Sheep Guarding Llama

For only the second time, really, Liesl was sick today.  She woke up very sick this morning and moved from her room into our bed so that she could be close to us, which meant no more sleep for us.  So today was spent mostly taking care of Liesl.  That and watching Doctor Who.  By the end of the day Liesl was doing pretty well.

The Ralstons arrive tomorrow afternoon.  We are not exactly all that ready for them at this point.  But what are we going to do?  Hopefully we have gotten the sick out of the family so that everyone isn’t sick after they get here.

Dominica and Luciana are feeling a bit better today.  The stomach bug appears to just be one of those normal, annual twenty-four hour deals that goes around.  Nothing awful but pretty annoying.

At noon we went to Denny’s to get some lunch.  Dominica was up to eating today so that was good.

Very slow day, trying to get the house ready for the Ralstons who arrive here on Monday.  We can only do so much for that, of course, since the moment that they arrive the house will begin being torn apart for construction.

We spent most of the day as a family just watching reruns of Doctor Who.  The seventh season is out but we don’t have any access to it so we are watching the first six seasons again instead so that we are ready for when that comes out.

I got up nice and early this morning at three and worked from the home office for several hours before going in to the gym at five thirty to work out.  I got in a nice workout and before I left the gym at eight to go to the office I checked my iPhone and had a message from Dominica telling me to be on the alert as she had woken up, didn’t feel all that well and that I might need to come home if she wasn’t feeling better later on in the morning.  I knew that going to work would be dangerous because I would get there, be busy, have to go home and that would cause problems.  So I just ran home before work started so that I wouldn’t have to deal with all of the extra driving.

On the way back home I stopped at the Donut place at the corner of Belt Line and Webb Chapel and picked up donut holes for Liesl and Luciana and apple fritters for Dominica and I and headed back to the house.

It was a good thing that I just went home.  By the time that I got home Dominica was really sick and within a few hours Luciana was too.  This was Dominica’s first time actually being sick, I mean “really” sick since 1999!  And this was Luciana’s first real stomach bug too.  Oh the joys of being the healthy one while everyone is very sick.  What a day.  Liesl, thankfully, did really well.

This evening, once all of the girls were asleep, Watson and I went out to Malarkey’s Tavern to talk about work and so that he could show off his new iPhone 5 with LTE, which was pretty cool.  We weren’t out super late and the tavern is close to home.  Need plenty of sleep to make sure that I don’t get sick too.

Got up just after five this morning and was out the door by just after five thirty to head to Brookhaven for my morning workout.  I’m loving this pattern of going to the gym early in the morning before going to the office.  Makes me far more awake and alert all day and makes me feel better and it doesn’t really impact my schedule in any significant way since I shower and get dressed for work at the club rather than at home and the club is on the way to work so I waste hardly any time or mileage at all.

I did about seventy minutes on cardio today.  Good workout.  I hit the hot tub for a bit afterwards to relax the muscles.

For lunch today, Dan and I went to Redneck.  Tomorrow I am going home during lunch so that Dominica can go to the gym while I watch the girls.  Tonight she and I are going out for dance lessons in Arlington.

After work I got home and the babysitter was already there and everyone was ready to go.  Chris got there a few minutes after me and the three of us jumped into the Spark and headed off for the Brickhouse in Arlington for an evening of salsa.

We had a really good time dancing tonight too.  It was still too hot for me.  I need to come up with some way to stay cool while dancing.  I just sweat way too much.  We got really good feedback on our dancing tonight and our instructors are really happy with us.  We had a lot of fun too.  It was great getting to dance with each other.  We are looking forward to doing this all of the time.

We got home around eleven.  We’ve been tired and we didn’t want to keep our babysitter out late – she has to be to work early tomorrow morning.  Liesl and Luciana both had fun.  Liesl especially likes the change of pace of a babysitter.

Today is my work from home day.  I thought about getting up early this morning but I don’t have the benefit of the gym being en route to the office and I was still quite sore from yesterday’s workout so I just went back to bed and slept in as much as I could.

Dominica got up and headed out to Arlington to help sit with Casen today so I’m home most of the day alone with Liesl and Luciana.  Luciana was actually up first today with Liesl not long after.  Luciana was walking around the house with Liesl’s chocolate milk so we had to find where she hid it before Liesl could drink it.

The girls were very good today and Luciana actually decided that she wanted to go down for her nap very early at ten thirty.  Normally it is more like one in the afternoon that she decides that she is ready for a nap.  Very odd.  She ended up sleeping for almost five hours!  That was handy because it was during my busy work hours and until Dominica got home.  Liesl spent most of the day quietly playing around the house.  She is mostly self entertaining.

Dominica got home around two or three.  Shortly thereafter Liesl ended up putting herself to bed and taking a nap for a few hours too.

Around four thirty the Google Nexus 7 Android tablet that I ordered over the weekend arrived.  This is my first Android device other than Dominica’s phones (which were horrible.)  I have high hopes for this device.  It was very cost effective and from what little bit I got to see it tonight, looks really nice.  It is a quad core processor (more cores that even my desktop) with a twelve core GPU.  This is Google’s first tablet and it is manufactured by Asus.  I got the less expensive 8GB model.  The screen is great and from what little bit I have seen I am liking the seven inch screen form factor, very easy to hold in one hand and carry around.  I need to find a good case for it yet.

As soon as the Nexus arrived we ran out the door to do flooring shopping at Lumber Liquidators down in old town Carrollton.  We had tried going there yesterday but they closed before I could get there from work.  That seems a bad decision, closing before people with jobs can get there but being open while people without jobs can easily stop by.  We found a few options that we liked and one that Dominica really likes.  It is not nearly as cheap as we had been hoping, but nothing really seems to be.

After looking at the floors we drove up to Frankford to get frozen yogurt for the family.  Then we went to Home Depot just to make sure that they did not have any flooring deals that we were overlooking.  They did not.  So we went back home.

We watched the movie Mean Girls 2 tonight, which was pretty weak and made no sense.  Luciana went to bed pretty much right as we started and Liesl went to bed towards the end of the movie.  Dominica and I turned in shortly after Liesl, as soon as the movie was over.

Liesl and I are just about all of the way through reading the first Winnie the Pooh book for the second time.  She loves those stories.  In case she is reading this many years later and trying to remember, the first Pooh story book is the orange book, the green one is “House on Pooh Corner.”  The other two are the poetry collections (pink and blue.)