Sheep Guarding Llama

We took most of today off so that we could watch travel videos that we found on YouTube.  We found some new travel vloggers that we were checking out, As We Travel, and ended up watching their entire section on their rail challenge around Europe where they took seventy-five days and went to thirty countries.  It was really cool.  They did a good job on the videos too.  We enjoyed watching them quite a bit, especially as their adventure was so similar to ours – we did twelve countries in about forty days but with two little kids with us, so the pacing was very similar but ours was a ton more work.  They also had the advantage of one of them being from one of the countries that they visited so for them it was more like traveling around the United States would be for us – doing thirty states in seventy five days would be pretty trivial, especially without kids.

Liesl started doing Litebright today.  She got one for Christmas.  It is mostly the same as when we were little.  Only when I was young it was stamped metal and now it is plastic, of course.  So the modern one is much nicer and easier to care for.  It also has a flip drawer on the bottom to hold the little plastic pegs so it is not the mess that the old one was.  It is smaller but that works better.  And instead of having to plug it in and have a light bulb inside of it, it is powered by a few little batteries, has a power button that switches between on, off and blinking, and is lit by an LED.  She had a lot of fun doing that.  That was a very good Christmas present for her.  Now I wonder how old I was when I used to do that.  Watching her do that really brought back the memories.

So on “As We Travel” we learned that the largest Orthodox church in west Europe is in Finland.  But I already knew that the largest Orthodox church in eastern Europe was in Belgrade.  This didn’t seem right to me.  It really made me question my geography.  So I looked it up.  And I was right.  The largest church of the west is three hundred miles east of the largest church of the east.  That is messed up.

That is like how West, Texas is far east of East, Texas.

I got paged out this evening and had to work for a few hours.  Same issue as last weekend.

A quiet Saturday at home.  Did not do too much today.  We have been avoiding dealing with the crazy mess that is our house.  It has been a disaster since Christmas.  So much to do.  We just never have the energy to start tackling it all.

We stayed home all day not venturing out at all.  We finished watching Family Ties.  Liesl was not very into that.  Then more of Shake It Up.  She likes to sit on my lap and sing along.

Very quiet day.  Just playing with the girls all day.

It’s Friday!  Last Friday was my early one so today was a relaxed Friday.  Got in normal time and worked all day in the office.  I worked through lunch which is pretty normal for me now.

Came home and spent the evening with the family.  We’ve been watching Family Ties and are almost done with the final season.  Dominica and I were watching it a few years ago and never quite finished the series.  She has a tendency to get tired of a show just before finishing all of the episodes so we took a few years off but finally came back to wrap it up.  Seven seasons.  Hard to believe that it ran for so long.  By the later episodes it felt like it was coming from a different era.  That show was so solidly from the 80s.  I probably saw every episode of it growing up.  Not a single one feels completely unknown to me.  If I missed any they were few and far between.

It makes me sad that so many of the classic shows from my childhood are not available today.  The shows that I liked the best are, mostly, unavailable.  So many shows that I don’t care about or outright detest, like “Alf”, are available but the great shows that defined the ’80s are not being released.  Shows like “Growing Pains” and “Who’s the Boss” and many of their spin-offs.  Some licensing problems combined with low revenue has caused these shows to effectively vanish.  Liesl and Luciana might never get to watch those shows simply because someone isn’t willing to allow us to pay them to see them.  Unbelievable in this era of “everything is available.”  That an entire decade is just missing is outright crazy.

We watched a little bit of the Disney show Shake It Up and got the girls off to bed.  Dominica is still completely exhausted from yesterday and went to bed early.  I went out to Redneck to hang out with Aimee and Stephan.  Haven’t seen Aimee in about two months.

Today is Thursday and I am home with the girls again today. Normally I would not be home twice in the same week but since I worked a double on Sunday I am staying home today.  This worked out so I get another day with my girls.  We had a good day together.  Lots of time to play.  Liesl has been anxious to go back to “Miss Melissa’s House”, though, because she wants to play with the kids and toys there.  So next week she is going to daycare for sure.

Dominica worked a very long day today.  Nine or ten hours in the office (remember, it was supposed to be just a half day) and then she came home and worked another two hours or more from home while we sat in the play room this evening.  She was really exhausted too.  Today really wore her out.  She could barely keep her eyes open all evening and she had to work tonight too, at least two hours.

We did nothing but watch some TVLand on Hulu tonight and everyone went to bed really early.  Luciana put herself to bed around seven!  Liesl was happy to go to bed before nine.  Dominica, as often happens, gets so tired then doesn’t go to bed which makes her even more tired tomorrow.

I was in the office again today, but I won’t be tomorrow.  Just two days in a row this week.  That’s how I like it.

I worked through lunch as I tend to do these days, now that I am at the new office it is just enough further to get home that working through lunch seems to make the most sense – that and I have so much work to keep up on that if I drive home I just can’t get to all of it.

After work I got out early and went home to see the girls for a while before heading out to meet Dan and Corey at Redneck Heaven to discuss a potential business project.

Got home kind of late.  Did nothing really tonight.