Sheep Guarding Llama

It’s Friday.  Not a lot interesting today.  I was in the office, of course, for a normal day.

Everyone who arrived upstate yesterday went to Niagara Falls today.  They went to the Canadian side as well and made a day of it.  They are going to be tired tomorrow, they have to leave for New York City around three in the morning!

It was a quiet evening.  I got home rather late and we just hung out and got to bed at a good time.  Paul, Karen and Kelly arrived tomorrow at some point so we have a lot of cleaning to do in the morning.

I was into the office pretty early this morning. It is nice getting in so early, I get to park right by the elevators in the parking garage and the place is completely quiet for an hour or two before it fills up with people.

I had to stay a little late tonight, lot’s to be done. But it wasn’t very late. On the drive home I finished reading “Fearless Fourteen” which is the last Stephanie Plum novel that I currently own. There are seven more now, I am only 66% through the current state of the series. I’m only one book behind Francesca now, though.

The girls were ready to head up to the playground when I got home at nearly eight. We hiked up the hill and played for a while. It’s not bad exercise but would be better if it were a little further. But the girls are pretty worn out just getting up there so it is probably as far as we could handle.

The girls played for a while and by the end Liesl had worked herself back up to doing the fireman’s pole again. Her two weeks off from the playground had left her unsure of herself and too nervous to do it. We stayed until the bugs got too bad and walked back to the house. Luciana made me carry her home, she was too tired to walk. We didn’t see any fat, tree climbing raccoons like we did last night.

We got back to the house and Luciana requested that she get her evening chocolate milk and that we all watch Dr. Who. Liesl concurred that she wanted to watch Dr. Who too by running around the house yelling “EX-TERM-IN-ATE!!!” So we watched two episodes of Dr. Who and got the girls off to bed.

Before we fell asleep both girls sneaked into our room and tried to climb into our bed. We left them stay for fifteen minutes but sent them back to their room to sleep.

I have to be in the office early tomorrow and will be working until nearly midnight. Going to be an exhausting day leading into a busy weekend. Paul and Karen are Karen’s daughter are leaving Missouri tomorrow afternoon and driving to our place due to arrive midday on Saturday. From there we are running down to Manhattan where I am speaking at the first MangoLassi Meetup which should be fun. Paul and Karen are staying with us in Peekskill for most of the week.

Katie arrived in Buffalo before we went to bed and Joe was on the ground, but hadn’t checked in with anyone yet, in Buffalo as well when we fell asleep. Art and Danielle were already at the airport hanging out with Katie as they waited for Joe. They will all be going to see Niagara Falls tomorrow afternoon before heading down to New York City early on Saturday morning.

I’m covering the early “shift” in the office so I was up at five and into the office before eight. Not super early, but the place is mostly empty when you arrive before nine. On the drive in my average MPG moved up to 35.6MPG. Pretty awesome.

It’s nice because it is quiet, traffic isn’t so bad and there is a great fruit selection to start the day – lots of blueberries, raspberries, pineapple and stuff. A nice kick off to the morning.

Today was very busy but not bad. I kept busy all day long. But good busy so I was not feeling burned out by the end of the day.

I tried to leave the office a few minutes before six, having gotten in early I was actually staying late at that point, and did well getting out the door but as soon as I was in the car I hit horrible traffic and lost half an hour sitting on the highway barely moving. So even though I left at a really good time it was twenty until eight when I actually got to the house. Really crappy.

The girls were ready when I arrived and we immediately walked up the hill to go to the playground which we have not done together in two weeks. That was nice, we needed the walk and the girls needed time on the playground. Unfortunately both of them accidentally left their shoes in their Aunt Francesca’s truck and so they are stuck with flipflops which are not good for climbing on a playground.

On the walk back down the hill, Liesl turned around violently to look at a car coming from behind us, tripped (I assume on the front of her flip flop) and went down. I was holding her hand and kept her up but she went down over the curb and caught it with her left knee and scraped it pretty badly. She was bleeding from four square inches of knee and I had to carry her back to the house.

Liesl took a hot shower to make cleaning the scrape easier. The Luciana wanted to take a bath. Always wanting to do what her sister is doing. Then both of them were right off to bed. It was probably nine thirty when they both went to bed and they were great, right to bed and asleep within probably half an hour without asking us for anything at all. Normally it is a few hours of calling us for water, cheese, kill a bug, plug in an iPad, etc.

As soon as the girls went to bed, Dominica ran out to go grocery shopping as there is nothing in the house to eat. She was gone for a while. I did some work in the bedroom office while she was gone and when she got home we went to bed.

Around five this morning Luciana sneaked into our bedroom and climbed into bed to snuggle with me. She put her head on my shoulder and slept there all morning J

I didn’t leave for the office until after eight. I was not about to get out of bed early when both girls were being so snuggly this morning after over a week without seeing them. Dominica and Francesca were awake as I left for the office and Luciana had just woken up to ask for her morning chocolate milk.

The Grices are planning on driving on up to Frankfort today.

On my way to the office this morning I finished reading “Lean Mean Thirteen” and have started reading “Fearless Fourteen”. I am only one book behind Francesca in the Stephanie Plum series now, but this is the last one currently in my Audible library so it might be a while before I read any more of them.

I got home around seven and everyone was really tired. I was horribly tired but Dominica was already wanting to go to bed and the girls were a little tired. We put on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and watched two episodes of that. The girls started off not wanting to watch it but eventually settled down to snuggle with me on the couch and watched it with me.

Dominica found some new Lego games on the iPads for the girls tonight. They both really got into them and were super excited to play them. They were doing really well at it too.

Liesl got ready for bed just after nine and was actually in bed by nine thirty which was amazing. She did a great job of getting ready quickly. We were all so tired that Dominica and I were in bed before nine forty ourselves! I have to be up and in the office early tomorrow so it was a good night to get to sleep early anyway.

My plan today was to leave the office a little early so that I could get home around six thirty to see the family but that would end up not being possible today.

At lunch today I went up to Wilton and had lunch with Danielle’s brother Tim at The Little Pub up there.

The family was on the north side of Baltimore last night and so had only a short drive to do today. They drove up through New Jersey and were hope by the middle of the afternoon.

Work itself was fine today and I thought that I was leaving early right up until I was stuck staying a little late. I was emailing Dominica and she was planning on having me meet the family at Grandma’s (the restaurant in Yorktown with the pies) for dinner. This works well as it is on my way home – I can easily go right by it without any effort at all.

I ended up getting stuck late in the office but the family did not manage to go to dinner either. Francesca fell asleep and ended up still being asleep when I got home after eight!

Liesl was very excited to see me. She came running as soon as I was in the house. Luciana took a little longer before she came down the stairs and jumped into my arms from the landing.

We got all of the kids packed up and we all drove out to Yorktown to get dinner. Emily and Madeline rode along with me in the Spark, everyone else piled into Francesca’s truck. When we got to the restaurant there was no one there except for a couple of cop cars. We were sure that they were closed but it turned out to just be too late for people to be getting food in Westchester, a very sleepy county.

We were the only people in the restaurant for much of the evening. That was good because the kids were all very tired from being in the car for days and were really wound up. It took all that we could do to keep them under control.

Luciana wanted to sit with her cousins but Liesl sat away from all of them to sit with me. Luciana sneaked over later on and sat on my lap to eat her mac and cheese. Liesl got spaghetti to which she adds pepper. That is her new things now. She recently discovered that she loves black pepper and loves to use it. She gets that from Dominica. It is funny how much she loves it.

After dinner we all went home and it was straight off to getting everyone ready for bed. The kids all decided to sleep in the girls’ room. We thought that Liesl and Luciana would sleep in our room and we had the airbed in there ready for them but they wanted to be with their cousins.

Before everyone fell asleep, Liesl sneaked into our room because she wanted a quiet place to watch a new show that came out on Netflix. So she ended up climbing into bed with us.