Sheep Guarding Llama

Friday. Today started out warm. Yesterday was incredibly warm. The sun was bright today and it was a perfect day for going outside. But it is not to last.

I tracked down my GoPro Hero 5 Black and GoPro gimbal today and got that charging up. It has sat idle for a very long time and I need to condition it. I hope to be using it quite a lot pretty soon. Rachel and I are starting to work on plans for a travel and beer show.

I worked until maybe a quarter after five. Stephanie texted to say that they were going to the playground that is between us. I got the girls ready and we ran out the door to go meet up with their friends. When we stepped out the door, it was clear that it was way colder than it had been during the day. It had to have dropped ten or even twenty degrees since anyone had checked outside. Liesl ran and grabbed a jacket and Luciana a flannel shirt to wear over her normal shirt and we were out the door. My girls are pretty responsible with checking the temperature and being willing to be prepared. Maybe because they know that just because they have a coat they know that I won’t make them wear it if they aren’t cold.

They played for maybe an hour or a little more with Isabella and Juancho, but it was very cold and got dark pretty quickly. A short day on the playground. But they had fun. And exercise.

From there we went to Walmart to do some more Lego shopping for Luciana who still had Christmas money left to spend because she had held some back a few days ago when we last went. The girls and I looked at some hot sauces first and picked up four new ones, we have been pretty short on spicy sauces at home and I have been wanting something with some kick. Liesl loves getting hot sauces and found it great fun.

Luciana struggled for a while with choosing what Lego set(s) to spend her money on, but finally decided on getting two smaller sets because one smaller set she really, really wanted and it was just the right amount to let her get two. She did a very good job of managing her money.

Before we left Walmart we happened to go by the scented candle aisle and since it was just us three we stopped for a bit and I let the girls smell all of the candles. Not something that they ever get to do and they thought that that was quite fun.

We had been thinking about getting tacos, but we have done that a bit recently and it has been a while since we had a real party night with just the three of us, so I offered to get Domino’s delivered and they were super excited. We came home, ordered pizza, and put on Full House which we watched all evening.

While we watched our show, Liesl snuggled with me on the couch and Luciana took over the bar (she loves sitting at the bar on the “new” bar stools, she does it every chance that she can get) and worked on her Lego sets all evening. It took her all night, but she managed to do both of them all by herself with my only assistance being to do the stickers for her on the second set (the first one had no stickers.)

This evening we found out that Dominica’s grandfather had an incident and we spent much of the evening waiting for news. We found out while the girls were at the playground but we have not told them anything is going on. By late tonight the status is simply that the family is staying with him at the house and will likely go to the hospital in the morning.

By the time that we went to bed tonight, the temperature had gone from the seventies, to just one degree above freezing! Totally crazy.

Thursday. It is St. Valentine’s Day. And today Madeline turns nineteen.

This morning our money to pay off our credit cards cleared. So for a little while this morning we had a lot of exciting money in our bank account. But as soon as we saw it, we paid down all of our bills, so it didn’t last long. But it feels good paying so many accounts down to zero.

This morning I managed to get breakfast from Taco Bell, their potato breakfast burrito and their California crunchwrap with no bacon.

Most of the morning was filled with the girls working on more valentines for their party this afternoon. And getting them showered, dressed, hair brushed, and ready to go. It takes so long to get them ready to go anywhere.

At a quarter after one I drove the girls down to Addison and dropped them off. I left at two, got fueled up, and drove up to Plano to go work for a few hours. That went fine, almost two hours up there and got that all squared away.

It was around four thirty when I got back to the house. Worked for a little bit and then Stephanie dropped off the girls. As always, they were very sad to be leaving their friends.

We had our Valentine’s Day dinner at home, pasta with veggie meatballs and marinara sauce. It was our first time trying out the Aldi store brand veggie meatballs, we will be getting those again for sure. It was quite good. The girls felt like doing their own thing so ate in their rooms. Paul ate and ran to his billiards league where he was all night.

Just after we had our dinner, Red and her sister came by and told us that three of the neighbourhood cats were trapped high in a tree across the street. Dominica and I went out and the four of us spent probably half of an hour trying to figure out how to get them down. One of the cat’s was Ken’s cat Nuc that we know pretty well, and Luciana calls him Keaton (as in Buster.) Eventually through careful use of flashlights, we guided one cat at a time down and they were all able to safely run away. But they had been stuck up there for several hours.

Dominica and I spent the evening watching Fear the Walking Dead and have just started the third season now.

Wednesday. Decently warm today. I thought that today was going to be slow, and it started out that way, but then by early afternoon things just got super busy with work and I ended up needing to work longer than normal. Dominica and Paul did a grocery run this afternoon to both Sprouts and to Walmart to stock things up.

The girls spent a lot of time today working on St. Valentine’s Day cards for their party tomorrow. They are going over to Isabella and Juancho’s house for a party in the afternoon. They have been looking forward to this all week. I have to work in Plano tomorrow afternoon again.

Dinner this evening was Taco Bueno. I figured out that my order is a bean burrito with no chili sauce (it’s made in beef) and the potato burrito with beans instead of meat. Both are just so awesome. I’ve gotten that twice this week. Very satisfying for just three or four dollars.

I hung out in Sherman this evening and watching Pillow Talk, the Doris Day and Rock Hudson classic that I have not seen in a few years. Boy I love that movie, it’s just so well done.

Tuesday. Got up and worked this morning. The girls slept in quite late, until the afternoon. Mostly just a work day for me.

Dominica and Paul went out to play pool some tonight. I fed the girls dinner. They both wanted pizza, so I made that. Each of them ate a whole one on their own. Then they both wanted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Then Luciana wanted four veggie sausage patties. They were so hungry!

The girls were very much in a “do their own thing” mood tonight, so they hung out in the private wing of the house while I hung out in the living room. So I got a chance to watch some Netflix.

I watched National Lampoon’s Van Wilder which surprisingly I have never seen! This is considered a classic of the era (which is 2002) and is often considered the break out role for Ryan Reynolds, although he had been a moderate actor for years before that, this was the role that really pole vaulted him into the spotlight.

I had one episode of The Orville to watch to be caught up. I’m on Season two, episode six.

Then I watched Netflix’ How It Ends which was “meh”. It wasn’t bad, but the story was thin and the plot never really went anywhere. I would not make it a recommendation.

When Dominica got home we watched an episode of Fear the Walking Dead before going to bed. Just one episode.

Monday. Back to the work week. The weather got warmer again today, it has been a little chilly the last couple of days. Spring is attempting to happen, couple more weeks and all remnants of winter will be gone.

Luciana got stumped last night doing her Lego Mia’s House, but she nearly did it all herself. I had to help just a tiny bit this afternoon because she believed that some pieces were missing, but it was actually that she had tried to do the same step twice in the directions.

So Mia’s House Lego Set is now done. Liesl has not started on hers yet. Luciana went and got all of her other Lego Friends sets and brought the pieces and directions out into the living room and set up on the bar so that she could attempt to put them all together to assemble a huge Lego Friends village and make it into an epic Lego playset for her and Liesl.

Dominica and I dug into our finances today and decided that it made sense for us to tap our retirement account and use it to pay off all of our high interest debt (leaving just the car and the house.) Our account is riding decently high right now and the credit cards are a real problem. So I made the transaction and we are expected to get our money into our bank account on Thursday. A bit stressful doing any kind of transaction like this, but we feel good about it. The interest rate on credit debt is just a killer. We figure that it will take four years for us to replenish our retirement if we pay into it the same that we had been paying the credit cards every month, with a small additional amount of monthly buffer added.

Paul and Dominica went out to shoot pool tonight. So the girls and I hung out.