Monday. It is a warm one today, almost eight degrees! It is so nice to have the windows open again and fresh air. We have been needing to air out the house a bit.
I worked all day, nothing to report there. Then after the girls were done with school and I was able to sneak away from my desk we went to the playground to get them out and running around. The weather was so nice.
Of course the playground was packed full. They played until it was dark and most of the kids were leaving. I did my DuoLingo while we were waiting. I am finally into the “home stretch” of the final lessons to test out of to finally have completed all of the DuoLingo Spanish stuff. It is so much, I have been just “testing out” for something like six months now!
The girls had fun but did not make any new friends or know anyone already there so were less than enthusiastic overall. But at least there was an hour or more of exercise.
On the way home we stopped at Taco Bell. The nacho fries are back and Luciana likes those, at least. We got our food to go and drove back to the house getting back just before Paul and Dominica were going to head out to play some pool. Paul has to practice for league, tomorrow.
The girls and I watched Full House while we ate our dinner. Eventually Luciana left to do her own thing, so Liesl and I watched Brooklyn Nine Nine.
Sunday. I watched more of Geography Now! today. They are now up to Namibia. Hard to believe that it has been going for so long and that is all of the farther that they have gotten! There are a lot of countries.
This afternoon the girls and I played more of “Anyway You Slice It”, the Golden Girls board trivia game. It is so funny that they like to play that.
Kat came over just after two. She and Dominica are working on a cookie making project for Kat’s students today. Trying to teach cellular biology using cookies and candy.
We did a cheese tray for snacks while they were working on the cookies. For dinner I made a run out to Taco Bell and picked up dinner. Liesl always is very happy when we do that. And the Nacho Fries are back, which Luciana really likes.
It is super warm today, windows have been open all day and the house is over seventy degrees! It is crazy how we went from nearly freezing to almost needing air conditioning in just a day or two. I guess winter is over and we made it without a broken pipe or a flake of snow seen, not even frost.
Liesl and I watched Brooklyn Nine Nine together for the afternoon. We took over the Ikea couch in my room and just hung out together. Luciana came in and joined us after a few hours and we all watched Full House together until it was time to go to bed which wasn’t until around one in the morning. It was a very snuggling evening, both girls were curled up on the couch with me all evening.
Liesl and I watched Brooklyn Nine Nine together for the afternoon. We took over the Ikea couch in my room and just hung out together. Luciana came in and joined us after a few hours and we all watched Full House together until it was time to go to bed which wasn’t until around one in the morning. It was a very snuggling evening, both girls were curled up on the couch with me all evening.
The weather is supposed to be even warmer tomorrow. I promised Luciana that I would take her to the playground. So that is on the schedule for tomorrow.
Saturday. Luciana got up “early” and came into our room and asked if we could run to the Guatemalan bakery this morning to get pastries. She asks all of the time, but normally in the afternoon after it is way too late to go. Liesl just wanted to stay in bed. So Dominica, Luciana, and I got up and drove down to Belt Line to go to the bakery.
Luciana got four pieces of her favourite “sprinkly cake”, two concha so that she could share with Liesl, Dominica got something like popovers, I got something akin to a Nepolian, one “elote” thing, and some meringues. So that was our breakfast.
Luciana with her Concha from the bakery
It was a quit trip but the bakery makes the girls so happy, especially Luciana. She absolutely loves getting to go there. She really has a taste for the style of breads there. Perhaps because she was at just the right influential age living in places like Spain and Nicaragua and getting so exposed to this stuff that now it is something that she looks for.
Elote pan dulce; Corn on the cob sweet bread
It is a lot warmer today. While the north is still buried in snow, we are already into the high fifties today and the house was nearly seventy degrees today even without the heater running! It’s the first time in quite a while that I did not need to wear my fleece in the house. And it is great to not have the furnace kicking on all throughout the day.
I spent a bit of time watching YouTube videos today, mostly Geography Now! which I really like. I was half relaxing and half doing research on Middle Africa. Liesl was in the room watching something on her iPad, so I put on my Bluetooth Plantronics headset and watched that way so as not to disturb her since Luciana was in their room watching YouTube and playing video games and Dominica, as always, has the living room watching some television show that no one else has any interest in (some random medical show now, I have no idea what the name of it is.)
Liesl decided to join me when I made her lunch. She had New England Clam Chowder and some bread. So I put on Family Matters on Hulu and we watched that for a bit.
Later on Liesl got tired of Family Matters and we decided to restart Brooklyn 99 for her so that she could start at the beginning and know what is going on. She loves the show but only sees it from time to time in the fourth season so doesn’t really know the characters and I think that she would like it even more if we started from the beginning. So that was our evening. Luciana never really felt like joining us, so spent pretty much the whole day on her on in her room doing her own thing.
Kat was supposed to hang out tonight but at the last minute had to cancel.
Late in the evening, both Liesl and Luciana wanted to play some board games. So we started with “Sorry!” which I have never played before. I really hate these kinds of games. This one is not technically purely random, but it is nearly so. There is just the tiniest bit of strategy to it, and I really mean tiny. I won, neither girl felt like playing again. It went pretty quickly.
Then we played “Any way you slice it”, the Golden Girls board game that Dominica got for Christmas. I won that one quickly, too. But both girls did pretty well, they really know their Golden Girls! Getting points in the game wasn’t all that fun, so we just played some fun Golden Girls trivia for a while and really enjoyed that.
I made myself some late dinner, I had New England Clam Chowder and bread just like Liesl did earlier. Then got the girls off to bed.
Friday. This morning is the dollar days at Once Upon a Child. Dominica has had it on her calendar and had them text her this morning. So once up she and Paul took a trip there to go shopping. That took a few hours and Dominica came home with loads of new clothes for the girls. Major haul today and they should be set for a little while.
So I was just watching the girls and working this morning. The girls got the day off from school between Dominica needing to shop this morning and plans for going to see their friends in Addison this afternoon.
At twelve thirty, Paul and I had a meeting for a while with a vendor that we worked with earlier in the week.
After the meeting, I took the girls down to Addison to play with Isabella and Juancho. They stayed there until five thirty. It seemed like no time at all to me back at the house working. Seemed like barely an hour. But it was about three. Not a long afternoon, but they did just see them a week ago, at least. We are going to try to get together again this week as they need a lot more time together and are so upset whenever they have to leave. While they were over there they watched the Ninjago movie from Lego.
Dominica, Paul, and I watched some Star Trek: Voyager while eating dinner. Two episodes. Then I sneaked in a little Star Trek: Enterprise and when the girls were ready we all watched our evening’s planned event The Incredibles 2! This is a movie that I have been waiting many years to finally see, mostly because it took them so long to make it. One of my favourite movie franchises. Dominica, Liesl, Luciana, and I all watched it together. Not as good as the first movie, but still really good. It is free on Netflix now.
After our movie we watched some more Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. We only have three episodes left now before we have completed the series.
Thursday. Paul went out and got donuts this morning at Luciana’s request. From WinCo. He had to go out anyway as we were out of milk. And milk is kind of an emergency need around this house. I’m the only one of the five of us that doesn’t use milk every day. I actually almost never drink milk or use it anywhere. I use half and half in my coffee, but milk is only for my cereal which I do not eat very often. But everyone else is big on milk and has it all of the time.
Work was a little busy today. Nothing too strenuous.
For dinner tonight I made frozen pizzas. The girls prefer them, because of the crust, to the ones that I made for them myself. But I don’t make the crust, so I don’t feel bad about that. The frozen pizzas are really cheap, too. So it all works out and it stops them from demanding Dominos so often, which is much more expensive. It is like five dollars compared to twenty five dollars.
I spent a lot of the evening working with someone in Cameroon, working on opening an office there. It is a potentially great opportunity to work in the Middle Africa region. Very few American companies venture there, for mostly obvious reasons. There are a lot of challenges trying to do anything there. From logistics to corruption to communications to the expected war about to break out.
The girls and I made a night of it tonight. The three of us bundled up on the couch and first we watched Full House for a while, then we started the new Netflix series Carmen Sandiego which is much more than a remake of the 1990s television shows. This one is pretty serious and starts with a hard core origin story of the elusive thief. We watched the first several episodes tonight and are really enjoying it. There are nine episodes in total made thus far, but it is very good so I am thinking that Netflix will be making a lot more of these. Liesl is really into the show. Luciana is liking it, but not nearly as into it and she stop watching part way through our last episode for the evening. Each episode is set in a different country and teaches a little geography and culture.
