Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica and I exchanged our gifts to each other before leaving Texas out of convenience.  I got her the GMC Acadia and a garage to put it in 😉  Actually we decided to not really do Christmas this year for each other because we were buying the house and car and have a baby on the way.  Just not a good time to be buying lots of extra stuff.  I was planning on getting Dominica the Lego Hogwarts Castle kit when we returned to Texas.  I didn’t want to get her anything that needed to be shipped around.  On Black Friday, Dominica had gotten me Fable III and Dragon Quest IX so I did get something from her too.  She hasn’t actually given them to me yet but I do know that I got them.  I’m trying to restrain myself from playing them, though, until I can completely finish Oblivion, at the very least.  So maybe in February I can get to them.

This is Liesl’s first real Christmas.  It isn’t technically her first Christmas but it is the first one where she can open presents on her own and actually understands what is going on.  It is, of course, her third Christmas which is pretty hard to believe.  It is her second in New York, her last Christmas was spent down in Houston.

Liesl had a lot of fun and did a really good job of staying on task and not trying to tear into every present that she saw.  She was a very good little girl all morning.  She got tons of great stuff too.  She is going to have a lot of fun when she gets home to Texas and gets to play with all of this stuff.

This Christmas we are a bit more relaxed than we have been in past years.  With the addition of Garrett, Liesl and Clara there are just too many kids now for the normal pace and planning of Christmas.  We are now staying at the house all day rather than racing to wrap up and get to Dominica’s grandfather’s house by mid afternoon which doesn’t allow enough time to do everything.

Boy is it cold in New York.  We are acclimated to Texas already and this is much colder than we find comfortable.  Who would have guessed!

We all slept in some this morning but not nearly as much as you would have guessed given the marathon drive that we just did.

This is the first time, I think, since Dominica and I have been together that we have been able to make it out to her parents’ place a full day before Christmas.  We traditionally show up very, very early on Christmas morning and barely get a nap before the Christmas morning festivities begin.  For once we have some time to actually relax.

I did have to work today but there was basically nothing going on.  It is a pseudo-holiday at the office.  Maybe I am supposed to have today off but no one said anything so I just worked.  It was super slow so not like it took a lot of my time.

We went to church this evening.  Liesl did pretty well until almost the end when she got very upset and I had to run out with her and sit in the car until church was over.

Getting ready for Christmas day is always a major undertaking so it was decently late by the time that we managed to actually get to bed.  Dominica, Oreo and I are sharing an air mattress that is starting to collapse on my side so I spent much of the night clinging to the bed to keep from falling onto the floor, taking Oreo with me and bashing my head into the night stand.

Today, for me, simply began at midnight as the clock rolled over from one day to the next.  No sleep for me tonight and so no clear separation between the days.

Dominica managed to get most of a night’s sleep during her normal sleep schedule which was good.  Liesl pretty much slept through the entire night as well making the trip a minimal impact for her.  Another reason why driving straight through really helps.  If we were to stop for the night we would have to wake up Liesl and bring her into a hotel which would make her really awake and cause us to lose hours rather than running in and crashing and getting up and going again.  Very inefficient and it always is needed, because hotels don’t normally have rolling check-in times, at the most inappropriate time for long haul driving.  If I could just get a room from six in the morning to one in the afternoon, that might work.  But that isn’t very reliable and you never know if you will really be tired at six or not anyway or where you will be.

On the drive I started “reading” the book The Disappearing Spoon which turned out to be so engaging that Dominica, who thought that it would be boring as she thinks everything that I read must be, was unable to go to sleep and stayed up just to listed to the book.  It is a really fascinating book of science history from the perspective of the periodic table of the elements.  How could that not be exciting?

Today was my first time driving through Kentucky since I did a north to south trip heading from Ithaca or Rochester to Birmingham in 2000 or 2001.  Overall the drive went well.  Nothing much to say about it.  It was long and exhausting but only as long and exhausting as a straight-through drive can be.  I drove the entire way, I was never tired enough that I needed Dominica to drive.

It was late evening when we pulled into Frankfort.  There was a lot of snow on the ground, an odd site to us Texans.  The entire drive took just over twenty seven hours.  Not too shabby for this old man driving straight through.  Francesca and Bennie traded off with Francesca doing about twenty four hours total and Bennie doing about five – they have a longer drive coming from Houston.

We all stayed up for several hours.  It takes quite a while to wind down from a drive of that long.  It seems like you would just fall into bed but that really doesn’t happen.  You need hours for your body to turn off the “must stay awake” response.

Today is the big driving day.  Time to get up to New York for the holidays.  Dominica spent the day packing the new Acadia.  We are looking forward to having so much space for the drive.  Even the X3 was insanely cramped when doing a trip like this.  Having the Acadia is going to be awesome.  We can actually take enough stuff with us and have room for both Liesl and Oreo too.  Plus now we have working satellite radio and an auxiliary input so that we can listen to Audible books while driving.

I went into the office today for my last day there for almost two weeks.  It is also my last day seeing Jeff at the office as he is not going to be working here very shortly.  His last day is in just about a week.

Brian and I had Mexican for lunch today at a popular place near the club.  The afternoon, after lunch, was very slow and I was able to escape the office around three to run up to the house to get ready for the drive.

Dominica had taken Oreo to the vet to get his stitches taken out.  Their appointment was at three so we were hopeful to be on the road just minutes after that.  Unfortunately it ended up taking over an hour and a half before Oreo was able to get in to see the vet so it was after four thirty when we finally managed to start driving.  Why is there always something that holds us up for hours every time that we are going to be doing a really long drive?

We hit the road for our first real trip in the Acadia.  It turned out that the Grices were on the road early while we were on the road quite late so that we were actually on the road at just about the same time.  So we changed our route and as we were heading up TX190 we switched from the northern “aka Oklahoma” route to the southern “aka Arkansas” route and worked our way east through Dallas rush hour to get onto Interstate 30 to Texarkana.

We timed it pretty much perfectly that we arrived in Texarkana just about fifteen minutes ahead of the Grices.  We stopped at McDonald’s and grabbed some food while we waited for them to catch up.  Once we met up there we started caravanning up towards New York.  It is going to be a long night.

The drive tonight went well.  We were undecided how we were going to travel – whether it would be straight through or if we would be stopping somewhere for the night.   We made good time and were through Arkansas before we knew it.

In Memphis I didn’t realize that the road changed speed dramatically and ended up getting a speeding ticket.  Argh.  My first in a decade, however, and the last one a full nine or ten years ago was on the same day while driving to Dominica’s parents house, just like I am now!  This was a tiny, no points, $24 ticket, though.  So other than the inconvenience of having to get pulled over, it’s not a big deal at all.

We finally made it out to Nashville.  The western Tennessee portion of the trip is really the most boring, I think, of the whole drive.  It always seems to be done in the dark and always when I am really tired and even in daylight there is not that much to see.  Eastern Tennessee is much more interesting.

We made the decision to just push on and get the drive over with.  So we will be driving all day tomorrow as well.  We will hit New York in the late afternoon.

The Acadia did great.  We are loving the ride and the extra space as well as the satellite radio.  Liesl likes it better because she has more visibility to the outside and Oreo really seems to enjoy having the third row to himself.  Dominica make him a little cave back there out of pillows and blankets so he is basically encased in a snuggly little nest where he can’t fall or run into anything but can move around some – to the extent that his harness allows – and not worry about falling or interference from a certain toddler.  He slept soundly the whole drive.

After work Dominica and Liesl met me at La Cima so that we could use our dinner for December.  Tonight is our last chance to eat there until next year!  Hard to believe.  Watson was at the club so joined us for dinner as well.