Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Today is the day, my family comes back from New York.  This is the longest that I have ever gone without my family.  Not having the children here is really hard.  Thankfully I have been able to talk to Liesl over FaceTime, what a difference that has made.  We have probably put in four hours or more talking like that.  That’s one of the best tools ever.  Liesl really enjoyed being able to talk to me.  I just wish that it would have worked for Luciana as well.  And I wish that we had newer iPads to do it with rather than just the iPhones so that we could have a bigger picture.  It was so hard to see.

The family did stay in Tennessee last night and were expecting to get home at four-ish this afternoon.  Dominica did not have a house key and so needed me to be there before they were to let them in.  So I went home around three once they were in the distant outreaches of the DFW and put in a little bit of time cleaning around the house while working from Dominica’s computer in the play room.

It was around four thirty when the family arrived.  It was so good to see my girls.  Luciana is walking so well now.  I am not used to her being able to run around the house and explore everywhere.  I was used to her walking in Europe, of course, but this is the first that I have seen her like this “at home” and it was quite a surprise.  She is bigger, faster and has more hair than the last time that I saw her and she is saying many more words now too.

The Grices stayed for only a few minutes.  Just enough time to unload the truck and use the restroom and then it was everyone back into the truck so that they could push on to Houston and to surprise Bennie who was unaware that they were coming back today.

We spent the evening just hanging out.  I haven’t seen my girls in so long!  Luciana was definitely in a kind of haze or shock as she tried to re-explore her home.  We could tell that she remembered it but we are not sure just how much.  She has been gone for just too long it would seem.

Liesl, for her part, was very excited to get to see all of her stuff again and was investigating all of her toys in no time and telling me all about our time apart and all of the things that she had been doing.