Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Dominica was up a bit before me this morning.  I am still feeling the emotional drain of the last few months.  But today feels good.  I got up around nine and helped to get the girls ready.  Once they were up and ready Dominica took them over to Francesca’s house to spend the day with their cousins until early afternoon when they were going to head out to the Grice Family Christmas at one.

I spent the entire morning sitting at the kitchen table working almost exclusively on SGL.  I got all of November and December updated last night and today I worked on getting all of October updated and a few days in September.  It is going to take a while for me to work back through all of September and get that all filled in as many of the days are missing but many are there and more than a week is the Spiceworld window which I can fill in very easily.

I also put in a ton of effort cleaning up my email.  I have fallen so horribly behind for the last several months.  Partially this was because I would get swamped with emails from recruiters or companies looking to potentially hire me and I was reticent to turn them down until we had something solid lined up.  So going back through and responding to hundreds of potential jobs and letting them know that I am no longer available and cleaning up all of those emails has been a high priority.  I need to get my email cleaned up so that I don’t miss things and can function better.

I worked until around two then Joe drove me over to Francesca’s house where I spent the rest of the day.  It was just a few of us there for about an hour until the Grices returned from their own Christmas event.

Nothing planned today. Everyone just hung out at the house.  Some of the baking continued.

We didn’t stay too late tonight.  We were back to Joe’s before nine.  Luciana was ready for bed before we were even back.  A full day of playing with her cousins is more than she is used to.  Everyone needed some sleep. Dominica has been up way too late the last few nights.

Today is, without a doubt, our decompression day.  The stress of the last three to four months has been catching up with us.  So many unknowns.  Still many, but a general life framework is coming into focus.  It is such an emotional relief to have a plan now and know, more or less, what we are going to be doing in the future that the weight of the last few months has really caught up and we are really just feeling worn out.  Happy and excited, but exhausted and worn down.  And to add to that feeling, now we have relatively little time to begin gathering details, processing paperwork and going through a rather extensive planning process for going out to California with the family, getting the house in New York completely empty and turned over to our renters and getting housing lined up for our first tour of duty in Europe!  And there is this little Christmas holiday going on at roughly the same time too!  What a month this is going to be.

Today was also my day to catch up on SGL.  I mean really catch up.  Roughly two full months of posts were posted today!  The majority of the posts were written at the time that they occurred but because I was already so far behind I was unable to post them because of the gaps.  So today I did my best, which took about four or five hours, to get the gaps filled in and to get as many posts as I could posted.  Now, once again, the site is roughly up to date and people can follow along with everything that is happening.

It was much harder to have the site be up to date with all of the interviewing going on because you don’t want to make those kinds of things public while they are still happening but you don’t want to skip recording them.  So having a bit of a delay on the blog made that easier too.  I still have some older posts to deal with, mostly in September and October, which I will attempt to address as time allows.  But the most important stuff has been updated.

Today we are all over at Francesca’s house.  Dominica went over there very early in the morning to help out with baking and stuff.  I brought the girls over a bit later once they were up and dressed and ready to face the day.  That was well after ten.  Dominica and Francesca were out shopping when I got there and were gone for at least another hour yet.

Emily and I did our traditional walk down to the Donuts, Kolaches and Tacos store to pick up a late breakfast for everyone.  They have added croissants to their breakfast sandwich lineup now too.  But their breakfast tacos are still the mainstay.

The cousins played outside together most of the day.  It was so warm that they did not even need jackets.  It was slightly chilly if you were to just stand outside but if you were active it was perfect.  I definitely did not need a jacket when walking to the store with Emily.

Emily and I ended up making three trips down to the stores today, all on foot.  Once for breakfast.  Once for baking supplies for Dominica and Francesca.  And once to look for moustache wax because my moustache is getting pretty long and I wanted to give it a try and see how it would look with a handlebar.  We had to go to two stores before finding some wax at CVS.

The handlebar experiment was… interesting. Some people liked it, some did not.  It is clear that the moustache is not long enough yet to really do it.  It will need at least another month before it will work.  Probably a bit longer than that.

I worked much of the day from Francesca’s new HP Chromebook that I had talked her into getting.  It really is nice.  Works great.  They are loving it too.  She almost never gets to see it because Madeline likes to steal it.  The battery life on it is insane too.  Like nine hours or more!  I used it all day and never put a dent in the battery life and Madeline had been watching Netflix on it before I started using it.

Dinner was Mexican tonight.  Joe and Francesca ran out and picked it up.  Dominica and I both did fish tacos which were really good.

After dinner we were all kicked out of the house.  So nearly everyone went over to Joe’s where they all watched Guardians of the Galaxy while I worked in the kitchen.  I have plenty to do, no real time to just be relaxing.  I have to catch up with SGL and some other postings, need to make future plans, need to catch up with emails like you would not believe, have to be posting on MangoLassi and Spiceworks and I need to be studying up on Ruby, Rails and Chef.  Tons to do.

Luciana came back to the house from the theatre after about half an hour.  She asked me to set her up with an iPad in bed.  She was tired and not interested in the movie.  Liesl was having fun, though, and watched the whole thing.  So I put Luciana in my bed, where she wanted to be, for about half an hour.  Then she came downstairs and asked to be moved into her own bed.  She was asleep in no time after that.  I am sure that she was just exhausted from playing with her cousins all day.  She is so good about putting herself to bed when the time is right.  Liesl, not so much.

Brittany’s family came over while everyone was in the theatre.  I have not seen them in a while so we had a chance to catch up.  Then they all watched Home Alone while I continued to work in the kitchen.

After all of the movies were over, Liesl came back over and just sat with me.  All of the iPads were dead at that point and she did not want to use one plugged in in bed.  So she just sat at the table with me.  I talked with her about how she stays up so late and she told me “Well…. I never miss the best movies!”

Dominica did not get back to the house until about one in the morning.  I stayed up a little longer because I was getting so much done on SGL.  But my two everyone was in bed and asleep.