Sheep Guarding Llama

Finally Friday. Very glad that the end of the week is here. Looking forward to a weekend with the family. One without rats and hornets making noise in the attic.

When I woke up this morning I realized how much cooler it was in our bedroom than it has been all summer. I am pretty sure that the new insulation in the attic is really making a difference. Really noticeable.

On the drive to work this morning I went to start reading Novo Ordus Seclorum but realized that I had actually already read it and just didn’t remember reading it by name. So kept reading “War and Peace” instead. That is going to take me forever to get through. I have fifty five hours of the book left to go and I have already completed the entire first part of the book!

More work for me this evening. If I skipped working this evening I would have too much to do over the weekend. I’ve been pretty good about this all week and continued tonight.

We started watching 30 Rock again late tonight. We both love that show and it has been a while since we last watched it so going back and watching it again is pretty entertaining and I don’t just know everything that is going to happen.

Today is the big day for dealing with the rat problem (and the hornets too.) The crew is scheduled to arrive around one this afternoon. Normal work day for me so Dominica gets to deal with the critter control people.

They came around one and Dominica and the girls had to vacate the house so that they could work for most of the day. So they went shopping and out to the movies. They got to see Disney’s “Planes 2” which I am guessing was good since I really enjoyed the first one.

They ended up having to be out of the house for about five hours. One of the guys working in the attic was attacked by the horde of hornets living up there and put part of his foot through the ceiling directly above our bed. So we have a half foot square hole there and a mess in our bedroom. Someone will come over the weekend to fix that. They had to close the hole with cardboard for now and at least half a dozen hornets got into our bedroom because of that but overall it was pretty uneventful.

They managed to finish up before I got home and Dominica said that they were really nice. While patching up the attic they found a baby bat living in our eaves so they couldn’t patch the hole there and can’t for another month or two until the bat matures enough to be able to be moved out of the way before doing the patching (bats are extremely good for the environment, never hurt a bat.)

The attic is now rat and hornet free and completely re-insulated. The house is looking pretty good with all of the cleaning that Dominica has been doing knowing that people were going to be in the house all of this time. We are very hopeful that the new insulation will make a big difference in the amount of work needed to keep the house cool. The air conditioning really struggles to keep the upstairs cool in any way.

Liesl was playing her Nickelodeon Fit video game on the Wii when I got home. She is amazingly good at that game and really loves it. It is a really good workout for her too. I am really thankful that we have that one and some ones like that.

I had a bit of work to do tonight so went straight up to the bedroom to work at the computer up there. The evening was very short for me as I did not get out of work until seven and did not get home until well after eight. So only two hours before the girls were off to bed.

I finished reading “The Darkest Summer” today. It was pretty good.

Today the exterminators are scheduled to come to the house and take a look at what we believe is a squirrel problem up in the attic above the master bedroom.

I went into the office this morning. The exterminators were coming late in the morning. Dominica spent the morning cleaning the house as it was a bit of a mess and strangers were going to be traipsing through the house much of the day.

Dominica called me at work. The verdict is that it is rats and hornets, not squirrels. And there are a lot of them. A lot! They are taking over the attic. Normally you can’t hear rats. There are so many that we are hearing them very loudly. The infestation is so bad that they were concerned about us staying in the house. They have gotten into the duct work and they have been going all of the way down to the basement and have been attempting to eat their way into the open basement area.

It is going to take a massive house overhaul to deal with the rats. We got quoted $3,000 for it and they don’t have an open slot to deal with it for two weeks. But once we decided to move forward they decided to see what they could squeeze in because of the girls and they found a way to come out to deal with it tomorrow. So tomorrow afternoon we are having the rats removed, all attic damage repaired, all entry points to the house closed up, all of the insulation removed, everything sanitized including the duct work and heavy duty, all out spray in, rodent repellent insulation laid down. Not the news that we wanted but at least it will be all dealt with.

I got home and Dominica and Liesl were busy playing one of Liesl’s games on the Wii, a Disney dancing game that she has not used before. Liesl was having a great time. We then went right up to the playground for a little while before it was too late.

Once we were back at the house Dominica immediately went out shopping and I did the dancing game with Liesl the entire time that Dominica was out. Luciana played games on the Nintendo 2DS.  I beat Liesl at the dance game, which didn’t surprise me, but she told me that she is able to beat Dominica.  She said, “Mommy is horrible at this game!”

Dominica got home and they all spent some time downstairs while I attempted to get some work done. Then everyone moved into the bedroom with me when we tried to get the girls ready for bed and they convinced us to let them sleep in our room. So they were all asleep while I worked for several hours until about one thirty in the morning. Then I was off to bed as well.

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.