Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is Tuesday.  After work I came home and the girls were itching to head to the playground since we had skipped that yesterday because of the heat (really the humidity) so we got ready and went straight to it tonight and spent much of the evening there.  The girls love being able to do this and it is good exercise for all of us because of the hill that we have to climb to get there.

It’s nice going to the playground because the girls get a chance to wear themselves out a bit which makes the remainder of the evening at home much better.  Liesl has lost the ability to do the fireman’s pole, though, which is sad.  Before the girls left for nearly a month Liesl had worked herself up to be able to do it all on her own but now she is scared of it and needs help and actually is moving backwards each day.

It is Monday and I am back to work, of course.  It is a warm day today.  I got home and Luciana wanted to go to the playground but Dominica did not feel up to it because it was so warm out so we spent the evening in the living room instead.  It was a pretty quiet evening.  Played some video games with the girls.

Very little going on today.  But that’s okay.  Mondays tend to be like that.

The girls got up on the early side this morning and both decided that they wanted to spend the morning playing on the Wii U.  They are improving so quickly!

We decided on getting Subway for lunch. Liesl is always super excited to be getting Subway. I have no idea what made her so addicted to Subway sandwiches but she really is. Just say “Liesl, what about Subway for lunch” and she gets a huge smile on her face and starts bouncing all over the house yelling “Subway! Subway! Subway!”. What is stranger is that the only sandwich that she likes is a plain Italian roll with lettuce, American cheese, green peppers and mayo. That’s it. She would eat tomatoes but they tend to make a mess. So it is effectively a lettuce sub. So weird. But she absolutely loves them. If only we could ease her into a few more veggies on there. Tomatoes, maybe cucumbers. Something.

I got our subs and returned to the house. Liesl had been watching a new show that she discovered “Tree Fu Tom” or something like that. It is really weird, whatever it is. Once I got home we switched to Jurassic Park, which Dominica just picked up from Amazon VOD (we pretty much buy all of our movies from there now – cheaper and we don’t have to store anything and all of our movies travel with us wherever we go too) which we have been wanting to watch with the girls for a long time. Liesl did not want to watch it, though, and so, as you can predict, she was unhappy with the entire movie. You have to “sell” these things before starting the movie or all hope is lost. She mostly pouted the entire time saying that it was boring and never scary or exciting. Dominica and I loved it though. Has been many, many years since either of us has seen it and it is mind blowing that it is twenty one years old now! I saw it in the movie theater many times when it first released. I saw it in high school and I know that I took a date (Tracy Miller) to it when I was at GMI in Flint, Michigan in the summer of 1994. (Russell, my later roommate, took Lisa Prox and the four of us drove there in Russell’s Chevy Z24.)

The one really funny moment of the movie was the very first time that they show the dinosaurs in the film. Liesl was sitting on the couch and when the giant brachiosaurus came on she literally slid off of the couch onto the floor, she was so amazed!

Ciana has been begging all weekend to go to the playground so we walked up there around five.  It was a nice walk up but the girls didn’t actually want to use the playground for very long today, so it was a short stay there.

The girls played a lot of video games this evening. They are loving the Wii U and Liesl told me that it was a really awesome surprise that I got for them. We are really relieved that they like it so much as it was a large purchase and we had no idea if there would be any games for them or if they would be interested in it at all. They are finding a lot of stuff that they really like to do and they enjoy watching me play it too which I would not have guessed. I played a bit of Wind Waker today and am way ahead of Dominica’s game now. Liesl and Luciana both thought that it was great fun to watch me play. They really get into the adventure. And since it is a Zelda game there is pretty much no story for them to follow making it much easier.

Both girls were super snuggly today. All day they pretty much just spent it snuggling with us on the couch. They have really, really missed being home together as a family, as have I.

After finally getting the girls to bed tonight, Dominica and I watched the first episode in the fourth season of “Sherlock” from the BBC. What an awesome show.

After a bit of cajoling I convinced Dominica to go for a drive out to Bedford to go to the diner there because I was really feeling like their smoked salmon eggs benedict.  It was nearly one by the time that we made it out there.  The drive from here is just over half an hour and it turns out that we cannot do that anymore because both Dominica and Luciana were starting to get car sick from the drive.  One of the problems with living out here in the woods is that the roads are so crazy curvy everywhere that you go that you really cannot drive anywhere that isn’t on the expressway without it being a problem for people who have a tendency towards car sickness.

The food was excellent and everyone really liked it.  Dominica got the California omelette burrito which she loved.  The girls, of course, got pancakes.  They are pancake addicts.

After the diner we drove to Yorktown and did some video game shopping at the Game Stop there.  We picked up a Wii U Princess Peach Pink controller for Liesl to use on Wii-style games and got three used games for the girls, a Barbie Wii U game, a Diego Wii game and a Cooking Mama Wii game.  The girls were really excited.

We stopped quickly at a green grocer too that had live herbs for sale on display outside.  We picked up sage, basil and rosemary for the girls to grow in the house.  Then we headed back home as the girls were out of control restless and not able to handle being out anymore.

I played Wind Waker on the Wii U for a bit.  Maybe twenty or thirty minutes.  Luciana sat with me and watched, she likes watching me play that game because it tells a story.  Liesl eventually joined us and she was very insistent on showing me where to go and what to do because she has played a lot more of the game than I have.

Liesl tried playing some more of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker but she only managed to play a few minutes because she got really scared.  She isn’t ready to handle games with “bad guys”, especially in an action game where things happen in real time.  The she and Luciana played their news Barbie and Diego games.  Luciana picked up the Diego game very quickly and was really making progress.  It is basically a Diego themed copy of the Dora Snow Princess game that Liesl liked so much on the Wii and that was her first real game that she was able to play.

Dominica bought The Incredibles and Sky High from Amazon VOD today and we watched those tonight.  The girls did well and made it right through The Incredibles.  Doing two movies was, apparently, too much for them.  They lost interest and were not into Sky High which we ended up turning off halfway through and putting Luciana to bed with an iPad (and she was asleep very soon thereafter) and Liesl put in a little time playing some Wii games like their new Diego game and Cooking Mama.

We are finally at a point where both girls are able to play real video games on a normal video game console.  That is pretty neat.  Now begins the endless fighting over who gets to play what and when, of course.

We are in the Hilton Garden Inn in Norwalk, Connecticut this morning. Getting up here, right across the street from the office, is awesome. It is so nice to not have to commute for an hour to get to work. I am so tired of doing that commute. Dominica always feels so badly for me anytime that she has to drive down here to Norwalk. She forgets that I am doing this drive every single day. She can barely stand doing it on special occasions and almost always (maybe actually always) gets to stay in a hotel between trips one way and the other so she never experiences doing the full round trip in a single day so never feels the commuting hit as much as I do every day. It is really rough and wears on you pretty significantly.

This morning I got up early and ran the Spark up to Wilton to drop it off at the Chevy dealer there in the hopes that they can get it fixed as it has been having a lot of issues recently. The drop off was very fast and smooth and they had an immediate shuttle to run me back to the hotel. I helped Dominica and the girls get ready and they drove me over to the office and dropped me off.

Kind of a long day in the office today. Higher stress than usual. Late afternoon I had to run up to Wilton again, via shuttle, to pick up the Spark which they managed to get working again. Then back to the office for a while before driving down to South Norwalk to “The Ginger Man” which is a pretty awesome pub down there for a going away party for a friend from work who is moving to California. Was there from about a quarter till seven until nine thirty. Had a good time.

Car did well on the drive home. No further issues, it would appear. Now I can push to get the average past the current 35.9MPG.

Got home and everyone was still awake. Hung out with the family for about an hour and got everyone off to bed.