Sheep Guarding Llama

Back to the office today leaving dad and Dominica to take care of the girls.  They went to Home Depot today and picked up projector mounting supplies as well as some pea gravel that we are going to try out on the side of the house against the fireplace where there used to be a dog run before we bought the place.  That side of the house has always been just a mess with out of control bushes, weeds, some old scattered pea gravel and dirt.  It was very haphazard and seem to have no plan.  So, for the moment, Dominica wants to try just putting down pea gravel and see if it makes a difference.  It definitely can’t hurt.

After putting down four fifty pound bags of gravel we can already see quite a difference along the side of the house.  I’m looking forward to getting more gravel and filling that in.  It looks much better and you can actually walk along there without getting all dirty now.  Several more bags will really make a huge difference.

We are looking at the side yard now and trying to determine what to do there.  We are thinking that we will rip out the bushes that are there as Dominica is allergic to them and maybe put in a little cafe table in the corner so that we can use that space for outdoor coffee or reading and make a little walkway garden against the house.  It’s a dark little spot but a potentially nice one.  We’ve been ignoring it for a few years now but it wouldn’t take all that much effort to really make it into something.

We went out to dinner at Brookhaven this evening.  The food was really good but the girls were really exhausting.

Dominica and I had to get up early together today so that we could do a conference call before I left for the office.  So we were up just after seven thirty.  No fun.

I was running a bit late after doing the call, catching up on email, showering and trying to get out the door.  Both girls were awake by the time that I left and dad had already arrived for the day thinking that he was coming in late and that I would have been long gone by the time that he got there.  He has a very long day with the girls today as he’ll be with them all day then he is going to watch them tonight while Dominica comes out to Coppell to go to SpiceCorps DFW tonight which is down near my office.

Nothing to report from work today.  Just a normal day.  A little busy.  I skipped lunch, as I often do, and at two thirty I needed a break from staring at my computer so drove over to Starbucks, grabbed a coffee and sat outside for just a little bit to relax.  That was twenty minutes at most, not a long break.  But it was a break, at least.  Then I hit Racetrac for some almonds and an egg salad sandwich to get me through the day.

Dominica got lost trying to get to my office.  Hard to believe that she has only ever been to my office once and that one time I drove.  I haven’t been at this particular office for that long but still.  She used to come to my old office all of the time but mostly that was pre-Luciana when it was just Liesl and Dominica coming to meet me for lunch.  Not very practical to go to La Cima anymore these days.  So I had to talk her through getting to my office.

We car pooled over across the highway to the Avaya offices.  Avaya is sponsoring SpiceCorps DFW tonight for which we are very thankful as it means that we do not need to clean the house, deal with the aftermath, stay up really late, deal with caterers, etc. for the event.  We like having it at the house but it takes a lot of energy to put on an event like that.  It will be slightly easier once we have the living room set up for automatic projection.

The meeting went really well even though our thirty-two RSVPs plus nine maybes turned into just thirteen people in actual attendance.  That wasn’t cool.  I’m really appalled by the number of people who RSVP but then don’t show up at these events.  It is far too many to be just the people who have something “come up” at the last second and it is getting more and more consistent.

One of the nice things about having someone else host the event is that it doesn’t end up going all night and it only lasted until a quarter till nine and then Dominica and I were able to leave without having to be on the clean up crew.  Dominica was extremely thankful to not have been cooking all day and coordinating caterers and getting everything set up.

We ran over to Subway just up the street to grab a quick dinner before going back to my office to pick up Dominica’s Acadia and drive back home to relieve dad.

We were just too late to help dad with the worst of his fears… one of the girls needing to use the potty without us there.  But he handled it alright.

Dad headed back to the hotel pretty much as soon as we arrived.  He was very exhausted.  We were pretty tired ourselves.  We put on two or three episodes of Grace & Favour, I had a gin and it, we did just a tiny bit of work and we were off to bed.

Dominica worked today so it was just dad and I at home taking care of the girls.  Mostly it was me working in my office and dad playing with Liesl and Luciana.

One of their fun projects today was for dad and Liesl to take a cutting that Liesl had accidentally knocked off of one of our ivy plants and another ivy plant that has been growing in the kitchen for a long time and to transplant them into a new, nice, large planter for Liesl’s room.  So they did that for a while then we took it in and hung it up in her bedroom.  This is Liesl’s very first plant of her own.

This evening Dominica picked up Panda Express on the way home and we ate dinner while watching episodes of Are You Being Served?

Today is dad’s halfway point through his Texas trip.  The time really flies.  Although being down here with the little ones really wears him out too.  They have so much energy and are so excited to get to see grandpa.

Liesl decided to name her new plant(s) “Planty”.

This morning we got started a little slowly and then decided that the best thing to do was to pack up the girls and all drive down to Brookhaven for their Sunday brunch.  That made for a nice start to the day.  Dad really enjoyed the food.  It was pretty busy there as the weather is excellent and people were out golfing and the Grille was full too.  It was a lot more carb heavy than we should have been eating but the change was really good.

On the way back we went to Home Depot and got five bags of sand for Liesl and Luciana’s new sandbox that Grandpa bought them the other day.  We also bought some bags of mulch to test out in the back yard.  We decided to try some red rubber mulch that is supposed to last for twelve years.  That seemed like a good investment in general and rubber mulch is so clean and pleasant to walk on.  So we got four bags to test out.

We got home and the girls wanted their sandbox set up right away.  So I set about moving the sand up to the patio.  Dominica had decided to have the sandbox actually sit on the patio so that she could easily watch the girls from the play room.

The mulch looks great after I put it down.  We have such an awful mess of a yard.  The mulch really helps.  We have tons of mud and grass-less areas that need to be covered.  Both to make the yard useful (not getting mud all over ourselves) and in making it look nice.  It will probably take thirty or more bags to really do it any kind of justice, but we can see that this new mulch will work so we plan to buy more soon.

We sat outside for a while with dad and the kids playing in the new sandbox.  I went and got all of the space rubber tiles that we have had sitting in the atrium since Art installed them there and took them out and put them up against the patio to kind of extend the patio out into the yard to cover the dirt area up against the patio where Oreo used to pee and no grass will grow now.  That looks pretty good and we hope will make a difference with tracking dirt into the house from the lawn.

We spent the afternoon working on plans for the living room theater.  Dad is working on a way to mount our new screen in front of the fireplace so that we can start using it.  We are very anxious to have some sort of a theater again.

Finally the weekend.  It felt like it would never get here this week.  Now I finally have some downtime that I can spend with dad.

Early this morning dad and Dominica took the girls out to Toys`R`Us to go shopping for stuff for the girls.  I stayed at home so that I could use the time to be productive and get work done.  That was a good decision as I got a lot done while they were gone so that I could actually spend time with the family once they were back.

Dad likes to wait on Christmas until he can be with the girls so this was their Christmas shopping trip with him.  Luciana’s big present was a pink “car”, like a foot-powered Flintstones’ car, that she can drive around the house.  Liesl’s big present was a big Lego set.  Then the big, joint present for the girls was a sand box for the back yard.  We are actually going to put it on the back patio.  Perfect for watching them from the play room.

Liesl and Dominica had a ton of fun putting together the Lego house today.  Liesl loves to see the structure come together but then she loves to just play and play with the toys that she builds.  I never did that even though I was really into Legos as a kid.  But I was really all about building them.  I might play with them a little, but it was very little.  It was all about modeling something in Lego bricks and then having something to display.  Closer to model railroading.

Both girls really liked playing with the pink car.  Liesl barely fits into it but she makes due.  Ciana mostly just likes to sit in it and hang out.

We watched the fifth Harry Potter movie this evening.  Dad watched the first four in the series last time that he was down in Texas.

I did some more work this evening.  Overall today was a more relaxing day.  Finally starting to get on top of things.  I have another project due on Monday, though, so I can’t really slow down.