Sheep Guarding Llama

I was supposed to be up very early this morning and I had set an alarm on my phone but the phone turned off and no alarm sounded. Luckily Liesl came into our room ten minutes after my alarm should have gone off and she got me up and then climbed into bed and snuggled with Dominica when I got up to get to work. Liesl has always been my little organic alarm clock. She is very good about getting people up in the morning half of the time. The other half she sleeps in for forever. She is always either the first or the last one awake, never in moderation. I guess that she gets that from me. I’m always either up at five in the morning or struggling to get out of bed by nine. Never anything in the middle.

Today was one of my two full days in the office this week. The storms and the holiday made the first part of the week abnormal and short. It was nice. Today and tomorrow are the long ones.

It was a good office day today. I felt very good about work and am overall much happier today.

A short evening with the family but we had a lot of time together all week. And the weekend is only two days away. It is tough getting so little time at home these days. I don’t get enough time with the family and since I get so little with them I spend every moment that I am at home with the girls which means that I have no time for my writing or school work which really needs my attention. Not to mention doing things around the house. The available time at home is just way too short these days. If only the commute was not so long.

Due to the big storm yesterday, we had a late start a the office this morning so I got to sleep in and spend an hour with the girls before venturing out for the nearly two hour drive into the office.  This is the second short day of the week and it is only a four day week.  Things were slow at work today, as you can imagine.

So by the end of the day it really felt like a vacation week.  Only two full days of work to do this week.  I got a lot of time with the girls this week.  It’s been great.

The day did not really go late either.  Got home and had a nice evening with the family.

I got into the office this morning and learned that there was a major snow storm expected to hit around noon.  I had no idea before going in.  It was clear this morning so it had not occurred to me that there might be weather issues today.

We pretty quickly decided that people needed to get home before the blizzard made driving too dangerous.  So people headed home in shifts.  I was the second out and left in the early afternoon after lunch.  The drive home took a full two hours with heavy snow and icy roads but it was okay overall.  I stopped at the Kurdish Deli and got late lunch or early dinner for Dominica and I and headed on home.

The girls were very excited that after my long three day weekend that I was home so soon, it was almost like an extra vacation day.  To them it felt like a four day weekend.  It was a nice surprise.

So we spent the entire afternoon and evening just hanging out together.  A lot of watching shows and stuff in the basement.  Good family time.

The girls and I slept in this morning, as you can imagine, with Liesl and I having been up until two in the morning.  I figured it would be good to shift their schedules a little late today because they will need to be up late tonight in order to go to the airport and get Dominica whose flight is not even scheduled to arrive until a quarter after ten and, as with flights, will likely not come until still later than that.

Dominica’s first flight had issues and they almost did not manage to leave Love Field!  Finally they took off with barely enough time for her to make her connecting flight in St. Louis.  It is a good thing that they left when they did because tomorrow is a blizzard and there will be no flights.  She has to get in tonight or she will be stuck.

Tonight I tried showing Liesl “Hannah Montana” which she has never seen before.  I knew that she would like it and I was right.  As soon as it started she was addicted.  Liesl always says that she wants to be a rock star so I knew that this would be exactly what she likes.  And she generally loves Disney Channel shows so this is perfect.

It was touch and go but eventually everything was going smoothly and Dominica was on her last flight leg and on her way to New York City.  Her flight was running just a little late so we waited until nine thirty before leaving the house to go down to Queens to get her.  The drive was fine tonight and went pretty quickly.  The girls were getting drowsy on the drive.

We had to circle the airport which is really hard to do at LaGuardia.  Finally got Dominica just before eleven and did the hour drive back home.  The girls both fell asleep on the ride up.

Our second day of the daddy / daughter weekend.  We slept in this morning, we were so tired last night when we turned in for the night.  Luciana was the first one up and got out of bed on her side, came around and tapped on me to wake me up then climbed into bed to snuggle with me for fifteen minutes or so and then asked me to get up and get her strawberry milk (or strawberry chocolate milk as she calls it) which is her version of Liesl’s chocolate milk.  So weird that they both love the same thing but they each like a unique flavour.

Liesl was up pretty soon, maybe half an hour later than Luciana and I.  We all needed our sleep.  Yesterday was a very long day.

No snow coming down today, bright and clear but a lot of snow left over from yesterday still.  It was really cold in the house in the morning.

I got a fire going in the fireplace nice and early to get us started for the day.  Luciana started her day by playing Liesl’s Nintendo 2DS for a while.  We all did some board games in front of the fireplace this morning.

This evening the girls and I snuggled in on the couch and watched Ghostbusters.  I have not seen it in many years and I have been wanting to start watching some classic movies with Liesl as she is now old enough to start enjoying them.  Both girls liked this one.  Liesl spent the whole moving bundled in a blanket sitting on my lap and Luciana spent it under my right arm.  Liesl followed the movie really well and did have some serious screaming to do during the scary gargoyle scenes but overall did pretty well during the movie.  This was the scariest movie that she has ever watched and right about at her limit.  Not that we want her to watch anything scary, but Ghostbusters really is not meant to be scary but funny.  They both said that they want to watch it again now, too.

Not long after that we put Luciana to bed.  We read another chapter is “Prince Caspian” and then Liesl went down to the basement and I laid in bed with Luciana snuggling until she fell asleep.  Then I came back down and Liesl and I stayed up until two in the morning until we beat Night of the Rabbit.  It was a special treat for the holiday weekend with just daddy.    This is the fifth game that Liesl and I have played through, from beginning to end, on the PC together.  Our fifth point and click adventure game.  This one was by far the best for both of us.  The graphics, music, story, dialogue – all quite superior to the others that we have played.  It was excellent.  We had a lot of fun playing through that one.  I am not sure what game is up next but I have a feeling that Liesl is wanting to play Deponia next, although we only own the first and second installments and not the third because it is brand new and there has not been a good sale on it yet.  I like to play the series one right after the other because it is easier for Liesl to keep the story straight that way.

Today has been a really great literary day for me and the girls with nearly finishing one of the greatest works of traditional literature “Prince Caspian”, watching one of the classics of 1980s cinema Ghostbusters and completing a modern video game storytelling classic Night of the Rabbit.