Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica got up this morning and went shopping with Francesca and then went over to her house.  I stayed at Joe and Brittany’s with the girls as well as with Clara and Emily until around noon when Francesca came over and picked them up and took them back over to her house.  I stayed at Joe’s house so that I could do some catching up on work as I have had very little time to work on anything for the past three days or so and am feeling like I am a bit behind.

It was a very quiet day for me.  I sat in the kitchen working at the kitchen island for the whole day.  I got a lot of posting done both on Spiceworks and on MangoLassi.  I also managed to get another article written.  This one was one that I had not worked on before, it was a completely beginning to end written in a single afternoon article.  That is three in the past week or two.  I am keeping a good pace.  Now if I can just keep that up.  If I could turn out two per week all of the time then I would be in great shape because I would get time off from time to time.

It was a nice day to work, Joe and Brittany spent most of the day out in their theatre having a movie day and everyone else was at the Grices’.  It was probably my most productive work day since before Christmas!

Today is also the last day that we have before Francesca goes back to work.  We, Dominica and I that is, will be watching all of the kids tomorrow because they do not have school until Tuesday.  So our plan is to stay here tomorrow and hit the road to drive back north again on Tuesday morning.  I would love to be on the road long before seven to get as much driving done as possible as early as possible.  But I want to get a good, long night of sleep in too.  It might be impossible to leave that early.

The plan is to drive to as close to Canton, Ohio as we can manage on Tuesday, then spend the night in a hotel.  It is a triple award points week with Choice Hotels so we will take advantage of that.  We will nearly earn a free night for every night that we stay this week!  Perfect timing for us.  Then Wednesday morning we will drive the last little bit to my family in Ohio and spend the entire day with them there.  Then head east and just grab a hotel as soon as we get tired which, we assume, will be in as little as an hour.  We would like to at least cross into Pennsylvania if possible.  We will grab another hotel (still at triple points) for the night.  Then, on Thursday, we can get up whenever we wake up and do the rest of the drive home to Peekskill and get in at a good time with very little effort.  In all it makes for only one hard day of driving and I have plenty of chance to rest up for that.  So we need to pack the car completely tomorrow evening so that we are all ready to go.

I have found Trivia Crack on my iPhone and have been playing that the last few days.  Madeline introduced me to it.  I have gotten Andy playing it too, now.

I finally got around to editing another one of Dominica and my Kidding Around Europe Podcasts today too.  We have had two of them done and waiting for me to edit them for the longest time.  That is something that I am going to have to be doing continuously while I am in Europe.

At nearly seven I went over to Francesca’s house where she and Dominica had made stews for dinner.  We ate and hung out for a little while.  They were mostly engaged in planning for the Disney World trip in March that I cannot go on since I will just be starting my new job.

Emily and I went to Walmart to do some shopping.  I picked up a one terabyte hard drive to use with the laptop to offload files because the laptop is completely out of space from working with just a single GoPro video.  That was a bit of a problem.  So I needed some way to be able to keep working.  I also stocked up on soap and shower supplies for the house.

On the way back to the Grices’, Emily and I did a run to Sonic and picked up dessert for everyone who wanted some.

Francesca was ready to head to bed by the time that we got back.  She has to go to work tomorrow even though the kids do not have school tomorrow.

We got back to Joe and Brittany’s house and got our girls right off to bed.  It was a little after ten by the time that they climbed into bed.

Dominica and I went out to the theatre and watched Joe’s copy of Ted which neither of us have ever seen and we have been wanting to see.  It was decent.  Nothing special but a cute, fun movie.  And another one that we have been wanting to see but have not had the chance.  We are bringing down our list of unwatched movies very quickly.

Got to bed around midnight.  I made #1 for the week on Trivia Crack.  I am not really sure what that means but… yay!  I guess.

Tomorrow is packing day.  I have a lot of work to catch up on still and Dominica is going to be getting the car loaded all day so that we are prepared to leave.

Today is one of those days where it felt like morning all day and before you knew it, the day was pretty much over.

This morning Emily and I drove out to Kroger to get chocolate milk for the girls because they had run out again and I picked up vegetarian Italian sausage that was needed for dinner plans tonight.  We also stopped at the kolachie place nearby and got breakfast for the family on the way back to the house.  It was a bit late when we headed out and likely after eleven by the time that we returned with food.  Burritos, kolachies and donuts for everyone.

The Grices came over a little after that and pretty much all of the girls went out and watched movies in the theatre for most of the day and Joe and Bennie worked on the bar (building it.)  I had no time to even set up my laptop yesterday so today I got set up in the kitchen and tried to get caught up a little bit.

Dominica and the girls got to watch The Maze Runner and Malificent today which was good as I was not really interested in seeing either of those films.  This is working out well that she is getting lots of chances to see so many movies that I don’t really want to see.

Joe and I made a run to Specs so that we could make Flaming Doctor Peppers later.  We never got around to that, though.  But we got supplies for Pimms and Ginger too, which Dominica wanted.

This evening Liesl talked me into watching Despicable Me 2 in the theatre with her.  All of the young kids decided to come out and join us too.  Liesl and Clara sat in the back row hanging out on their own.  Luciana climbed into my lap for the entire movie.  Garrett joined us later on.  It was a cute movie, a lot like the first one.  I’m not a huge fan of the series but they are cute and fun and the kids really like them.  This was Liesl and Luciana’s first time seeing the movie.  Liesl got it on DVD for Christmas but has not had a chance to watch it yet.

After that movie Francesca, Madeline and Garrett went back home.  We put Clara, Liesl and Luciana to bed and then Dominica came out to the theatre and watched The World’s End with me which we have been wanting to see for a while but do not own.  It is really handy that Joe owns tons of movies that we want to see but do not necessarily want to buy.  That is saving us a fortune in rentals and whatnot.

The World’s End had a great cast and was entertaining but really, really weird.  Worth seeing once but not a classic by any stretch.  I absolutely love Shaun of the Dead with most of the same people but this one was only so so.  We are glad that we got a chance to watch it, though.

After our movie it was time for bed.  Most everyone was still awake when Dominica and I went off to bed.  The party was still going.

We got up and moving on the late side.  Once we were all up and ready we drove over to the Grices’ for the middle of the day.  We did not do very much over there today.  Mostly we just sat around until this evening when we went back over to Joe and Brittany’s house.  Madeline and a friend were working on a project for school so we were waiting for them for a bit of the day.

This evening we had another game night over at Joe and Brittany’s house.  We tried playing a drawing game but we decided that the game was too slow and complex and no one was enjoying it.  So mostly we played Quelf again.

Dominica and I got up this morning around nine and immediately showered and headed out to join Bennie and Francesca at a new breakfast place that Bennie wanted to try: The Egg & I.  It was probably ten thirty when we finally got there after both Dominica and I had to showered and get Ciana set up to be entertained while we were gone since she is always up between eight and nine in the morning every day.  Liesl and Emily were still fast asleep and probably would be for quite a while.

After breakfast we came back to the house and Emily & I watched the kids for several hours while Dominica and Francesca went out to do some shopping.  Our first project was doing Luciana’s new Goldiblox set that she got for Christmas.  This one was a story about a dirty dog named Nacho that needed to take a bath, but he does not like to take baths.  So we built a working dunk tank which we tricked him into.  So he got a bath.

The girls really enjoyed that project and I used the GoPro to record all twenty two minutes of us working on it.  My first long use of the GoPro.  It worked well.  I used my head mounting kit to try that out.  Pretty good but the camera was clearly angled way too high.  Lessoned learned.  The footage is not too bad, at least.

Then Liesl and Luciana both took a shower together so that they could play with Liesl’s new bath toys.  They played with Liesl’s new Dora the Explorer bath paint set and the bath crayons from her other Dora bath toy set.  Luciana only stayed in for a little bit because she accidentally bumped the water controls and scared herself.  She got out and coloured from ourside of the tub.  Liesl stayed in for a nice, long time.

Luciana and I played a couple of rounds of her new pop-up Rapunzel Disney board game.  She beat me soundly both times.

Then Liesl, Luciana and Emily played some “running around the house screaming” games for a long time until Dominica and Francesca returned from their shopping excursion.

I spent some time learning how to use the GoPro software that comes with buying the GoPro.  I edited together the clips from today’s Goldiblox session and am attempting to get them loaded onto YouTube.

After Dominica got back she did some sewing projects with Liesl.  Liesl has been asking to use her sewing kit, that she got for Christmas, every day since Christmas.  She had asked for a sewing kit, it is something that she has been wanting.  Finally today she got her chance and had a great time making two little pillows and a little purse for her CareBear that she plans to give to it for its birthday “tomorrow.”  I managed to take a video with the GoPro of the second pillow being made and hope to have that posted tonight or tomorrow.

My laptop is already completely out of space working on these videos.  I need some massive storage to work with even these little videos.  The GoPro, doing high definition video, eats of storage like crazy.  We are already guessing that we are going to need something on the order of a terabyte of storage per week, or four terabytes per month while we are traveling in Europe!  That is going to be incredibly cumbersome to deal with!

Around four we packed up the kids and headed over to Francesca’s house for the evening.  It was a board game evening, mostly.

We played a few games of Quelf.  Dominica and Francesca really liked the game.  Madeline and I definitely did not.  Emily did not seem to like it but I am not sure.  It is a game that has bizarre rules and depending on what cards you draw it can be very funny or downright annoying to play (like some of the rules make you unable to eat, drink or talk during the game which takes the fun of group activities out of it – if you don’t get those cards and don’t understand how it makes the entire evening just downright boring because you are not participating it might not be apparent what a bad game it is.)

Then we tried playing Cranium, which is a much better game, but the little kids were so loud and rambunctious and their movie was so loud that we had to give up on that.  We got dinner from Domino’s.  Francesca said that it was the first time that they had had food delivered there in years.  Madeline looked shocked that you could get food delivered.

We played another game of Quelf and called it a night.  It was getting late and everyone was pretty tired.

Tomorrow night we are having the “real” family New Year’s party at Joe and Brittany’s house.

The last day of 2014.  What a year this has been.  Most of it was spent with me working at a new job, then a few months of stressful wondering what was going on with that job and my supposed new job, then two months of frantic job hunting with me finding a new job right at the last second before the year was done (not really significant other than it worked out well for a year end wrap up paragraph.)  A very stressful year, for sure.  Our life in 2015 is going to be, in no way whatsoever, anything like what we would have guessed that it would be at any point in 2014.  Nor, for that matter, was 2014 anything like we had guessed that it was going to be when, at the end of 2013, we moved back up to the northeast thinking that we were taking an amazing job opportunity that was going to make us very happy.  Boy were we wrong.  You just can’t predict where life is going to take you.

I ran out to Bullrito’s to pick up lunch for us to eat while we watched the movie.  I did some work before that in the morning.  We were so happy with our burritos yesterday that we just had to get them again today.

Dominica and I started the day, after getting our food, by finishing watching the second Hobbit movie in Cinema Joe.  We are loving having regular access to his theatre which is much nicer than even the one that we had in Geneseo ever was.  We are very jealous.  What is funny is that now, after all of these years, when we finally own a house of our own it is very likely to be Dominica and not me that demands that we have an all out, full scale theatre in it.  We use it non-stop when we have access to it.  And we are not even using it for video games which it would be amazing for.

It was early afternoon when we finally got the kids over to the Grices.  Francesca agreed to watch Liesl and Luciana for a while so that Dominica and I could have a “date afternoon” to go out and see the third Hobbit movie.  We left at 3:45 to go up to Fuqua to the AMC 30 up there for the 4:45 showing.

I will not be going to an AMC theatre again, that was a horrible theatre.  They left the projector room lights on so it was much brighter in the theatre than even when we watch movies at home.  And the screen quality wasn’t as good.  So it wasn’t nearly as nice for viewing the movie.  And instead of nice, big, comfortable seats like Cinema Joe has, these were the smallest little theatre seats that I have ever been in.  There wasn’t enough room for Dominica and I to sit up straight next to each other.  It was smaller than normal airplane seats!  Completely ridiculous.  There is no reason to ever pay to see a movie under those conditions these days.  None at all.

Overall we were not impressed with the third Hobbit movie.  The book was really messed with, no wonder Tokien’s family revoked the rights for Peter Jackson to make any more films, this was really bastardized and in a very poor way.  The movie trilogy was generally just incredibly boring but the story wasn’t right either in really dramatic ways.  What is crazy is that the theme of The Hobbit is about someone corrupted by wealth and that is, apparently, exactly what happened to Peter Jackson.  He was brilliant when he made The Lord of the Rings and now he is very obviously completely out of his mind and doesn’t know how to make movies anymore.  He’s like a little clone of George Lucas who was never able to make a decent movie after he got rich on his original Star Wars success.

After the movie we ended up meeting Bennie and Francesca at Chili’s for dinner.  Just the four adults.  Emily and Madeline stayed at the house to watch the kids.  It is very rare that we get to do this.

We went back to the Grice’s house and hung out for New Year’s Eve but none of us was interested in really seeing midnight so we did not bother with that.  We needed to get all of the little kids off to bed anyway.  So we went back to Joe and Brittany’s house at eleven thirty to avoid the after-midnight drunk traffic.

On the way back to Joe’s we almost hit a small dog running down the road.  We pulled over and I chased the dog as far as I could trying to catch up to it so that I could help it.  It nearly got hit by several cars.  Eventually it got off of the road and cut across a field that I could not see it is as it was so dark out so I had to give up.  It seemed to know where it was going and was heading towards a well lit area with a lot of houses so we are very hopefully that the poor little lost dog found its way home.  We were guessing that it was running scared because of all of the fireworks going off all over the place.  There were constant reports for hours, it nearly sounded like a thunderstorm but there was no sign of rain.

Once back to Joe’s house we spent nearly half an hour trying to decide on a movie to watch and finally settled on the recent movie adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” which Emily had seen before but neither Dominica nor I had and Emily said that she liked it a lot and was happy to watch it again.  Overall, not a bad movie but not great.  Very predictable for me, which is unusual.  But it caught Dominica off guard which is shocking as she can always predict the outcome of movies.  I knew pretty much all of the plot twists within the first few minutes.

It was after two in the morning when we finally all headed off to bed.