Sheep Guarding Llama

Liesl and Oreo got me up pretty early this morning, around six thirty.  Luckily we had been smart and came back to Joe and Britt’s house early last night and had gotten to sleep probably by ten.  I am back to normal work hours today and that means getting up super early every day because they relocated us to a central time zone but our jobs are still based around New York (or in my case London) so all they have done is make it more difficult for us to support our clients during the early hours.  (The early shift now starts at 5:30 rather than 6:30 and the normal day starts at 8:00 rather than 9:00.)  Not dramatically early hours but 5:30 is pretty exceptionally early to be up and doing technical support work when you have to think clearly.  Since our days are ten to fourteen hours long normally having us start in a time zone not aligned with our work just makes it harder for us to do support of this magnitude.

I took Oreo out for his morning walk and he slipped and fell down the top of the stairs inside of the house. Luckily I was right in front of him and realized that he was falling and caught him as he slid down.  He didn’t roll but slid so since I caught him it was more scary for him than dangerous and he did not appear to hurt anything at all other than his ego.  After he went outside he went right back upstairs and asked to get in to bed with Dominica where he curled up and snuggled far away from the dangerous stairs.  Liesl decided that she wanted to get up then so came down to the living room with me so that she could hang out while I worked.

Dominica set up Liesl’s new pop up play house that she got from Joe and Brittany for Christmas at their house last night and this morning was Liesl’s first time getting to play in it.

As of today we officially have an apartment in Los Colinas but we are not going to actually move up there for a week yet.  Dominica’s parents are here until this weekend and this is the last that she will see them until late April when they return for the arrival of baby girl Grice.  Four months is not really all that long.  Dominica is very concerned that she will never see her parents living down here in Texas but, in reality, I have a feeling that with all of the traveling back and forth that she will actually see them nearly as much now just in different way – more longer stretches and fewer really quick visits.

Dominica and Oreo got up around nine.  They came down to join Liesl and I in the living room.  Dominica and Liesl watched some PBS.  Liesl has never seen Sesame Street before or Clifford so she really enjoyed that.  While watching Sesame Street Liesl tried running for the first time as well!

At eleven thirty we drove out to League City to meet the family at Denny’s for lunch.  That ended up taking almost three hours from door to door.  A very long lunch trip.  Work was very slow, though, so it was okay.  I didn’t miss a single thing while I was out.

We stopped at the Game Stop next to Denny’s at the mall while we were there and I picked up a copy of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Ring of Fate for the Nintendo DS.  I need Ring of Fate because I accidentally bought Echoes of Time the other day which takes place after Ring of Fate so I need to play them in order.

I dropped Dominica and Liesl off at Francesca’s house and then Oreo and I went back to Joe and Britt’s house so that I could work from there and Oreo could get some time to just relax.  He needs time away from dogs and small children chasing him all over the place.  He just curled up on the love seat and slept the afternoon away.

I returned to the Grices’ house around six after work was done.  I stopped at the other GameStop at Exit 20 on Route 45 on the way up and checked out their used game selection.  Their selection was quite different from the selection at the store that I had already been too and I managed to get Blue Dragon Plus, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Anno 1701: Dawn of Discovery for the Nintendo DS as well as Wii Fit Plus and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World for the Nintendo Wii.  It was quite a haul of Nintendo system games this week.

I got to the Grices’ at six thirty, just in time for dinner to be ordered from Pei Wei Asian Diner which is Francesca’s favourite restaurant, I hear.  Dominica and I have been looking forward to trying this local Asian fusion place.

The food from Pei Wei was okay but nothing special at all.  Definitely what you would expect from Thai fast food.  It is no wonder we don’t have these in New York or New Jersey – having a local Thai restaurant would totally shut this place out of the market.  The food wasn’t bad at all but certainly not up to even poor non-chain Thai food standards.

The family played a lot of Wii games this evening like Wii Sports Resort.  Everyone really enjoyed that, especially fencing.

Dominica and Liesl went back to Joe and Britt’s house early, around ten thirty, to call it a night.  Dominica spent the evening playing Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days on her DS.  I stayed at the Grices’ until everyone was calling it a night and drove Joe’s car home for him.

Got off to bed around midnight.  A bit of a late night for those of us who work eastern time rather than central time where we live.

We are still pretty tired today but feeling a little better.  My big project for the day, besides working for the office, was to get caught up on SGL updates.  The “move” is pretty much over at this point so now I can focus on getting everything back the way that it should be.  The overhead of the move has been killing me.  I am so relieved to have it basically done.  Maybe that is why I am feeling so sick and run down now – I put all of my energy into getting the move done and now that there is no more completely pressing need for me to keep pressing forward I am collapsing and everything is catching up with me.

I got paged out this morning around four thirty and so was up for about two hours in the wee hours of the morning before getting to go back to bed for a little while.  So much for getting lots of sleep.  It wasn’t too bad of a night though.  I am still feeling more rested and overall much better this morning.

Once we were finally all together we headed on over to the Grices’ arriving around ten thirty or so.

Last night and today there are a lot of people playing the New Super Mario Bros. Wii game that is the first 2D member of the Super Mario Bros. series in a very, very long time.  It has a lot of the look and feel of the classics like Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World (my personal favourite of the series) but is widescreen (and in 480p, of course) and now allows for four players simultaneous which is pretty cool.  This is a great innovation with the series and is executed pretty well.  This is one popular game that is really hard for people to get their hands on these days.  Brittany tried to get a copy yesterday and they just giggled at her.  Unfortunately the game only allows local multiplayer and does not allow people to cooperate online which would have been very nice since a lot of the family would like to play this game together in that way.

For dinner this evening we went out to Texas City to the Grand Prize BBQ to celebrate Dominica’s mom’s birthday.  The food was good and they had fried catfish for Dominica and I which was really tasty.  After dinner we went back to the Grices’ for cake and for Elizabeth to open her presents.

Dominica, Liesl and I were really tired so decided to head back to Joe and Britt’s house around eight thirty (central time – I am starting to get adjusted to that) so that we could relax some.

I am posting a little early and calling it a night.  SGL is up to date!  Yay!  Look for regular updates once again now that we are starting to get settled in to our new lives here in Texas.

I am still pretty sick today.  I got a good deal of sleep last night and my sinuses are definitely improved but still not great.  Brittany has today off of work even though Joe has to work all day so she went over to the Grices’ with Dominica and I.  We were all starving so we decided to swing into Waffle House on the way so that we could get some breakfast.  It turns out that Brittany has never eaten at a Waffle House!

It turns out that she has still not eaten at one as the wait to get in to eat was way too long so we went to Cracker Barrel instead which only had a ten minute wait.  The same Cracker Barrel that we ate at the last time that we were in League City.

After breakfast we were over to the Grices’ where the Carl clan has arrived from Arlington to visit for the day and tomorrow morning.  We hung out at the Grices’ for a while and then Brittany, Madeline, Emily and I ran out to Game Stop and did some shopping.  I picked up a bunch of Nintendo DS games including: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicals Echoes of Time, Suikoden, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, a Nancy Drew title and Fire Emblem (the remake of the original.)  It was a good haul.  Brittany had decided to go to Game Stop so that she could stock up on Wii games for her new Wii system that she got for Christmas for which she does not yet have any games except for Wii Sports which comes with the platform.

Not too much news today.  Just spent the day hanging out with the family.  We are all worn out from driving, Christmas, etc.

It’s Christmas!  Today is Liesl’s second Christmas but the first Christmas that she really gets to experience.  Normally the Tocco Christmas is a crazy affair with everyone up early and present opening going all day until we rush to make it to Christmas dinner.  Today, instead, we started opening presents on the late side and were done by one in the afternoon!  Without the adults really needing to exchange presents it cleared a lot of the presents out of the way and eased logistics dramatically.  This moved along really well and was quite manageable.

I was pretty sick today.  My bronchitis is really bad and I have a new sinus infection like I often get.  I was so bad today that I could barely hold my right eye open at all.  I also finished drinking all of the special Chinese pharmaceutical tea that Brian had gotten for me a week ago.  Now I am on my own with normal tea.

It is Christmas Eve.  Quite strange to wake up this morning and realize that, as of today, Dominica, Liesl, Oreo and I are Texans.  After all of the work that we have been doing to get here it is incredible to think that it is mostly over and here we are.  No more New York for us.  At least not for a while. 😉

Believe it or not, we were awake at eight thirty this morning!  I have no idea how we managed to wake up that early.  And that is eight thirty eastern time – we have no adjusted to central time yet.  As of today we live on central time, weird.  This is the first time in my life that I have lived in the “south” or outside of the eastern time zone.

We didn’t get very much sleep last night.  Between the massive thunderstorm that woke us up with crazy wind and rain blowing in the windows or Liesl not being tired in the least after having slept for almost two entire days and Oreo having a really hard time adjusting to the house we got at most six hours of sleep and most likely closer to just four hours.

Francesca came over first thing this morning and picked up Liesl from us.  We are exhausted and Liesl has tons of energy to spare so she went over to the Grices’ for the day to burn a lot of it off.  That worked out perfectly as it gave us time to do some unpacking and relaxing.  I stayed awake after that point but Dominica went back to sleep until about noon when she had to get up and get to work on wrapping presents so that we are ready for the festivities this evening.

We went over to the Grices’ in League City around three thirty this afternoon.  This was our first time to see everyone since arriving in Texas.

At four thirty we went to church for the Christmas Eve Mass.  It was a very nice service but standing room only and quite warm inside of the church while being too cold outside.  The temperature dropped into the forties today!  Quite cold for December in Texas.

Because Joe and Britt need to work tomorrow we are doing the “adult” Christmas celebration this evening.  So the adults exchanged presents today instead.

We were out way later than we should have been.  Dominica and I were really tired by the time that we were heading back to Joe and Britt’s to get some sleep.  It was around midnight when we finally turned in.

I was pretty sick today.  The long drive and lack of sleep (and probably the stress) have been contributing to my inability to fight off sickness and my bronchitis has come back with a vengeance.  So I have not been n the best shape for the day and am likely going to be pretty sick tomorrow.