Sheep Guarding Llama

The kids were up pretty early this morning. Well before eight. They had all slept in Madeline’s room last night, so I suspect when one woke up, they all woke up. So we did not get any time to sleep in today.

Breakfast was prepped, but saved for later in the morning. And we were off to the races.

This year was all about unicorns for Liesl and art supplies for Luciana. Liesl’s main request this year was unicorn decorations for her bedroom. And Luciana wanted Legos and painting stuff. They both got loads and loads. It was a great Christmas for them. They are so excited.

Luciana got a poopsie slime kit that she is super excited about. Liesl got some choose your own adventure books. She said that this is the most excited about reading that she has ever been.

Dominica got a Golden Girls board game. Such a funny thing, but it is so her and she loves it. Dominica got me a whiskey barrel for the home bar and made me some slippers (I knew that she was making those, she had asked if I had wanted them a month ago.)

For lunch we had the new tradition (this is year two) of a blueberry cream cheese casserole thing that is so delicious. This year’s was better than last years. We hypothesize that this was because the blueberries were fresh last year, and frozen this year.

Paul got the family an Oculus Go VR headset. The girls are super excited about that. They have both been asking for VR stuff for two years now.

Dominica’s parents gave Paul a bottle of Scotch for Christmas. So we opened that and all had a glass while opening presents. Emily tried a sip and had to run to the kitchen to wash out her mouth. Not her kind of thing. Madeline didn’t like whiskey either when she had it in the UK with Dominica over the summer.

Both girls got Harry Potter wands that are really nice. They come from a random set, so you don’t know what you are going to get. Luciana got Neville Longbottom’s wand. Liesl got Hermione Granger’s. They love them.

Both girls got makeup, too. Liesl got the boardgame Clue, which she loves. She had asked for that. She also got Sorry which, surprisingly, I have never played. I’m not sure how it is played. The girls got phone holders meant for using while laying in bed. Luciana is especially excited about that.

Both girls got new Amazon Kindle Fire 10 HDs for Christmas, too, with expansion SD cards too. Their iPads are getting really old. The older iPad was already “not new” when we were in Spain when the oldest one died, and the “newer” one is roughly as old as the older one but was a hand me down. And their original Kindle Fires were little and first generation and didn’t work very well. These have more power, more battery, and a lot more things fixed. They are quite excited to finally have new tablets and so much more storage than before. We are amazed at how well their iPads have held up to years of continuous abuse and loads of international travel, but they are just getting so old at this point.

This year the girls made gifts for everyone. Luciana painted artwork of our initials for everyone. They are really awesome. Liesl made different things. For me, a “Best Dad Ever” coffee mug with a fox on it in orange (my favourite animal and colour.) For Dominica she made a ring holder to go on the side of the bed.

I posted 116 pictures of the Christmas process to Flickr.

We had to take a break in the middle of the afternoon because Joe had to work today and can’t join us until tonight. So some stuff is being saved for another round of presents in the late evening.

We did Christmas dinner. My big project was setting up the Oculus Go. Everyone wanted to try it so that was a major project. It took an hour or two to get it configured, charged, and some content loaded onto it. From what I can tell, it is really cool and works really well. The 360 degree film option is really cool.

We had to go through everyone one by one testing it out. Liesl and Luciana were up first. It worked really well for them, this will be a hit. All of the kids liked it, even Emily who doesn’t like video games. Francesca was able to use it without getting sick. Garrett, too, who has gotten sick from trying cheaper VR headsets in the past (and why no one got any last year, because of that test.) Even Dominica’s dad was able to use it without a problem.

It took two rounds of charging for everyone to have a chance to use the Oculus Go.

The Toccos came over and we opened more presents.

Paul definitely got to experience the Tocco Christmas. Too bad this was such a “small” year, I’m not sure that he believes us that this was small. This is not something that you can really explain to someone without them getting to watch it themselves first hand. Paul is the first “outsider” to see it since I joined long ago!

The last thing before bed was a game of Clue with Liesl, Garrett, Clara, and Madeline. Wehad fun, but it was late and I needed to get to bed. I have an early day of doing work tomorrow. My alarm is set for five in the morning.

Today is a Monday and some of our customers are open for a half day today, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Why make people come into work for a few hours on a Monday morning after everyone left early on Friday, took the weekend, and is definitely off tomorrow and nearly everyone is off for the entire week? Crazy. NTG let all of the staff go today and I am manning the shop alone knowing that it will almost certainly be incredibly slow.

The middle of the day, the middles and I all played Nancy Drew: Ghost of Thornton Hall. The game ended up taking a total of thirteen hours to complete with about half of that time being played yesterday and half of it today. By the end, everyone was really happy with it and learned a lot of stuff and are super excited to be going on to the next one. This was a major hit and the key theme of this Christmas holiday. What a great find. I would never have guessed how much everyone would love doing Nancy Drew games all together. Liesl and Luciana have played them in the past and love them, but had gone a bit cold on them as they didn’t like the last one that we had played all that much. Hopefully this will reinvigorate them. Clara doesn’t seem nearly as into it as the other three, but still seems to like it.

We completed the mystery just in time for everyone to get ready for dinner. Dinner was the traditional Christmas spread with perogi casserole this time (so good, Francesca sauteed veggie sausage in onions to go in it and it is one of my favourite foods now), BBQ tofu, fried fish from Papas, calamari, etc. Very delicious meal and I ate way too much.

Right after dinner it was time for the pajama elf to deliver the Christmas Eve pajamas. Paul got to be the pajama elf’s helper this year playing ding dong ditch at the front door. Clara did the reading of the pajama elf book. And the kids all got dressed up in their pajamas and ready for bed and their cousins picture.

Luciana got a pair of sheep pajamas (lambie pajamies?) She was super excited and loved them (but was unhappy for some unrelated reason by the time that the group picture was taken). She kept talking about how she was now a member of her “lamb fam”, which is what she calls her collection of sheep stuffed animals and has for years. Lambie has always been her main stuffed animal to sleep with since she was a baby. And the family of stuffed sheep has just grown over the years and she talks about them constantly and makes me do things like sleep with them in my bed to keep them company when she is away.

Liesl got a giant cat face pair of pajamas, which she also liked. Because she loves to be a cat.

After dinner, pajamas, and after everyone went home, when it was time for the kids to start being quiet so that the adults could begin to get everything ready for tomorrow, I took the middles upstairs and set up Nancy Drew: Alibi in Ashes and we started playing that for a while. This one is not scary and didn’t go over nearly as well as the last one, and the controls proved to be a little more complicated making everyone unsure what to do in part of the game. I think that it would have improved a lot had we had more time in which to play it. But we only got about an hour before Madeline and Emily took all of the kids off to bed.

We had a work emergency tonight that I had to deal with for an hour or so. Just what we needed on Christmas Eve. Argh.

After the kids went to bed, Paul really got a chance to see the insanity of the Christmas traditions. He had some insight from the whole evening, but as we were all up until one in the morning he really got a feel from just how over the top it all is.

Sunday. It’s a slow weekend for work with the holiday upon us. So today I set up the Steam laptop in the upstairs living room at the Grices’ so that I could play some video games myself.

I played Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for a little while. This game has been in my library for a really long time, but I have never played it and really had little idea of what it even was. But I wanted something different so I downloaded it and checked it out. It’s not my kind of game exactly, but it seems fun. Just an action game set in the Star Wars universe where you play the Sith and get to do lots of light saber battles and use force powers. It seems to tell a story, so we will see how it goes.

I didn’t play for long before Liesl and Garrett came up to watch me play. They were both very interested in the game. It’s pretty simple, nothing but a basic hack and slash set in the Star Wars universe. But it seems like it could be fun.

After I played for a while, I installed Resident Evil 4 and tested it out. I got it working and then Garrett played it for a few hours. He really loved it and says that it is now his favourite game. It is very hard, though. All of the “middles”, as they should now be called (Garrett, Liesl, Clara, and Luciana) came up and sat on the couch with me watching Garrett play the game.

After a few hours, Garrett couldn’t take it any more and needed a break. The girls decided that they wanted to try playing a Nancy Drew game and Garrett thought that that sounded interesting. So I installed Nancy Drew: Ghost of Thornton Hall and it was an immediate hit. Garrett got to control it for most of the time, although Liesl and Clara both did at least some, and the five of us all played it together for many hours. Clara fell asleep about halfway through the evening of playing. Luciana fell asleep towards the end.

Garrett likes the Nancy Drew games so much that I think that he completely forgot about Resident Evil because of it! This is not a kind of game that he is ever exposed to and I think that it was really exciting to have a mystery to solve, puzzles and challenges to make it really hard, and to have to learn about a lot of different things. GTH teaches about the civil war, female spies during the war, how homemade batteries work, some southern culture, and the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Everyone had a great time. Nancy Drew games are so good for playing as a group. This was totally perfect. It’s a game where it is often better not to be the one controlling the action, but rather just paying attention and thinking. I prefer not having the controller myself. So it made for a great day and the whole family was super happy and impressed that I managed to keep the four kids happy and quiet for an entire day! Garrett is planning on buying some more Nancy Drew games after Christmas during the Steam sale. He was really interested to learn about what ones we had played, how the stories vary, the history of the games, etc.

It was pretty late when Garrett, Liesl, and I finally turned in. Dominica had been asleep for probably an hour before we quit gaming for the night. At best we are only halfway through this Nancy Drew game. Garrett was very surprised by how much gameplay that there was. He expected the game to only be two or three hours. But most of these newer ones seem to be closer to a dozen or more. Especially when we are trying not to use any online guides or hints. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out where to go next.

The holidays have begun, the kids are home from school for a few weeks. Dominica got up around seven so that she could help with making cookies and pignolata. I would have gotten up sooner, but Luciana immediately came over and said she was freezing and hadn’t had a blanket last night and climbed into bed to get warm.

All morning was more cookie baking. Paul and I kept joking that we need to wall mount a video camera and record the kitchen and make an Italian baking reality show, it would be a huge hit on YouTube.

Holly managed to escape again this morning. What a pain that dog is. Much easier to catch her today with everyone home.

Joe came over with the kids this afternoon, around three. After working hours, even though it is a holiday Saturday, Paul, Bennie, Joe, and I went out to the garage and shot pool for a while till it was time for dinner. It was so hot in the house, between the baking and no windows being opened and it being close to seventy outside anyway, that we could not stand being in the house.

I was tired very early, as was Dominica. So we got to bed shortly after the Grices making it a short day. We could hear people out in the garage shooting pool long after we had gone to bed.

Friday. Another very busy day with work. Today is the last day for the Grices. So we had a quiet day for the most part. But school was a half day, so we expected everyone to come back around two or two thirty.

I spent the morning working. We are doing a lot of work to test and move to MeshCentral which is one of our best new finds in software. We are estimating that it is going to save us around $1,600 a year in licensing costs, while making us more agile and performant as a company. I am so excited about finding it.

This afternoon Paul and I had a major phone meeting for a while. Very significant. Fingers crossed that it turns into something.

I worked most of the afternoon. Keeping myself busy. Dominica is always swamped with work around the house. Cooking, baking, wrapping, etc.

For dinner this evening, Paul and I went to Taco Bell and got nearly sixty dollars of Taco Bell for the family. That is a lot of food from Taco Bell!

I spent an hour and a half on the phone this evening talking to a sales candidate that I met at a part two weeks ago. That has some promise.

I worked till around midnight. The kids all slept on the couch tonight. So I got a break from the floor and tried sleeping on the air mattress with Dominica.