Sheep Guarding Llama

Hard to believe that Liesl turns four tomorrow.  Today is my very last day to spend with her as a three year old.  Three was a great age.  I am really going to miss three year old Liesl.

I woke up, on my own, at six thirty this morning so got up and got ready for work.  Today is my first day back in the office in five days so I am sure that there is plenty to be catching up on.

When I got out of the shower I discovered both Liesl and Luciana had gotten up and gotten into bed snuggling with mommy.  Liesl was fast asleep but Luciana was awake and waving at me.  What a cutie.  I can’t believe that they were all up so early.  Luciana got up and followed me around the house as I got ready for work.

Rather quiet day at work, I was expecting there to be far more going on.  Medifast was very busy and had me go in to my appointment early today so that they could squeeze me in as they did not have enough time to see everyone today.  So I went to my appointment during lunch.

I’ve put on six pounds this past week.  That’s not horrible since I took off twelve the week before.  But it is depressing either way.

On the way home from work I swung into Rockfish and picked up dinner.  Dominica is still feeling sick but she thought that maybe some mahi mahi would go down well.  It did not.

I had dancing tonight in Las Colinas.  I keep wanting Dominica to go so that I can stay home and relax for a change but there is always a reason that it has to be that goes.  This week, obviously, because she is not feeling well.  Very likely it will have to be me on Thursday as well.

I came home this evening and did a mix of work and hanging out with the family, but mostly just hanging out as it was so late.  At one point this evening we had Liesl crying for nearly half an hour because she was so upset that she is turning four tomorrow.  She is sad because she loved being three so much and she doesn’t want it to be over.  It was sad and adorable at the same time.  A very complex concern for someone so young.  That she realizes time passes as it were and seeing her childhood slipping away already seems abnormal.  It is awesome that she has been so happy that she doesn’t want it to end.  She often says that she does not want to grow up and wants to be little forever.

Got up decently early this morning, around seven thirty.  Did not spend the day working, though.  Mostly today is a day to relax.  I’ve been working like mad for the last several days and am feeling a bit over-taxed.

The Grices packed up this morning and were on the road by the middle of the morning.  Dominica and I set to cleaning the house for about an hour.  It made a dent but only a dent.

I put in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune in the PS3 and played for maybe forty-five minutes.  I am only about two hours into the game, total, if that.  Apparently I never actually get time to really play it.  It is a good game and I move through it at an acceptable pace and I like the story.  I just never get a chance to play.  I would have played a bit more today, I might even had made an attempt at completing the game as it is pretty short, but Luciana could not stop climbing on me as I attempted to play after a certain point and there was just no way for me to make it through some of the more challenging portions like that so I gave up.

This evening I told Liesl that we were going to watch a “daddy movie” because I wanted to relax for a while.  I put in The Man with the Golden Gun and as soon as she saw it was a Bond film she said, “This isn’t a daddy movie.  This is a Liesl movie.  It is a Liesl and daddy movie!”  I am so proud of my girl.  Liesl, Luciana and I all watched The Man with the Golden Gun while Dominica read.  When that movie was over we moved on to The Spy Who Loved Me.  Luciana went to bed pretty early on during the movie after snuggling quite extensively and practically falling asleep on the couch.  Liesl made it to the very end when they were blowing up the secret hideout and then fell asleep on the couch between Dominica and I and had to be carried off to bed.

Liesl is not sick at all, as far as we can tell.  Luciana actually got sick a little this evening during the movies.  I was in the kitchen and she walked in and just threw up a little.  It surprised her, I think, and she suddenly pointed to her feet, which she had gotten, and got a little upset.  Dominica has been rather sick for days and just spent the day on the couch.

So as soon as Liesl was put to bed Dominica went to bed herself.  Way too early for me.

Another full day of Dominica and I having tons of work to do.  When she wasn’t working on the email migration she was helping Bennie as he did work around the house.

People are starting to feel better but there is still a bit of sick going on.  Dominica is definitely the worst.  She has been in rough shape for day.

As we were the stay in and watch the kids people last night, Bennie and I got to go out tonight while the girls stayed home and hung out with the kids.  They were all pretty exhausted anyway and only went out last night because they had been determined to see that movie all week and it was their only chance to do it.  So around the time that Luciana went to bed Bennie and I headed out to Redneck for the night.

We were there for about two hours before Watson decided to join us as well.  The three of us, Watson and Bennie know each other from Liesl’s second birthday party two years ago, had a really good time just hanging out.  We stayed out until they kicked us out 🙂

Just mentioning when Bennie and Watson met makes me realize just how long we have been living in this house now in Carrollton.  This is Liesl’s third birthday being celebrated here!  I can’t believe it.  We have lived in this home for half of Liesl’s life.  She turned one in Walt Disney World, but while we were still living in the Peekskill house.  Then we moved to Texas and lived in the apartment in Las Colinas for so long but apparently not long enough for her to have had a birthday there.  That is what really surprises me.  We managed to always be living in a house when Liesl had a birthday.  This house that seems so new and recent to me has had three of four Liesl birthdays and, of course, every Luciana birthday in it.

Liesl’s actual birthday is not for another few days.

Everyone is still feeling pretty sick around here today.  No one is feeling terrible but no one is feeling particularly great either.

Officially today is not a holiday but, in reality, there is just about no work going on and no one goes into the office today.  So I am home with the family but in the office most of the day.  There is tons of work for me to do and Dominica was completely unable to work yesterday because she was so sick that she never got out of bed so today she is stuck working on that email migration for a large chunk of the day.

Bennie came up and worked on the house a bit today.  He is getting the trim done around the floors so that we don’t have the gaps between the flooring and the walls.  And he trimmed in the new windows in the bar that Art put in last month.  The house is really coming together now.

This evening Dominica ordered in some pizza for Bennie and I and the little ones and she and Francesca took Madeline and Emily to go out and see the last of the Twilight movies in the theater while Bennie and I stayed in and watched the kids and a couple of James Bond movies.

We started with Diamonds Are Forever which was playing when the pizza arrived.  I am loving that I have the entire James Bond collection now.  These are movies that I strongly associate with my childhood.  It is great getting to see them and be able to see them in order and associate them in ways that I couldn’t do very well when I was young because I was always seeing them in an arbitrary order.

The girls were not back yet so we went ahead and watched Live and Let Die.  Liesl joined me for some of the first movie and all of the second one.  She loves snuggling and watching movies finally.  The girls got back before halfway through our second movie.  Most everyone went to bed leaving just Dominica, Liesl, Bennie and I finished up Live and Let Die.

I managed to actually sleep in pretty dramatically today.  That was nice.  It is really rare that I get to do that.  Normally I am up with the girls.  Today the kids all came and climbed into bed with me but Dominica and Francesca were both awake so I didn’t need to get out of bed.  So “slept” in might not be correct, but I didn’t have to actually get out of bed.  Good enough for me.  Madeline managed to go the entire day without getting out of bed at all except to use the bathroom once or twice.  Weird.

Everyone except for Madeline, Luciana and I ended up getting sick at some point today.  Dominica had to go back to bed before noon and never got back up again.  Francesca went down for a three hour midday nap.  Liesl was doing great all day and was playing outside as it started to get dark and all of a sudden, without any warning, she ran into the kitchen and threw up.  Whatever this is, it seems to come very suddenly and without any kind of warning.

I worked like crazy all day. Very busy.  This migration is a huge pain and seems like it will never end.  So much work and this has been going on for nearly a year.  There have been some huge gaps but this is a major project demanding a ridiculous amount of my time for some pretty silly stuff.  But it is all Linux and MySQL stuff that no one else can reasonably do so that leaves me dealing with all of it.  not fun, but what can you do?

This whole day was pretty much dominated by the sick family and the migration work.  Nothing else really happened at all.  At one point Emily and I ran out to McDonald’s and picked up a small amount of food for the few people well enough to eat.  Then Emily came into the office and I talked her through our huge slew of vacation pictures as she had never really seen them.

Once everyone had gone to bed I took the laptop and headed off to Redneck Heaven which is always open and set up to work from a table in the back.  I had some barbecue shrimp as my Thanksgiving Dinner since I didn’t have anything for Thanksgiving all day.  This is

Bennie is coming up tomorrow at some point and is going to help get the flooring and bar work completed that Dominica and I cannot do.  Dominica and I have a ton of work to do tomorrow as well.