Sheep Guarding Llama

Today was one crazy day for the Miller family.  I had to be up at a good time, I had my regular Wednesday morning meeting today.  Which we expected to go really poorly, or at least awkwardly, given yesterday’s news.  But it ended up going great and running for an hour and a half.  We felt really positive about it by the time that all was said and done.

After the meeting, I was actually in a rush to get showered, get the girls ready, and get out the door to drive up to Hebron to go to the Carrollton Public Library to attend the home school open house that they are having today.  Thank goodness both girls got themselves up, got dressed in what they were supposed to wear, brushed their hair, and were ready to go.  They were very helpful, and excited about the day’s activities.

Liesl had actually gotten up this morning and worked on her Spanish via DuoLingo while I was on my call!

The library was really crowded.  The turn out was one hundred and twenty eight people!  Way more than we had been expecting.

Liesl immediately made friends with another nine year old girl, Isabella.

The program had the parents all in one presentation room, while the kids were taken off to do activities to keep them busy and entertained.  We learned about library resources and community activities for the home school kids.

One that I think the girls will really like is 4H.  There is a homeschool 4H for them to check out, and it meets tomorrow.  So that is going to be rough, but we might make it.  The people there seemed really nice.

There is also a local nature trail group that seemed really nice that I think we will want to check out.  They have some neat programs for the kids and activities.  And everything is so close.

Luciana ended up being a little young for the scavenger hunt and something went wrong and she was upset and a librarian had to bring her back to me.  But even Luciana, by the time that we left, said that she had a really good time and just didn’t like the scavenger hunt.  We never found out exactly what went wrong, though.  Liesl tried to explain later.  But I think it was that Luciana didn’t understand all of the rules.

I met Isabella’s mother and we talked for a bit.  The girls want to try to get together later this week to hang out.

While at the library, I renewed my library card which had expired (it was a short six month card, now I have a five year one) and I got a Texture card which gives me access to most libraries in Texas.  So I am well set up on library cards now.

We got lunch at Taco Bueno on the way home.  Luciana especially loves the food there.  She got a quesadilla and discovered that she really likes dipping it into sour cream.  Liesl started with just some Mexican rice, but then wanted a quesadilla, too.  The girls were very happy with the day and the food.

We got home and only had forty five minutes for me to sit at the desk and catch up as quickly as I could, and for the girls to relax a little, use the bathroom, brush their hair again, etc.  Then at a quarter till four we were out the door again to go to the Farmer’s Branch library!

Farmer’s Branch had well over one hundred people, as well, for their dino craft activity event, they had only planned on about sixty.  The room was super crowded and they were scrambling to get stuff for all of the kids.

The girls did three crafts.  The first one was a paper cut out dinosaur that the girls coloured, cut, and glued.  They ran out of parts, though, so the dinosaurs were without feet.

The second craft was making dinosaur skeletons out of pipe cleaners, straws, and clay for feet.  But Luciana didn’t like that idea and decided that she wanted to use the clay to sculpt a dinosaur scene, instead.  Which honestly was way cooler than the planned activity.  Liesl tried the thing that they were “supposed” to do, but didn’t like it and took it all apart and tried to do what Luciana had done.  But she wasn’t happy with the result and decided to just give up on it and not keep what she had done.

Then the last craft was making “fossil necklaces” by putting plastic dinosaurs into clay and making a necklace from it.  Both girls got lucky and were able to do this, but there weren’t enough supplies for everyone.

The library gave both girls (and everyone else) two tiny little dinosaur fossils to take home.  And the girls won the raffle to get fossilized dinosaur poop, too!

It was pretty difficult carrying all of the crafts and things back to the car to head home.  The event didn’t last as long as we had expected, so we were in the car by five thirty and home well before six.

A super fun school outing and activity day.  Our libraries here really do a good job of offering things for the kids.

Once home I had a lot of work that I needed to do as I was way behind having been out of the office for so much of the day.  I had planned on being able to work from Farmer’s Branch Library while the girls did crafts, but because of it being so crowded there was no way that I could do that, I couldn’t take up any unnecessary space.  So I lost a couple of planned hours there.

So I worked for several hours while the girls relaxed and played video games with the Grices.  The Grices had been trying to Facetime them from the instant we stepped in the door.  So they did that all afternoon.

It was late, after eight, when I stepped away from the desk and we drove to Taco Bell to get dinner.  Liesl had wanted Taco Bell for lunch and Luciana had wanted Taco Bueno.  So we had compromised and did one for lunch and one for dinner.  Luciana got a pizza here (they do Pizza Hut personal pans) and Liesl got three cheesy bean & rice burritos, plus a caramel apple empenada; and she ate it all!  I got two bean burritos, as I usually do.

We got our food to go, came home, and ate it while we watched the ending of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,  which has one of the endings that all of us like least in the series.  There wasn’t much left, so we then put on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which, while being Luciana’s favourite movie of the series, has the beginning that we all like the least.

We only watched part of the movie before Luciana decided that she was ready for bed.  Both girls were pretty tired.

Liesl stayed up a bit longer, first watching something, then she realized that she had forgotten to do her reading in The Witch of Blackbird Pond today, so she climbed into bed and did that before falling asleep.

I had to stay up for several hours to work to catch up a little from the time that I had lost being out of the office today.  It was closing in on three when I finally got the chance to go to bed.

If things go well tomorrow, I am hoping to take the girls to Homeschool 4H in Carrollton, which is right up the road, at half past noon.  I am pretty sure that it is something that they will really enjoy and they only get together once a month, so I do not want to miss it and have to wait an entire month before we get a chance to try it out again.

What an incredibly full day we had!  We had loads of fun and got lots of time together.  And so many educational activities.  It all worked out really well.  And Liesl made a new friend.  All in all, today was a slam dunk of success.

Tuesday.  I woke up at seven thirty.  It is so nice out this morning, and expected to stay nice until at least tomorrow afternoon, that I decided to open the windows and move to fresh air for a change.  This is one of my favourite days of the year, the day that the AC is no longer needed.  It’ll be needed again tomorrow or the day after at least, this is the coolest day for a week, but it is the beginning of the end of the summer heat.

My day started out great.  Plenty of sleep, nothing wrong at the office, great weather, fresh air, good mood, feeling good.  And then, just after ten thirty, I go out to get the mail when I hear the mailman stop by, and get the letter than our largest customer has decided to “go another direction”, which we’ve known was probably coming at some point, but still doesn’t feel good.  It’s not a terrible defeat like they didn’t like us, they just wanted to hire someone local to be an internal resource.   And they still want us to continue to be available in a lessened capacity.  But it is still a huge blow and really sucks.  Just as we had been struggling so hard all year and were just getting onto our feet and things were looking so good, another major set back.  A few more months of “doing not so badly” would have been awfully nice.  And technically, we still have a few.  The change doesn’t take effect for a bit.  But it is very unfortunate, all the same.

I did school with Luciana first today, and that went really smoothly.  We had fun and she zoomed through her lessons.  Even doing extra of some things over what she had to do.

Both girls had pizza for “breakfast”.  I ate the cut up melon in the fridge before it went bad for my breakfast.  That was pretty good.

Liesl, of course, had attitude problems for school and got in trouble.  It is such a struggle with her, even when I am the one doing school with her, to make her just either be happy that we are doing school, or at least put on a good face and do the work that needs to be done.  I don’t know why it is such a struggle when just doing it would make it all be over and done with so quickly and easily.  It’s like she wants to make it hard and take forever.

Allan came over this evening to talk sales for a few hours.  It was probably almost nine by the time that he got to the house.

After Allan left, the girls and I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  At least part of it, we couldn’t get that far into it, as it was too late.

We read more of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone before going to bed.  Just one chapter.

Both girls did a bunch of DuoLingo Spanish tonight.  They are very excited to be doing it again and Luciana can actually do a lot of it now as she can read.  This will be good not only for her Spanish, for also good for her English reading and writing.

I got up nice and early this morning around seven and got right to work.  Did a couple hours of work until the girls got up.

Our Farmer’s Branch Library cards needed to be renewed and today seemed like the perfect time to do it, so as soon as they were awake I hustled them out of the door and we raced down to the library and took care of our renewals, which is super easy.  We use that library all of the time as that is where my digital books, audio books, and MangoLanguages come from.  So we use it heavily.

On the way home, we stopped at Pupusa Dona Lola in Farmer’s Branch for some authentic pupusas for lunch.  I haven’t had one in many years, and the girls have never had them.  Luciana did not want to try one, but Liesl was excited to try something new.  We had time, so we stopped in and got them to go.  So cheap, less than four dollars for two with the trimmings.  We got them with beans and cheese.

Then we swung into La Mejor, the Guatemalan panaderia on Beltline.  The girls were super excited when they saw all of the baked goods and I let them get two each.  They were so excited to find this place.  They wanted to get everything.  I can tell that they were influenced by their time in Nicaragua.  They were right at home with all of the selection here.

Everything was so cheap, too.  Barely more than we would have actually spent had we been in Central America.  A great bargain, we will be back to both places for sure.

From the panaderia, we drove right back home as I had an up coming meeting to get back for around noon.  I ate my pupusa before the metting.  It was excellent.  I miss having these.

Luciana dove right into her cake and said that it was great.  She really liked it.

Liesl loved her pupusa and the spicy cole slaw that comes with it.  She ate the whole thing.  She liked how spicy it was.  This trip made for a very happy family.  And both stores together came to only seven dollars for all of that food!

In addition to the cake and pupusals, each girl picked out a concha.  Luciana, of course, got a yellow one.  And Liesl had to get a pink one.  There were a lot of smiles this morning.  This was a very successful trip to the library and for some food.  I discovered a few places that I really want to check out in the future, too.  Especially Monica’s Cafe, a Salvadoran diner nearby to us.

Once back to the house, it was straight to conference calls, one after another for a couple of hours.  So my day got to be quite busy.

The girls had a nice day.  They were thrilled with the morning’s activities, and then came home and played Portal Knights together for some time after they had eaten their food.  They are loving all of the natural light in the house, too.  I can tell myself that having the house so clean and bright, since I spent so much time yesterday cleaning before the kids even got up, is making me feel so much better.  I miss natural light when I am closed up for too long.  And having the house be a mess always drags me down.  It is still a mess, but at least things like the bar and kitchen are clean.

The afternoon was decently busy.  The girls did a great job of just hanging out with each other and playing really well.  They played with Playmobile or something similar all afternoon.  They were in the living room so I could hear them the entire time.  They are so adorable.

I ended up needing to work until eight this evening.  Mostly on the phone.  Once I was off, Luciana requested that we have pizza tonight.  We didn’t have any other plans, so I agreed and ordered Domino’s.  I decided that today would be my first real diet skip day in two months.  By this point, I’ve earned it.  So I got myself a thin crust pizza, too.

Liesl asked if we could watch some more of The Chamber of Secrets while we ate our pizza.  So we made it another Harry Potter evening.  We finished Chamber, which was already near the end, and started watching The Prisoner of Azkaban, too.

It was a very good day.  The girls and I got a lot of quality time together and did a lot of fun things.  Both girls were super happy with the day.  They had a great time between the library, food, getting to play, nice weather, pizza for dinner and family movie night.

During the second movie I needed to stay back into the office to run some Sage updates.

Got up around six this morning.  Dominica and Paul are off to the Rockies to work on Dominica’s intestinal issues to see some medical professionals up there now that we are pretty confident that she has an IBS issue, rather than a gallbladder issue.  They have a long drive ahead of them today, up through Amarillo and through north eastern New Mexico.

I worked all morning, on posting, cleaning, organizing the house, getting caught up on stuff while the kids were still asleep.  First order of business is turning off all of the unneeded electronics and lights.  Second order of businesses is opening all of the blinds and getting some much needed light into the house.  The summer heat has broken, it was under seventy when I got up this morning, and there is no need to have the windows covered for insulation purposes and the girls and I very much enjoy the chance to have real sunlight in the house whenever possible.  The girls talked about it all morning, how much they love being able to open the blinds and have natural light.  It makes them happy.

I cleaned for several hours.  The bar is totally cleared, for the first time in about eight months.  Loads of stuff has been put away that never gets put away.  Then I watched some Deep Space Nine before the girls came out and asked to start a Harry Potter movie marathon, which we did, starting with the first movie and, early in the afternoon, moving on to the second one.

Luciana tried her life hack of putting milk into the empty Nutella container today, after she and Liesl finished off the Nutella.  Luciana liked it, so life hack success, I guess.

We had a nice day, and lots of time to relax.  By mid-afternoon, the girls decided that they needed a Harry Potter break and wanted to just play with their toys, instead.

The girls requested that I make pasta tonight.  The first real test of my cooking has already come.  I had to make the pasta, and figure out the butter, garlic, and cheese combination for the kids.  I made my pasta with a little sage in the water because the girls won’t eat pasta with “green stuff on it”, but sage is so important in the flavour of good pasta.

The verdict was that both girls really liked the pasta and ate it all.  Not as good as mommy’s, but really good, they said.  Can’t ask for much more than that.

I managed to use the time to get to watch quite a lot of Deep Space Nine and have practically completed the sixth season.  Just about one episode left to go.  I got a bit of exercising in today, which was nice.  I’ve learned how to use my exercise band a lot better.

We read chapter twelve in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone tonight.  It is amazing how many times the girls want to watch the movies and read the books.

Overall, it was a pretty relaxing day. A bit of cleaning, a bit of family time, some movies, reading, cooking.  We had a nice day.

I am glad that I got to bed on the early side last night because this morning we were all woken up, even the girls because they have cell phones of their own, to Dallas area flood warning alerts.  Argh.  Flash flooding on the roads is not a good use of the emergency warning system because crap like that, instead of actual emergency warnings, is why everyone disables these alerts and doesn’t know when real dangers, like tornadoes, are coming.  Totally irresponsible to use it like they do.  We know that nine times out of ten it’s a warning for drivers and not one for normal people.  People driving already know that it is raining and have no need for a violent alert.  And people driving aren’t allowed to use their phones anyway, so who is the alert really for?  It’s basically like a fire drill – just designed to make you stop believing in fire alarms so that people burn to death.

Lots of rain this morning, right after waking up to the alarm.  Figured I would go to my desk and catch up a little on emails, posting, MangoLassi, etc. before really getting a jump on the day.  My morning is relatively short because I have a noon meeting in Garland and with the rain it is bound to be nearly an hour away.  At least the tires are topped up, now, so they will handle better in the rain and I don’t need to be looking for air while I drive.  But I need to leave the house at eleven to be sure that I can get there in time, which is annoying considering how close it is.

It was raining pretty steadily as I drove out to Garland, it took just as long as I had predicted to get out there.  No surprise that there are flood warnings.  We need the rain, though.  It’s been a long, dry summer.

The meeting went well and only took about forty five minutes.  We are trying to get together again in a few days.  Holds some promise.

I got home and immediately took Luciana out for her daddy – daughter special frozen yoghurt trip as a reward for completing her reading sheet at school, just like Liesl got when she did the same reading sheet.  Our old yoghurt place, Yogurtland was recently turned into a Yogurtti, so this is our first time trying it.  The girls really enjoy these special outings as a reward for doing school work quickly.

Luciana and I both really liked the new frozen yoghurt.  It’s the same building and they didn’t even redesign anything inside.  But the yoghurt is new and we both felt, better than before.  She got cake batter and cookies & cream; while I got cotton candy and pistachio.  It was still raining even as we left.  Lots of rain today.

Luciana had me read another chapter of Harry Potter while she was in the shower today. We are making good time going through the books again.  These remain her favourite books.

The girls are planning on being Harry Potter characters for Halloween.  Liesl is thinking that she will be Luna Lovegood.  And Luciana will probably be Ginny Weasley.  Luciana hopes that next year that they can go as forest animals.

I spoke with the lawyers today and found out that GroveSocial is free to be used.  I always loved that business name and was sad that it never got used properly.  I’m excited that it is eligible for use, now.  Now to get a new website made for it and stuff.  Lots to be done, but it is a big step that we have gotten clearance that it is not something that we have to throw away.  That would have really been crappy.  It is so hard to come up with good company branding and having to throw something we really like out because someone misused it would have been awful.

For dinner I just had the last of the salad in the house.  It was getting old and was just on the edge of still being good today.  Had to be eaten.  So that was my dinner.  I had a lot of froyo earlier so I was not incredibly hungry.

This evening I watched several episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  It keeps getting better, for the most part.  The story is getting more and more intense.  Only one and a half seasons left to go at this point.  I really am starting to lean towards this possibly being the best of the Star Trek series, thus far.  TNG was more episodic than this.  DS9 really starting hinting at serious story arcs and less goofiness.

Dominica spent most of the day either building with her new Lego set, or working on some web site design.  She did some quick packing and cleaning this evening before bed.  The Legos are going to take forever to finish, but there is good progress.  I can’t believe how cool it looks.  This is, by far, the most detailed Lego set that I have ever seen.  They have come such a long way since I was young.

I put the girls to bed on the early side, as both really wanted to read some Harry Potter before going to sleep and if they stay up too late, we don’t manage to do it.  So I got them into bed and read one more chapter tonight.

Got to bed at a good time myself, tonight.  I had meant to read some in my own book tonight, but was tired and fell asleep pretty quickly.