Sheep Guarding Llama

I felt pretty awful this morning when I got up. I was tired and I could barely open my eyes. Thankfully Dominica had gotten up super early so that she could take Katie to get on the seven o’clock train down to Manhattan so that I could get some more sleep. She woke me up before she left but it got me probably an extra hour of sleep or more which, apparently, I really needed.

The weather was great this morning. The drive in was fine. I stopped and got a breakfast sandwich along the way.

Work was fine today. Super busy, but fine. I did not get to come home until a little on the late side.

I had been expecting that Dominica was going to get Katie at the train station around five but instead of a short day in the city she ended up working all evening. So we did not see her until late.

We watched some “Frasier” and relaxed. I still felt crappy like maybe I have a cold or allergies or possibly pink eye. I would have gone to bed early but Katie wasn’t expected until around eleven. We got the girls off to bed before I went downtown to the station to get her.

We had a big fight between the girls tonight after they were supposed to have gone to bed. We found Luciana kicking Liesl in the face to keep her away from her (Liesl’s) CareBear that she sleeps with. So they had to be separated. Poor Liesl, she doesn’t fight back and all and just takes all of the abuse. Luciana was sentenced to sleeping alone and lost her iPad privileges and Liesl got to go sleep with mommy and daddy tonight.

Dominica’s parents went to morning mass and we got to sleep in. Dominica was the first one up and not long after her, Luciana came downstairs and just sat in the kitchen with Dominica watching a show on her iPad, probably “Blues Clues” because that is her show this month, it would seem. Liesl has been enjoying going back and watching “Blues Clues” with Luciana. It has been quite a long time since Liesl watched those and she is feeling nostalgic, I think.

Liesl came downstairs but because her grandparents were not home yet she was told to not look around and try to see any eggs to find. So she sat on Dominica’s laptop with her eyes closed and her hands over her face to make sure that she would not see anything by accident. She is so good. She would never try to cheat the game. She really tries to always play by the rules. It was so sad, though, as she could not do anything but sit there covering her face. I asked her if she wanted me to carry her back upstairs with an iPad so that she could watch something in bed until it was time for the Easter Egg hunt and she liked that idea.

Once Dominica’s parents were home I went upstairs and got Liesl (who was not engrossed in her show and not nearly as interested as she was before) and brought her down. We put the two girls at the base of the stairs and Luciana had found two eggs before we even said “go.”

The girls had great fun. Liesl, of course, found the bulk of the eggs. She found about 25 and Luciana found about 15. We had hidden 42, so two are now missing. It could be months before those are found.

At one thirty we went to Aunt Barb and Uncle Joe’s house in Frankfort for Easter dinner. Not a huge crowd today, just the ten of us (Dominica’s grandfather was there too.) After we ate Dominica and I took the girls out into the back yard where they just played and played. The weather was great – warm and sunny and the ground was not wet so they were able to just hang out and have a good time. We walked all over the yard and learned about pine trees and spruce trees and pine cones and all kinds of things. Liesl has decided that she wants to collect plant parts that she finds so that she can learn about them. She is also very excited about going to Florida soon because she will have a chance to get shells for her shell collection. She collected some on the beach in Barcelona two years ago but accidentally left the shells on a bus somewhere and is still sad about that.

For just a little bit before we the twins came by. Liesl and Luciana are so excited to get to play with the not quite six month olds. They had a great time.

By five we really had to get on the road to drive back to Peekskill. The traffic ended up being great, though. We made the drive in just three and a half hours which is unheard of for returning from Frankfort on a Sunday evening after a holiday. We were very happy about that. Liesl, however, is losing her ability to handle long car drives and thinking that these short trips in New York are the longest things ever. She has already forgotten are very regular drives across Texas that were much, much longer and just as regular, if not moreso.

Once we got home we cleaned for about an hour before Katie arrived from South Jersey. She is staying for a couple of days with us while she is working in Manhattan. She ended up sleeping in the guest bed in the girls’ room and the girls moved back to their bunk bed. They have been opting to sleep in the queen bed most of the time when given their druthers.

Luciana got Dominica up this morning and climbed into bed to snuggle with me after Dominica got up.  Luciana fell back asleep and we snuggled for at least half of an hour before Liesl woke up and once she was up Luciana got up and they went downstairs to play.

I spent most of the day sitting in the kitchen with the laptop working. I got a lot done, so that was good.

For lunch we got pizza. But Big Willy’s was closed so we could not get my favourite pizza.

This afternoon I had to work for an hour or two for the office too. But it went pretty quickly, not a big deal at all.

This evening I watched “Trouble with the Curve” which was actually a pretty good movie. Good people and a decent story. Mostly predictable, but everything out of Hollywood is these days. You can’t expect too much.

Once it was late, everyone came into the living room and we all watched the Superman series reboot “Man of Steel” which was actually really good. I really dislike comic book and super hero stuff but I have always liked Superman, maybe because it was the only one of those that was really a part of my childhood. The original Superman movie was so good. This, though, is a legitimate reboot of the series that has a lot of potential.

I have today off because it is Good Friday. We slept in this morning but once we were up it was just time to pack everyone up and get ourselves on to the road. So it was quite late morning before we actually got moving and out the door.

The drive north to Frankfort was fine. The weather is nice but slightly chilly. We stopped at the Starway Diner that we like and got ourselves some lunch. The girls shared a pancake. At first they accidentally brought a chocolate chip pancake that the girls agreed to try but neither of them was willing to eat. They take after me in that way. So that made lunch take much longer than it should have.

We got to Frankfort in the mid afternoon. Liesl was especially excited to get to play with the other set of the Shera toys of her mother’s that her grandfather had promised to find in the attic for her. Sadly, he had not been able to locate them in the last few weeks. Liesl was very disappointed. Luciana said that she would go look and she went upstairs and came down a little later and told us that she had found the toys. We were rather incredulous but someone went upstairs with her and, lo and behold, the still two year old had actually found the box that no one knew about in a room where no one looked and there were the toys that have been sought for weeks!

This evening we went to the Kitlas for dinner. A Friday night traditional around here.

Tonight, I found Liesl upstairs at one point visibly upset. She was sitting in the empty room just sitting on the corner of a bed. I spent twenty minutes sitting with her before I could get her to tell me anything about what might be wrong. And even then I had to guess everything. I eventually, from playing a game of twenty questions where she would only shake or nod her head, worked out that she had had an accident downstairs and that she had dropped grandma’s iPad and she thought that she had broken it. It took a lot of running up and down the stairs and cajoling to eventually convince Liesl that she had dropped it but not damaged it. There was a piece of the case that her grandmother had broken off long ago and Liesl thought that that was the iPad itself and was sure that she had been the one that had broken it. Poor little girl.

I got up early and worked from home a little this morning to make sure that everything was all set at the office before traveling in.  Since tomorrow is a holiday today will likely be a slow day but I am covering for a lot of people so even though the day will be slow I am likely going to be very busy.

The day flew by and it really did not seem like I was in the office that much.  We got cleared to head home at three but I had too much work to do so I stayed for a while.  At four thirty we had a small happy hour, there were still many people left in the office.

I was able to head for home before five.  It was nice to get home early.