Sheep Guarding Llama

Monday and back to the office.  The is my one week with the family at home before they leave again for another week.  Most of our focus this week is on getting the house cleaned up as Dominica’s family is coming here on Friday to stay for the night before heading out to the lake house near Canton, Texas on Saturday morning where they are all going to be spending the week together.

I came home for lunch today and spent some time with the family.  Then back to the office.

I had a long conversation with Coraid today.  Learned a bit more about them.  I have not worked with their storage gear before so it was rather interesting.

Quiet evening at home just spending time with the girls and some light cleaning.

Today is Sunday and I am on the home stretch of Mass Effect.  I started playing it somewhere around December so this is about eight months of Mass Effect being the only game that I have played.  I am really anxious to see the ending of the last game.  Three games, three novels (I am only halfway through the last novel) and about one hundred and ten hours put into it.

We stayed home all day today.  Dominica cooked and we are doing pretty well at getting back into the groove with our Medifast plan.  I can’t believe that I have been doing that diet for well over a year now.

This evening Liesl decided to plop down on the couch and watch me play Mass Effect almost to completion.  She eventually fell asleep but before she did she was sitting right beside me snuggling for hours as I worked my way through the final battles of the game.

It was about one in the morning when I finally finished Mass Effect.  I can’t believe that it is done… all three games completed.  One hundred and ten hours of game play!  I can’t say that I was happy with the ending, it was not at all what I was expecting and it did a really poor job of wrapping up a story that I had been really engrossed in for such a long time.  I like that they did something unexpected and put in a serious twist but there were so many loose ends just left open at the end.  Kind of disappointing.  I’m not unhappy with the actual outcome, but with the lack of closure, I think.

Finally a weekend at home with my family.  No plans for today but to hang out with the kids at the house.  Not going anywhere, not really doing anything.

I got up early with the kids this morning and Dominica slept in for a while.  So the girls and I had some time to just play on our own.  Both of them were up pretty early.

I got to play a bit of Mass Effect 3 today.  I am nearing the end of the game so while I could I advanced on it a bit.  Liesl had a ton of fun watching me to “resource gathering.”  In the game you fly around to different systems and explore planets looking for resources and sometimes the bad guys show up and chase you.  Liesl watched intently for hours and would say “Daddy, you found something!”  Or “Scan that one daddy!”  She really had fun.  Part of the time she snuggled with me on the couch.  Part of the time she was in the living room showing Luciana how to play with her old toys and was watching through the opening in the playroom wall.  So cute.

I can’t wait until my girls are old enough to really play games that are more fun.  Liesl is starting to get there, she has been playing the Lego video games.  We figured out that the 360 and PS3 are much easier for her to use than the Wii.  Nintendo is so into whacky controls that Liesl gets confused with their bizarre controllers.  But the joysticks she can just use and they make sense to her.

We did some cleaning today.  The house is, of course, a disaster of toys as the girls explore their toy collections again.  And it is a mess from all of the stuff that came back from our vacation and from storage at dad’s.  We only have until Friday before Dominica’s parents come to visit so we want it to be cleaned up by then.  There is a lot to do.

I had to go to the office today but it is my only day that I will be out of the house.  I saw the girls yesterday and will see them this weekend.  I am not working this weekend and just spending time with the family so that will be good.

I came home at lunch today and hung out some more.  Trying to get as much time in with the girls as possible.

This evening I grabbed dinner from Brookhaven for the family.  It was honey chipotle glazed salmon today.  Awesome.  Dominica was not exactly thrilled as she doesn’t really like salmon anymore ever since being pregnant with Luciana.  Sucks that she doesn’t like salmon as that is what is available everywhere these days.

We hung out in the playroom at watched Good Luck Charlie this evening.

I took today as my work from home day so that I could spend the day at home with the family.  Boy is it good to have them all home.

I did have to work today but I did so from Dominica’s workstation in the play room so that I could be with the girls all day.  That worked out really well.  It makes me wish that I had my own workstation out there somewhere so that I could do that more of the time.  I use my laptop in the playroom but that is still decently hard to do much of the time.

It was a really good day.  Pretty much nothing but family time.  Great to get time with Liesl and Luciana.  They were very excited to have me home.  Liesl talked almost continuously all day to me.  She had so much to tell me about.