Sheep Guarding Llama

This morning Brian and Tara left Chalfont, Pennsylvania driving the Trailblazer pulling our loaded UHaul with just about everything that we own in the universe (except for all of the crap that we have stored at my dad’s place, of course.)  It is massively loaded so the drive is going to be horrible for them.  It has been really windy all down the east coast and out to Texas as well so they are in for some really crappy driving conditions with that big trailer.

They made it as far as Knoxville today which is pretty amazing with how slowly they have to move and how late they got started.  They had been planning to have gotten up at two this morning to get on to the road very early but ended up sleeping in and not leaving until eight or nine which meant that they were in much heavier traffic as well.

I am in the office today.  Nothing special to report.  This week I am spending all of my spare time doing my best to get my papers caught up in my master’s class at RIT.  I have a total of forty papers (yes forty) due by mid-semester which is the nineteenth which is just two weeks from today.  But some of those papers must be turned in before that point.  There will be another forty papers that I have to write in the second half of the semester as well.

I slept in as much as I could this morning – not very much sleep for me to be sure.  As soon as we were up and ready we went down to the open courtyard of our apartment complex where there was an easter egg hunt set to begin.  Liesl was one of the youngest kids there.  Many of the kids were tweens and teens and some adults were involved too.  The prizes being given out were a bit extreme for the crowd varying from candy to gift certificates at restaurants to money off of rent and even free rents!

Liesl (with Dominica’s help – I was quite busy with the Nikon) found lots of candy and got a $50 rent reduction prize!  Good job Liesl.  Today she managed to earn her keep 😉

After the community Easter egg hunt, we got ready and hit the road out to Arlington again to go see the family.  I was good today and brought along the Nikon so that we could get lots of pictures.  I know that there are a lot of complaints from the family that we are not getting enough pictures of Liesl.  We have been trying but I still don’t have a desktop here in Texas and that makes taking, editing and posting pictures very, very hard.

We had a really nice time hanging out with the family.  They had another Easter egg hunt out there too although Liesl was a little egg hunted out,  I think.  She isn’t really sure what she is supposed to do although she does know that there is candy to be had and she loves candy.

Liesl got to tackle her first piñata today too.  She needed some help from mommy, of course.  She had fun with it though.  She liked the big bunny.  She was very happy to have another day with the family and a chance to play with her cousins.  She is getting to be very social with other children after having spent so much time with her cousin Garrett.

After the easter party we returned home and spent the evening relaxing and hanging out as a family.  Brian and Tara come down from Philadelphia sometime this week (we don’t exactly when yet) so we are going to be very busy with them very soon.

Today is a family birthday party in the Arlington area.  So this morning I did some work and we just hung out at home as a family.

We drove down to Arlington early this afternoon.  Liesl is still in family-party mode after having been with her cousins for two weeks so she was ready to have kids to play with again.  She is just now at that age where we can go to family events and she can jump right in to playing with the other kids.  It is so adorable watching her run out and play with all of her extended cousins.  She has so much fun.

They had an inflatable bouncy ball room set up in the back yard and Liesl really enjoyed that.  She got in there and played quite a bit.  Sometimes she played on her own and sometimes she played with the other kids.

We had a really nice time hanging out with everyone.  It is great living so close to so much family.  Neither of us are really used to this.  Dominica grew up near family but hasn’t been all that close since she left high school.  I’ve never lived near family anything like we are now.  How strange that we had to move across the country away from where we are from to be near to so much family.

Tomorrow we are going to a family easter egg hunt too.  In the morning, though, we have the easter egg hunt for our apartment complex too.

We got back to the apartment and I spent the evening working on papers for my masters class at RIT.  I have an insane amount of papers that need to be written this week.  I am rather overwhelmed with work, actually.

I ended up being up until around six in the morning working on my papers.

Today is Good Friday so I am off of work (sort of) and at home with Dominica, Liesl and Oreo.  No need to go into the office.  I am very glad that I have a whole day to just spend with the family.  We need some time together.

Liesl and I hung out all day together.  We really missed one another.

This weekend we are planning to spend a lot of time with the family here in the Ft. Worth area.  Today is just time to hang out at home.

I did end up needing to work quite a bit today but as long as I was home it wasn’t too bad.

Liesl is so much “older” now than when I left here just two weeks ago.  She has more hair, new facial expressions, she eats more, talks more and communicates so much.  It is so sad that I missed two weeks of her gaining all these new talents.  She really is a full fledged toddler now.  She is incredibly interactive.

I’m still home along but only until tonight.  I got up this morning and worked until lunch.  At lunch or a little afterwards I came home and worked from the house for a little while.  I worked from home for a little while and then at four or four thirty I was finally able to get into the car and start driving down towards Houston.

Of course I ended up hitting horrible Dallas traffic which cost me a lot of time.  The original plan had been for me to leave Irving at three thirty but I got delayed because of work and then hit the rush hour traffic that I had been attempting to avoid so my ride got much, much longer than we had been expecting.

It was a long, long drive down to Houston.  Originally Dominica was going to get dropped off in the Woodlands to meet me there and cut a few hours off of my drive but with the delay and then the traffic no one had the time to drop her off so instead of driving to the near side of Houston I had to drive into Galveston County down to League City to pick everyone up.  A very long drive indeed.

It was nine thirty or so when I finally got down to League City.  Already I was pretty tired.  It was great to finally see everyone though.  I do not like going that long without seeing Liesl at all!

Liesl was so excited when I walked through the door.  She spotted me from across the house, held out her arms and just ran to me 🙂

We loaded up the car and turned around in League City as quickly as we could.  We were probably there for half an hour or so before getting back on to the road to drive north up to Irving again.  What a late night.

It was around three in the morning when we pulled into the apartment.  Very good to have everyone home.

In the last two weeks I have driven just a little under five thousand miles!  I am ready to be done driving for a while.