Presents from Aunt Marci

Today started with Jennifer and the girls going to the YMCA. We’ve been trying to go every Tuesday and Thursday morning and I was supposed to get up early and go before work, but it was hard getting out of bed after softball last night.

Today we received a present for Abby and Emily in the mail from Aunt Marci. She sent two flashlights, one shaped like a tiger and one like a hippopotamus. The girls loved the presents and played with them all afternoon.

We are currently watching the Presidential Debate. We are still undecided on who we are going to vote for. We don’t feel invading Iraq was the right thing to do, but on the other hand we really don’t like Kerry and his plans. We are still waiting to hear something from either candidate which will point us towards one of them. So far, no luck.

Today’s picture is of Emily sitting at the computer in the kitchen. She’s starting to say “cheese” when you point a camera in her direction. She also demanded to eat cheese for breakfast this morning and threw herself on the ground when I told her no.

Second Softball Loss

We once again lost our softball game 13-11. I don’t think we played as well as last week, but we still hung in there. I was 0-2 with a walk and a run. My first two times at bat, I didn’t really get very good pitches and I ended up popping them up. So, the next time I was up to bat I just made him pitch to me and he ended up walking me. I didn’t really have any balls hit in my direction at second base. We were in a seventh inning rally when the batter flew out to the outfield. We had a runner on third who tagged up and then came on it. The umpire called the runner out because he didn’t see him tag up before running home. Our coach confronted the umpire who’s response was, “He tagged up?” Usually you don’t want questions from the umpires. You usually want, “The runner is out. I clearly saw him take off before the ball was caught.” That didn’t happen. So, that was the last out of the game. You never want a game to end of a call from the umpire. We’ve been close in both games we played. Perhaps we will win next week.

Meanwhile, on the other end of town, Jennifer took Abby to a kids group at church called Kid’s Connection. They have classes where they do crafts and play games. Abby had fun while Emily played in the nursery and Jennifer helped a Girl Scout troop which meets at the church on Wednesday. They came by the softball field after they were done, but they got there too early. I wasn’t scheduled to start my game for another hour.

Today’s picture is of Emily riding Abby’s bicycle. Look, Poppy, Emily’s ready for her own bike!

Jeanne Passes Through

We survived our third hurricane. Fortunately it went south of Orlando and since we live north of the city, we only got the outer edges of the storm. The local news reported that our area had wind gusts of 64 miles per hour. The end result is that it has been raining since 3:00 last night and the wind has been gusting on and off the whole time. We lost power for about five minutes this morning. The lights went out and then Abby prayed that they would come back on. Next thing you know, they were back on. Surveying the damage it appears that we just had a few downed limbs and that’s about it. I will probably even be back to work tomorrow, even though Abby’s school has been canceled for the day. It’s funny how each hurricane has only hit on the weekend. Jeanne was heading our way about a week and a half ago, but then turned away from us and looped back and headed back towards us. Right now the wind is still whipping outside, but Jeanne has been downgraded to a tropical storm and is just to the northwest of where we live. Hopefully this is the last one of the season. We aren’t holding our breath.

Preparing for Jeanne

The day started off with our weekly visit to Peach Valley Cafe for breakfast and then I was off to softball practice. Since both Tiburon softball teams lost last week, everyone thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and have another practice this morning. I was able to get some more batting and fielding practice, so I thought it was good to go ahead and go out. We had about thirteen people show up, which is about half of the people who are on the softball teams.

The afternoon was used to prepare for hurricane Jeanne. My preparation consists of bringing in the grill, garden hose, and wheel barrow and placing them in the garage. It’s been cloudy with occasional sprinkles all day. We are supposed to start feeling the effects of the hurricane tonight around 2:00 in the morning with the eye of the storm getting to us around noon tomorrow. I will report tomorrow on how we faired in the storm.

Just finished watching Texas pretty much roll all over Rice tonight 35-13. Wasn’t really a good match up. Next week is Baylor and then the following weekend, or wedding anniversary, Texas plays Oklahoma. Can Texas beat OU for the first time since the day that we were married?

Here Comes Jeanne

Here comes another hurricane. Jeanne is now forecast to hit us on Sunday. It was heading for us a week ago and stalled in the Atlantic. It has now decided to go ahead and visit. I can’t believe that we are going to get three hurricanes in one year. Wish us the best and I will keep everyone updated here on Frenchville.net.

Frenchville.net is now available as an RSS Feed. This is a format for syndicating content for news-like web sites so you can now get updates of Frenchville.net through an RSS Reader. A friend, Tom Carbone, introduced me to RSS Feeds today and I bet him I would have Frenchville.net up as an RSS Feed tonight.

First Softball Game

Today was our first softball game with the league that I play with through work. This was the first time I played in four years since playing with Atomic Games. We didn’t up winning, but it was a very good game. We lost 13-11. We were down 8-0 after one and a half innings. During the bottom of the second I had a good hit to kick off our two out rally and we came back and tied it up 8-8. In the third we went up 10-8, but they had a rally in the fifth inning which put them up 13-8. We tried to come back in the sixth and seventh innings, but it wasn’t enough. I played second base and I help turn a good 6-4-3 double play during the sixth inning.

Tonight was the season premiere of CSI: NY. I’m a big fan of the original CSI. I tried watching CSI: Miami, but after a while I just couldn’t stand David Caruso’s character. I used to like him when he was on NYPD Blue, but his character just didn’t have any depth. Anyway, CSI: NY was okay. I really love Gary Sinise as an actor ever since he was in Stephen King’s The Stand and, of coarse, Forest Gump. Hopefully the show will pan out. I thought tonight’s episode was a little slow.

Tonight’s picture is of Abby and Emily giving each other a hug. Just heard today that Hurricane Jeanne might actually be heading our way this weekend. I will keep everyone updated.

Happy Star Wars Day

George Lucas finally released the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD. Before today you could only get the moves on VHS. George Lucas still isn’t finished tweaking the movies. The ones that are on the DVD are not the original movies. They aren’t even the ones that were released as “The Special Edition” back in the 90’s. They are pretty much “The Special Edition” movies with even more tweaks by George Lucas. One of the tweaks, which is pretty controversial, is the removal of the original actor who played Anakin Skywalker at the very end of Return of the Jedi. He’s been replaced with Hayden Christensen, the actor who portrayed Anakin in Attack of the Clones and the upcoming Revenge of the Sith. Oh, well. I guess George Lucas can do what ever he wants to do with his movies, but it seems a little bit like he is revising history. It’s a shame that you can’t get the movies in their original form.

Buying the Sequoia

We decided this weekend to go ahead and purchase, for our upcoming fifth wedding anniversary, the Toyota Sequoia that we’ve been wanting to get. We really wanted to get it before we made our trip back to Texas this Christmas. We figured there was no time like the present. Jennifer did all the research: she found out the Kelly Blue Book value of my truck and the value of the Sequoia with all the options that we wanted. We found this really helpful when we went in to the dealership. We had one of our neighbors come over and watch Abby and Emily while we took my Blazer to the dealership. We were in a little bit of a hurry because the neighbor could only stay for a couple of hours. This turned out to work in our advantage. The salesman didn’t want us walking out without a deal in hand. We went back and forth for a little bit, but we settled in with the car priced a little bit under the Kelly Blue Book value and them giving us a little bit more for my Blazer. So, we figured we got a fairly good deal. The Sequoia is “steel blue” with leather interior. We also had them put a DVD player in with televisions in the head rests so that the girls can watch TV on the trip back to Texas. We don’t have the truck yet. It’s in mid-production and we will be getting it by the end of the month. I will have a picture of it, once we get it. The one pictured is just one off of Toyota’s web site.

Linty Beagle Hair

It’s been a pretty non-eventful week, thus the absence of any entries at Frenchville. Today we finally got our clothes dryer fixed. The timer hasn’t been working for almost a year and a burning plastic smell was starting to emanate from the dryer. The Maytag Repair Man arrived today with a new timer and cleaned out the biggest hunk of lint that had ever been seen. Jennifer said the lint had beagle hair in it. Our beagles haven’t lived with us since we moved to Orlando a year and a half ago.

It’s possible that another hurricane is heading our way. Jeanne is currently heading towards South Carolina, but we are still in the projected path’s margin of error. We barely dodged Ivan, which turned out to be a pretty bad storm.

Today’s picture is of Emily being cute while the floor is half ripped up. It’s been a week now since the floor was installed. We’ve started putting our rugs back down and the house is starting to get back to the way it was before.

TOASTY

Not much went on today. Just a normal day with me going to work and Abby going to pre-school. There’s a story from Sunday night that I forgot to tell. We went to Quiznos to eat dinner and they had a neon sign which said “TOASTY”, but the first two letters were burn out. We were sitting there and Abby asked, “Mom…Dad, why are the ‘T’ and the ‘O’ not working?” We were floored that Abby actually new those letters in the alphabet. Lately she’s been talking about the letters “A” and “B”. She’s always saying “A” is my letter. “A” is for Abby. We figured they were slowly working their way through the alphabet at school and eventually they would get through the entire alphabet. We were amazed that she already knew those two letters. We told her that they had burned out and her next question was, “Did Charlie do it?” She’s been obsessed with the lights going out ever since Hurricane Charlie blew through. It’s a good thing we didn’t loose power when Frances came through.

Today’s picture is of Emily after eating some Oreo cookies. She’s point up in the pantry because she wants some more. Since then, we’ve learned that cookies right before bed time isn’t a very good thing to do.