Another thing that started this week was the re-tiling of our bathroom. I found water underneath the tile in our shower a couple of months ago and since we were going to have to re-tile the shower, we decided to go ahead and re-tile the entire bathroom. We hired a contractor and Jennifer used her discount at Pro Source to get the tile. It’s looking good. First they spent the first couple of days this week tearing out all the old tile. Then, they spent the past two days putting the new tile in. Once it’s all in, I’ll take some pictures and post them on the site. Won’t the home improvements end?
Abby and Emily are getting pretty restless, but it’s their last week of freedom. She goes back to school on Monday and she is going to start going every day Monday through Friday. Emily is also going to start going to pre-school, but she is only going to be going on Mondays and Wednesdays. Jennifer can’t wait.
I had a pretty uneventful birthday on Sunday, but isn’t that what’s it’s supposed to be like once you have kids? The focus moves from your birthday to the kids’ birthdays. We went to breakfast that morning and that was a treat. We thought about going out to the beach, but with Isabelle in tow, doing stuff like that has become more and more tough.
Jennifer was sick today, so I stayed home from work. The girls and I watched the space shuttle take off on TV and then ran outside to see if we could see it in the sky, but I forgot that there’s still a time delay even in live TV, so we missed it. It had already gone behind one of the clouds by the time we got outside.
I had another Frenchville reunion today. An old high school friend, Jincy Pace, stumbled upon my blog. She’s living in San Jose, California and is a local police officer there. She investigates traffic accidents and tries to reconstruct what happens. It was good to hear from her. I’m glad Frenchville has been a great tool for getting back in touch with old friends.
We had quite a scare here at Frenchville over the past couple of days. First off on Thursday the site was down for some unknown reason. Then, today, the site was back up, but the database which contains all of my blog entries was gone! I was quite worried that all of my entries for the past few months were gone. Evidently it’s all fixed now. I never heard back from my web hosting company on what the problem was. Now I must find the button that backs all of this up…
The site was back up just in time for me to get my new cell phone and set up my moblog. You will now notice a series of pictures to the right under the “Jason’s Moblog” area. These are all photos that were taken with my cell phone. All you have to do is click on the picture and it will take you to a larger version of it. The first picture I took was of Isabelle sitting in her bouncer. Next, I went to pick up Abby from the last day of her Vacation Bible School and it turned out they were having a program where all of them sang. I didn’t know about it, so I didn’t bring my camera. It was pretty handy that I just reached for my new cell phone and snapped a couple of pictures. Abby did good. I could tell she was nervous singing in front of everyone, but her teacher reassured her and she did very well.
The girls were on the verge of busting down the back door with anticipation this morning, wanting to go out on the play gym. Once I was at work, I called back to Jennifer to see how they were doing. She said that they had been out there for a couple hours just running around and playing. The next problem is containing all of the sand which is starting to get tracked into the house. Also, the girls are complaining that Austin is playing too rough. He will run around and nip at their heals while they run away giggling. Their only escape is to climb up into the play gym. Today’s picture is from last week when Austin was playing too rough with Abby and scratched her neck. Emily is not injured, but because Abby had a band aid, Emily had to have one too.
I read today on my friend, Tom’s, blog that one of his stories was quoted in a news article. He had a rant about how CNN was blowing the hurricane coverage out of proportion and apparently the CJR Daily thought it was good enough to quote and write an article around. That’s pretty cool, but then also a little scary that all of a sudden something that you are writing in your blog is being quoted in a news article.
Cue Theme to Superman. I am proud to announce that the play gym is up! It’s been a long and hard battle. It’s an epic story with bad guys, blood and sweat building sand boxes, 11 cubic yards of sand, and trials of patience. Now two fair princesses can go into their backyard and sit atop their tower looking down unto the world and their parents will be happy because they are outside and not inside running around like little maniacs.
So three guys from Woodplay, the people we bought the set from, arrived today to move the pieces back into the sandbox and then one guy stayed behind and put the thing back together again. I must mentioned that they said the sandbox was very well constructed. Once they were finished, the girls were all over the play gym. They put their lawn chairs up the tower part and they stuck flower-shaped windmills outside the lower playhouse portion. Needless to say, Abby and Emily will be well occupied the rest of the week.
Two advances on getting the backyard in its final state happened today. First, the last of the sand arrived today. They topped off the sand box and leveled it all out. It looks much better. Now if we could only get the play gym back up… They called today and said that they could come and set up the play gym tomorrow, which is earlier than the Thursday time frame they told us last week. So, we are on the verge of having the entire backyard done tomorrow.
Today Abby started another Vacation Bible School. This one is in the evening and is at the church were she goes to pre-school. She told me she had a good time and that she ate bread and cheese. She said she also had fun in crafts where she made a dreidel. I thought we sent her to a Christian Vacation Bible School?
Finally, tonight I ordered a new cellular phone. This past weekend Jennifer smashed my phone with the Sequoia’s hatch back. So, it kind of forced the issue on getting a new phone. The good news is that it is a camera phone so I am going to setup what is called a “moblog“. Any pictures I take with the cell phone will be automagically uploaded real time to Frenchville.
We all piled into the car this morning heading to church to hear Abby sing. She’s been talking about it all week, so she must have been excited to sing. We were there and it was time for everyone to go up on stage to sing. So about 300 kids start walking towards the stage at the same time. They must have rehearsed it before hand, but alas, poor Abby, got lost on her way up there and came back to where we were sitting tears in her eyes. From that point on, it was meltdown city. Jennifer took her to where she was supposed to go, but the tears wouldn’t stop and finally, she just gave up. Afterwards, I asked her why she didn’t sing. I asked, “Were you scared?” I was trying to get some insight into why the meltdowns were happening, since I thought we had gotten past this. Her only statement was that “She couldn’t sing.”
It’s been a very busy week for the French household. First, Abby and Emily attended Vacation Bible School at our church each day this week. It was pretty tough because we had to be up and out of the house by 8:15 each morning. It’s not so hard for me because that’s around the time I leave for work, but for Jennifer and the girls, it’s quite a chore to get them up and going that early in the morning. They had a great time up there and we are going to hear Abby sing at church tomorrow.
The sand arrived for the play gym this week. Abby exclaimed that it was like being at the beach and they ran to the garage to get all of their beach toys. So, the play gym is still in pieces and there’s a ton of beach toys in the sand pit. Unfortunately, they didn’t bring enough sand to make it entirely level, so they are coming back this week to put more in. On Thursday, the other guys are coming back to put the play gym back together. The end is in sight for the play gym installation. (yippee)
Our next project is getting the tile replaced in our bathroom. A couple of months ago I discovered water underneath the tile in shower of our master bathroom. (I have a knack for finding water underneath our floors.) We pulled up some tile and discovered that water was getting underneath and the shower needed to be “re-floated”. So, we’ve hired a contractor and Jennifer ordered some tile. We are going to go ahead and get the whole bathroom re-tiled since we are at it. We’ve never like that tile, so we thought it was a good opportunity to go ahead and get it done.
Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted my last updated. Between Isabelle and work, my plate has been full. At work, this weekend is the end of our Production period as we entering Alpha. This is the time where we switch our focus from creating new features for the game and just fixing the bugs in the features we’ve been creating for the past several months. So, this past week and this weekend are pretty busy for me at work.
Very good news on the play gym front. Our homeowners’ association has approved our play gym for the full height of 11 feet 3 inches. That means the whole this will be going up intact! Yea! Last weekend was spent buying big crape myrtles to block our neighbor’s view of the play gym once it goes back up. I tried to pick them up with our Sequoia, but they wouldn’t fit. I would have been dragging them all the way home. So, that was no good. I had to borrow a friends, truck in order to haul the home. I dug giant holes to bury them in and all was good. We also bought some plants to put along the fence line in order to grow into a hedge row. Next, we’ve hired someone to bring in sand and put it into the sandbox that I made. That will happen on Thursday, weather permitting. After that, we will call the play gym people and they will set it back up.
Last weekend I also bought a friend’sPlay Station Portable (PSP). I rented a few games from work, but I spent most of the weekend trying to get videos to play on the device. I bought a case and I’ve been mainly using it as an MP3 player until a really good game comes out for it. So far I’m really enjoying it. I’m going to try and get into some Podcasts which are out there. Podcasts are radio broadcasts recorded to an MP3, which you can download and put on your player and listen to them any time you want. The main one I’ve been listening to is This Week in Tech, which is hosted by some guys who used to host a show called The Screen Savers which was on TechTV before it got sold to G4 and was shut down. I think I’m going to search for some other similar Podcasts once I get some time.
Isabelle has been doing well. However, Jennifer and I are running low on sleep. Me because of work. Her because of Isabelle getting up at 3:00 and it taking her two hours to get her back to sleep. We are surviving, but it hasn’t been easy. Between Isabelle, the two other girls running around the house, and Austin, we really have our hands full right now. Abby and Emily are going to be going to some Vacation Bible School next week, so hopefully that will get them out of Jennifer’s hair for a while so she can get some peace. Even if it’s only for a couple of hours.
Frenchville 