Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is Madeline’s birthday slumber party down in Houston.  We didn’t know when I would get out of work last night and late Friday night drives down to Houston are exhausting so we decided that we would just get up early and try to make it down there this morning.  That often works out better and is far safer since I am not driving so exhausted.

We were up really early and on the road before seven.  The drive was fine and we got to the Grices’ around eleven.  I worked just a little bit and then we headed over to the Toccos’ where the party was kicking off in the mid-afternoon.

The party got started around four, I believe.  There were probably a dozen girls there for the party.  We had all thought that they would hang out inside and use the hot tub outside later on once Joe had a chance to warm it up.  But before anyone knew what was happening everyone was in swimsuits and out in the main pool – which was relatively cold.  I can tell that everyone is getting old that they’ve forgotten how warm you are when you are young and that the continuous “it’s so cold” feeling that we always wondered about with adults doesn’t exist for them.  Now that I am older I see why adults always feel cold, I’m in a fleece nearly around the clock, but I remember when I was young telling myself never to forget that as a child, adults are always cold and kids do not need anywhere near the thermal protection that we project onto them as needing.  But, as expected from my own childhood observations, all the adults have completely forgotten this and feel that rather than being colder themselves, the world itself is now colder and children must, as an artifact of that, be cold too.

Nearly the entire evening of party was out in the pool.  Later on, after there was food, the hot tub was warm and Liesl went out and got into it with the other girls.  Liesl was totally in her element.  She loves having a party and she loves hanging out with older girls.  This is totally Liesl’s scene.  She just had a blast all night and older girls always love having her around because she is so much fun.

After the pool portion of the party was done, Joe set up the theater and we all packed in to watch Mall Cop which Dominica and I have seen before, although I can’t remember where.  It is a cute movie and was one where the little kids could stay and watch too.  Liesl had a good time in the theater with everyone.

After the family friendly movie was over the little kids headed off to bed and the older girls split into three camps… the horror movie in the theater group, the horror movie upstairs group and the sleepy group.  I will never understand the preoccupation that tween and teen girls have with nonsensical, gory, violent films.  The adults mostly moved into the house and watched Clueless together.  Benny and I stayed out in the theater to watch over that group while they watched the relatively awful movie Sinister.

After that all of the girls were terrified and needed me to escort them to and from the house to use the bathroom.  The girls who had watched a horror movie inside the house wanted to join the group in the theater (which is an unattached building) but needed me to escort them out to there as they were scared too.  Bennie ended up going to bed and stealing the room that I was going to share with Liesl.  Liesl ended up camping out in the one slumber party room with some of the other girls.  So I was left with nowhere to sleep except on a couch in the living room (Dominica and Francesca were using the other two couches.)  But I can’t sleep on couches very well.  So I did some thinking about it and was considering sleeping in the theater because I was the last person awake and there was going to be no chaperon watching over that building and being separate didn’t seem like a good idea, but there was no way that I would get sleep in there as they were loud and watching movies all night and giving makeovers and they wouldn’t want me in there.  So I thought about it and took one of the pool lounge chairs, put some towels on it as it was soaked, and moved it over next to the house so that I could plug in my CPAP.  And with just one blanket I curled up outside by the pool and went to bed where I could watch over the theater while not having to intrude on them.

I got up early and got out to downtown Addison where I had breakfast with the Drobo guys.  We had a really good time and I ended up hanging out with them for about two hours.

This was my first time ever doing breakfast down in Addison.  There was a little sidewalk cafe, very New York in style, that had good food and coffee.  It was a nice change of pace and the Mediterranean breakfast that they had is perfect for us vegetarians.  I need to take Dominica down there sometime soon.  A slice of the life that we miss from being back in the north east.

Into the office, then, for a normal, long Friday.  Nothing too remarkable.

I got home far earlier than we had expected.  Often I don’t get home until eight or later on Fridays but today I was home around six which caught Dominica off guard a bit.  I texted our babysitter to let her know that I would be home early so we moved her up from seven thirty to eight so that we could go out earlier.

So at seven thirty Kayla came over and Liesl was very excited, as usual.  It is nice that she got to come over on the early side so that they got three hours or so to play together before Liesl had to head off to bed.  Liesl has so much fun with her.

Dominica and I went out to Redneck for the evening.  The parking was completely insane with people parking on lawns all over the place.  In fact, both Dominica and I experienced our first even parking spot stealer, ever.  Having grown up in the north east where public rudeness of this nature is unthinkable, we find that here in Texas the attitude is a bit different.  People just aren’t as generally friendly in the south as they are in NYC.  They say “hi” more and make more eye contact, but that’s not actually related to being friendly or helpful.  Not that people aren’t friendly or helpful, just not to the same degree.  In the north, we spend our time around people a lot more.  In Texas, the trend is to lock yourself in a car and avoid human contact as much as possible so that things become very antisocial as a result.  Then you act friendly during the tiny slivers of human contact that you are forced to endure day to day.  I’m so used to being ‘around people’ so much more.  I don’t like the antisocial lifestyle here at all.

The wait line to get a table was up to three hours tonight!  Luckily, being regulars, we had a whiskey each and Vanessa found us and took us right to a table bypassing the line.  That was awesome.  After an hour or two some friends joined us.  We had dinner and hung out till around midnight then went to Waffle House as Dominica had been craving a waffle all afternoon.

I got up only about fifteen minutes after Dominica this morning and was in the office working before she was out the door.  So I got a good, early start.  Probably about six thirty.  We’ve been moving both our and the kids’ bedtimes forward dramatically.  Luciana is in bed just a little after eight and we were in bed before ten.

We had a dark and gloomy morning.  There was a light rain when I first got up and it got moderately heavy for much of the early morning. Ciana was up before eight and Liesl not long after.  I set them up in the storm-darkened living room with the big screen and let them watch The Fresh Beat Band there which they really liked.

The morning flew by but I wasn’t able to get very much done.  The interruptions were just often enough to keep me from being able to be productive.

Dominica left work at noon and did some shopping before coming home.  I was able to do a little bit more in the afternoon with her around.

Today is dad’s first full day back home in New York.  So far the girls aren’t doing too badly.  But it’s not been very long yet.  We will see how they come, say, the weekend.  Although we are going to Houston this coming weekend so that will distract them until next week.  It is amazing how packed our schedule is, we seem to just have one event running into another.

I was into the office early today.  Worked through lunch.  Back home at a good time.  Mostly uneventful workday.

This evening was mostly hanging out as a family.  We used the new home theater a bit.  We are really liking that, as are the girls.  They are getting used to having it now and Luciana especially thinks that it is really neat.

I am home tomorrow as my work from home day.

I was ready earlier than I had expected to be so started walking and dad picked me up out about half a mile from the house.  So I got a tiny bit of exercise in this morning and cut off an unnecessary part of the drive that he would have to have made to have picked me up.  Dominica and the girls were still asleep so we weren’t going to wake them up anyway – they all said goodbye last night.

It was an easy drive into the airport.  Grabbed my morning Monster energy drinks on the way past the office, since my office is right next to the airport, and got dad in a few minutes earlier than he had been hoping so he had plenty of time for a relaxing, leisurely check in for his day of flying.  He is leaving “no jackets needed” weather to return to the heavy snows of New York.  At least he managed to miss the really big blizzard that hit this year.  That worked out really well.

I got into the office on the early side and managed to leave just a little on the early side so that I could run home, meet up with Dominica and the girls and immediately drive them to Brookhaven for the annual Dallas Zoo Night.  Liesl had so much fun last year that we definitely wanted to make it tonight too.  Luciana is old enough to enjoy it now so we are hoping that it works out well.

We are having a whole day of the Miller Family being early.  We were the very first family sitting down to eat for what was eventually a full house.  We got there minutes before the official start of the evening at five thirty.  The food was quite good and a nice departure.  That’s one of the reasons that I really like making an effort to do the special events is because of the additional food variety.

The zoo show started at six thirty with the same girls from the Dallas Zoo and a few of the same animals, but mostly new ones, from last year’s show.  Liesl tried going up on her own to sit with all of the children but quickly got anxious from there being too many people packed too closely together and came back to sit on Dominica’s lap in the front row of the seating area rather than on the floor with the kids.  Luciana sat on a chair next to me.

It was a nice evening and made it a lot easier for it to be the first day with dad having left as there was plenty of distraction for the girls.