Sheep Guarding Llama

This morning was a scramble to get everyone ready and out the door so that we could make it to the early seating of Easter Brunch at Brookhaven.  Our reservations were for eleven.

We made it to Brookhaven on time and brunch was really awesome. There was a huge selection including baked salmon, smoked salmon, smoked trout and loads of other good stuff.  I have to admit that we cheated a bit on the diet today!  Cheese blintzes were a particularly difficult treat to pass up.  Dominica cheated far more than I did going so far as to even eat cake.  I was reasonably restrained, if I do say so.  The whole meal was just incredible, though.  It was terribly hard to resist.

After brunch was over we came home and the Grices were pretty much immediately on the road back to Houston.  Normally they would not have stayed this late but Francesca really wanted to do brunch at the country club and it really was awesome.  That is the place to go for brunch.

We had a quiet afternoon.  I mostly worked on homework today.  I am way behind on my class.  Argh.

Francesca and Dominica had discussed the Easter plans and Francesca was very excited about the food and activity lineups at Brookhaven so we decided to do events there both Saturday (today) as well as tomorrow for Easter Sunday itself.

Everyone was up moderately early this morning since we were all in bed so early last night.  There were a lot of kids to get ready to go to Brookhaven, though.  Our reservations were for noon.  Unfortunately Oreo has a vet appointment today as well at a quarter after one that could not be rescheduled so I had to arrange to take him there while everyone else got to stay and hang out at the club.  I wish that I could have been there for more of it.  Liesl had such a good time at La Cima’s event last year.

Emily and I drove to the club separately.  We went a few minutes ahead of everyone else so that we could get us checked in and ready to save time as I would barely have enough time to eat before I needed to leave.  We got there minutes before noon and managed to get the perfect table – all the way up front directly next to the buffet with tons of space around us and room for all of the kids.

The food today was excellent.  Salmon in a caper cream sauce!  Very tasty.  Neither Dominica nor Francesca really liked it though.  I thought that it was a truly phenomenal salmon style.  Normally Dominica and I have more aligned tastes.  There was a Caesar salad as well.  It was a tasty lunch.

I had to eat quickly and run out to go back to the house and get Oreo to take him into the vet for his appointment.  Back at the club the family visited with the Easter bunny, did face painting (Liesl got a little chick breaking out of an egg painted on her cheek), temporary tattoos and had an Easter egg hunt.  They had a lot of fun although Luciana and Clara were scared of the Easter bunny.  Clara was more terrified and Luciana more concerned.

Oreo’s vet appointment went well.  They feel that he is making good progress at recovering from his horrible skin and eye problems.  It was a good day for him to go in because he was really showing improvement today.  I could look at him and tell that he was better than yesterday.

The family got back to the house before Oreo and I did.  I spent much of the afternoon uploading loads of pictures to Flickr.  My Nikon D90 has been loaded with pictures dating back to 2010 that have not yet been uploaded!  Oops.  Going through the pictures I cannot believe that things like our trips to the Fort Worth Zoo with Liesl were mostly in 2010.  To me they seem really recent but they were, in fact, two years ago.  I can’t believe that we moved to Texas in 2009.  I still feel like we just got here but it has been nearly two and a half years at this point.

So anyone interested in seeing lots of pictures, check out my Flickr feed.  I would estimate that at least four hundred pictures are being uploaded.  Lots of really good ones too.

This morning marks the beginning of Easter Weekend with the Grices.  Francesca and the kids left Houston around five thirty this morning.  Francesca really likes to get up early and get out the door as quickly as possible when she is traveling.

I had to be up around six thirty so that I could sit in on the fed’s non-farm payroll call today.  At least it got me out of bed and kept me from sleeping away my holiday weekend.

I worked pretty solid for a few hours this morning and helped Dominica to do some cleaning when I could.

Francesca made amazing time getting up to our house in just over four hours!  That has to be a record.

This evening, once work was done, since I had to do some number of Friday night deployments, we all went out for a walk to Cafe Brazil.  We were quite the entourage with the nine of us traveling along in a caravan with two strollers and me with Luciana on my back.

Dinner was good at Cafe Brazil.  After dinner we walked back but decided, at the last minute, to take a detour and take the kids to the local park.  Liesl hasn’t been there in a while and the Grice kids have never gotten to go.  I doubt that anyone but Emily was even aware that there was a park there.

The kids had a good time at the park. The weather was great and it was quite busy.  Lots of kids out playing.  The highlight was Luciana taking her very first time out in a swing.  Liesl tried the swing at this park over a year ago but hated it and wanted to get down immediately.  Luciana, on the other hand, had a wonderful time.  Liesl even spent some time pushing her little sister.  We managed to get Liesl to try the swing as well but the effect was the same as before.  A few seconds of swinging and she wanted to get down.  It could be that she gets vertigo like me.

It was after eight when we got back to the house.  We had to head back because the insects were starting to come out and we had a little bit of walking to do yet before we would be back to the house.

It was a very early evening for everyone.  Everyone but Dominica had been up crazy early so we were all ready for bed very quickly.  Clara was using my office as a place to sleep so I was kicked out of there and unable to keep working at a pretty early hour which was actually decently convenient as it forced me to stop working.

Today was an overall pretty uneventful day. I was in the office and have several phone meeting today.  Nothing really worth noting.

Tonight was a quiet night in.  We did a little cleaning as Francesca and the Grice kids are coming up from Houston early tomorrow morning and will be staying with us for the weekend.  Today is my “Friday”, more or less, because tomorrow is marginally a holiday.  We were originally going to have tomorrow off completely but it turned out to not officially to be a holiday so I do have to work but it is going to be a very light day and I will be working from home all day.  Unfortunately the federal government is still doing the non-farm payroll announcement tomorrow morning so I have to be up early to deal with that.

Today was just a boring day compared to yesterday’s exciting day of tornadoes.  It will be hard to top that one.

This evening we went for a walk again as a family.  We are getting better about going out regularly.  Dominica is able to walk pretty far now without it being much of a problem.  We are much better prepared for Europe already.

We walked to Cafe Brazil, no big surprise there, and got dinner.  We are still loving the food there although it really encourages us to cheat heavily on the diet.  There is so much stuff there that is very not on plan and looks so good.