Sheep Guarding Llama

This morning, Dominica went grocery shopping and dad and I stayed home with the girl.  We have been terribly low on groceries recently and we really needed some basics to get through the week.  We’ve been running lean on groceries and other semi-discretionary spending as we attempt to get back on top of our expenses after a very brutal winter of spending and the need to pay for Dominica and the girls’ upcoming Florida vacation in a few weeks.  We are doing fine, there have just been a crazy amount of bills that we’ve had to go through recently and it takes a little while to get back on top of them without taking drastic measures.

We just spent the day, mostly in the living room, hanging out.  No real plans or activities.  The girls have missed their grandpa so were all over him all day.

This evening we watched the latest Star Trek film: Star Trek: Into Darkness.

We have a new Podcast Feed for Kidding Around Europe.  Be sure to subscribe if you have some sort of podcast software.

I had planned to leave work early this evening so that I could drive out to Croton-Harmon Station to get dad from Amtrak when he arrives this evening.  So I had planned to leave work at four thirty.  But as the time to leave work got closer, dad’s train got delayed more and more as it seems to always be.  So I ended up staying late rather than leaving early.  Although not very late.

On the drive to Croton it was raining just a little.  It was dark and drizzly all day in Connecticut.  By the time that I got to the station it was ready to really rain.  I tried to stay outside to wait for the train doing some walking to and fro in front of the station but soon it started to pour and drove me inside of the station with everyone else.  There were girl scouts out front of the station selling cookies, but they were in a covered area.

I was only at the station for half an hour before dad’s train arrived.  On the drive back to the house we stopped to get food.  Dominica had told me to bring home food tonight and there is only one restaurant really on the way from the station to our house: Julianne’s Schoolhouse.  We have been really wanting to try that place for a while.

I was surprised to find the restaurant was completely packed.  The parking lot was full and the restaurant was standing room only!  We managed to get seats at the bar and I had a beer while we waited for the food to be ready to go.  I got a veggie burger and dad got a real burger and for Dominica I got calamari as an appetizer and their miso cod for dinner.  The food all turned out to be really excellent.  Not cheap but really good.  It is really neat that this place is so close to home.  It is amazing that we have never been there and Dominica has never even seen where this place is.

We watched a little of Antiques Roadshow while we ate dinner at the house.  The girls were so excited that dad was there for the weekend.

It was off to bed early for everyone.  Dad was worn out from his long day of train travel.

I found Luciana in our bed this morning when I got up.   Neither Dominica nor I have any idea when she sneaked into our room.

The Spark flipped to 35.4 miles per gallon today.  It just keeps getting better and better gas mileage.  Such a good investment.

I worked late today, not getting home until after eight this evening.

After work today I came home and discovered Dominica had gotten herself addicted to old reruns of the Antiques Roadshow from PBS.  She got the idea from watching Frasier where they talk about the show and then she found that it was available via one of our online streaming video services (I don’t remember which one.)  So she watched that this evening.  There are not many episodes available online right now so she worked through most of it pretty quickly.

Just another day at work today.  Nothing special.  Quiet evening at home after work.  A little light cleaning.

Tonight we read the second chapter in “The Magician’s Nephew.”  Liesl continues to really like this book and is super involved asking all kinds of questions about things in the book.  She is finding this very educational.

Tonight, when I put the girls to bed, we started reading the sixth book in the Chronicles of Narnia series: The Magician’s Nephew.  We had thought that the girls would not be that into it, neither Dominica nor I liked it that much compared to many of the other books, but Liesl was really into it, even after the first chapter, and I think that this might be her favourite of the entire series although I have no idea why.  So it seems like making the decision to read the sixth book was a good one.  We are definitely not going to be going on to the final book in the series until we have read them all again at a minimum.