and Francesca and I went out to pick it up for everyone.  Dominica and I love their enormous Texas sized baked potatoes.  It is an entire meal.  That was all that Dominica got and all that I got was that plus a side salad and it was more than enough for both of us.  Pretty cheap too.

Once we got back to Joe and Brittany’s house, Dominica, Liesl, Luciana and I went out to the theatre and watched National Treasure 2.  We would have watched the first one but Joe appears to have lost his BluRay for that one.  The girls have never seen either of them but we figured that it would not matter.  Luciana watched it snuggled on my lap.  Liesl watched most of it but it did not hold her interest enough to finish it.  She said that she liked it and would like to watch it again some time.

The kids all slept at Francesca’s last night.  Dominica and I slept at Joe’s house but had to be up by seven this morning in order to get over there in time for everything.  So we had both of our alarms set for seven.

Dominica was actually up early and ready to go before seven. She came into the bedroom and flipped on the light at exactly seven, the very instant that both her and my cell phones went off.  It was like a bomb went off in the bedroom.  I leapt out of bed pretty darn quickly!

We were ready to go in a few minutes and were quickly over to the Grices’ house for Christ.  We were there long before eight.  The kids were up not too long after we were there.  Joe and Brittany did not come over for a few hours.  Brittany is starting to feel a little under the weather and everyone figured that she would need some extra sleep and Joe has been working long days the last couple.

The kids had all gone to bed on the early side and so were up at a pretty early hour (for them.)  We got right to the business of opening presents which went on until nearly two in the afternoon.

Dominica and my big present from her parents is a GoPro Hero4 Black ultra high definition (4K) professional camcorder.  We are very excited about this in general but especially now that we are going to be in Europe and California so much of the time!  We had originally asked for this when we were hoping to be vacationing in Europe for a few weeks this year, but now that it is going to be most of the year it really changes things! The value of this went way up.  It is really perfect for us.

After we were done opening presents we went back over to Joe and Brittany’s house for Christmas even dinner around four.  After dinner we did our “ugly sweater contest.”  I only got one vote, from Liesl.  Luciana votes for herself, of course.  My sweater was pretty awesome, though, I had several pounds of green garland to make me look like a Christmas tree and then silver garland to make it look like I was decorated.  Then candy canes hanging off of me and twenty five feet of purple LED Christmas lights!  It was pretty intense.  And heavy.  And expensive.  And I only got one vote 🙁  I even had a star for the top of my head.

Merry Christmas Eve everyone!

We all slept in this morning.  We have been pretty tired.  Got up around nine.  I took the laptop downstairs and got to work.  Not the busiest day, but some amount of stuff to do.  I am still so incredibly backlogged with work that I will be struggling all month just to get ready for us to start our new adventures at the end of the month.  Just catching up on emails alone is a struggle.

Dominica went over to Francesca’s late this morning.  Francesca came over to pick her up so that I could keep the car for driving the kids around later.  They are helping the Grice kids to work on their ugly sweaters this morning.

Liesl and Luciana opened the last door in their Playmobile Princess Wedding Advent Calendar this morning.  They got the horse that they both believed was in there.  So they spent the morning playing together with their new Playmobile stuff.  They sat at the table with me so I could overhear the storytelling unfold.  It is so cool to get to casually hear Liesl’s rich, imaginative worlds unfold.  Her play time is so complex.

The girls and I went over to Francesca’s house later in the day.  We were there for a few hours then back over to Joe’s house for Christmas Eve dinner a little later on.  We had a nice evening with the whole family hanging out.  I played pool and darts with the guys for a while.  Dominica and Francesca took the kids back over to Francesca’s house earlier in the evening to get them ready for bed and to get them to all settle down and to do their Christmas Elf pajama routine.

Once everyone was in bed and asleep all of the guys drove over and we all worked on setting up for Christmas until about half past midnight.  This was one of the earliest nights being down with that that I can ever remember.  Still very late and we are all really tired.  I’ve been telling Dominica that she really needs to get more sleep and to be sure to take her vitamins because she is getting run down and is going to wind up getting sick if she isn’t careful.

Dominica got to sleep in a bit this morning because Francesca had to take Garrett to the clinic early this morning to get tested for strep throat which, as we already knew, he has.  Then Francesca picked Dominica up and they went shopping again this morning.  This should be their final shopping trip for Christmas.

I watched the girls for a while and then took them over to Francesca’s house around one.  I had a light lunch there and then went back to Joe’s for two hours to do a little more work and to shower and stuff so that I could go back at three to get Dominica dad and all of the six kids because we were taking them to see Night at the Museum 3 so that Dominica and Francesca could get some Christmas work done at the house.

We went down to the Mall of the Mainland to the Cinemark 12 there.  The movie was awesome. Liesl has been dying to see it.  It was a really great wrap up to the other two films.  I was really impressed at how well and how touchingly they tied the three together.  I really enjoyed it.  Luciana spend the entire movie sitting in my lap.  She was tired of sitting in the theatre by about halfway through but she did a great job and stayed quiet and sat through it even though she did not want to.

After the movie we went back to Francesca’s house and everyone got Panda Express and watched Home Alone which I have not sat through actually watching it in a very long time.

After the movie the kids played.  Liesl has been addicted to watching the cheesy Anime show Yu Gi Oh.  She and Garrett played some Call of Duty too.  Dominica, Francesca and I set about working on our ugly sweaters for the contest on Christmas.  I did not have the supplies that I needed so Emily and I made a run to Walgreens and stocked up on stuff.  My sweater is going to be pretty good.  Unfortunately it also cost $80 to make 🙁

We spent hours working on the sweaters.  That is a lot of work.  I was no where near done by the end either.

It was nearly midnight when we got back to Joe’s house.  Luciana put herself straight to bed.  No pajamas or anything, just “carry my up and put me in bed.”  Liesl was only minutes behind her.  Neither changed, grabbed iPads or anything.  Luciana was asleep in under a minute.  Liesl in a few minutes.

Dominica and I stayed up talking with Brittany until Joe got home from work.  It was well after midnight when he got home and he has to be back at seven in the morning so he went straight to bed.

Dominica got up at six thirty this morning so that she could go shopping with Francesca at seven.  Way too early.  They were out shopping until almost noon!  That was a really long morning.  They were pretty tired when it was barely lunch time.

I stayed at Joe’s house all day today.  There is a lot to do and I need to keep working.  I can’t be treating my time before starting the new job as a vacation.  I have as much to do as I normally do during this window.   I got a lot of work done, though.  Mostly catching up on posting, emails, blogs, etc.  I have been so far behind.  I am making great progress on things.

I took the girls over to Francesca’s late this morning so that they could play with their cousins.  I went back to Joe’s to continue working.

I went back over to Francesca’s to join everyone in the evening.  We ordered in dinner from Kelly’s which makes the best breakfast around.  We love their food.

I had to fight to get Dominica back to the house at a decent hour to get some sleep.  Luciana is so exhausted by the end of the day.  She needs more sleep than she is getting.  We all do.

It was discovered tonight that Garrett has strep throat.  So pretty likely we are all going to have it soon.  Francesca is going to take him to the clinic in the morning to get checked out.