Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

We didn’t manage to get anything figured out but we know that I can get down tomorrow night to get Dominica, Liesl and Oreo so we are just stuck doing that.  I have Friday off from work so I have a lot more flexibility tomorrow night than I do the rest of the week.

Again, nothing to report today.  Worked in the office.  Went home and got dinner from Mike’s Jersey Subs.  Off to bed early.  Long day ahead of me tomorrow.

Dominica has been telling me all of the new things that Liesl has been doing since I have been away.  She has said her first sentence now!  “I get down.”  She has been learning a lot from hanging around her older cousin Garrett.  She has started acting like a toddler now rather than an older baby.  She is quite ahead of schedule in many ways now.

I really miss my family.

It is Tuesday morning and I am back in Irving, Texas but unfortunately Dominica, Liesl and Oreo are stuck down in Houston without having a way to get a ride back to Irving so I am stuck without them.  It is really crappy to get back home after being away from everyone for so long and to have them be so far away that I am unable to get from Irving to Houston and back within any window of free time that I have available to me!

This morning I am back to the office.  Back to the grind.  The lonely grind.  I went out for lunch, obviously, since I am all alone.

My evening was spent sleeping.  I pretty much went to bed as soon as I got home.  I am exhausted from this past week and all of the driving.

Sorry for SGL being so completely out of date.  I am working hard to get caught up.  I am behind on a lot of things these days.