Monthly Archives: November 2006

Abby’s Sixth Birthday

Posted on by
Reply

It’s hard to believe I have a daughter who is six years old, but it happened today. It was also a long day. With Abby’s Sunday School class, we boxed up Thanksgiving dinners for the Greater Orlando Food Bank. It was mass chaos as around 100 kids kindergarten through fourth grade walked in a line with boxes and put canned goods, stuffing, and other non-perishable food into card board boxes. They were taped up and will be sent to the food bank for distribution to the needy.

After Sunday school we headed into church where Abby sang in a kindergarten and first grade choir. Her group blew away the second through fourth graders, who you could barely hear. Abby’s group knew their song well and you could actually understand what they were singing as opposed to the other group. Sorry, older group, but the younger kids out sang you.

After Church we headed to the Cheesecake Factory for a birthday lunch for Abby. Abby went for the French Toast and bacon, while Emily went for the grilled cheese which was bigger than her head. I wish I would have taken a picture of it, but we didn’t think of taking the camera into the restaurant.

Finally, we celebrated Abby’s birthday at All Fired Up, a pottery painting place in Winter Park. Abby invited some of her friends from school. Abby painted a mermaid statue and Emily painted a hippo. Emily’s statue started out multi-color, but ended up gray as she kept adding multiple colors one right on top of the other. It will be interesting to see what color it comes out as once it’s gone through the oven. Abby had fun with all of her friends as we had cupcakes and sang Happy Birthday.

She opened up her presents when she got home and Nana and Poppy gave her a digital camera. This last picture is one Abby took of Isabelle with her new camera.

Texans are now 3-0…

Posted on by
Reply

…against Florida teams. They are 0-6 against non-Florida teams, but that’s besides the point. Unfortunately, they didn’t give tickets out to any of the games at work this week. I was hoping to win tickets to the Texans–Jaguars game since it was only about an hour and a half drive away up in Jacksonville. Texans were up early and held strong winning 13-10, despite missing two field goals. This was their first road win since December 2004.

You may be saying to yourself that I haven’t commented on another game which happened yesterday. Well, here at Frenchville, we only talk about positive sports events. We don’t talk about how the Longhorns choked away their chance at a rematch against Ohio State in the National Championship. We don’t talk about how Colt McCoy’s collar bone isn’t broken and he’s questionable in the game against A&M. And, we definitely don’t talk about they now must beat the Aggies in order to have a rematch against Nebraska in the Big XII Championship.

Report Card brought to you by Pizza Hut

Posted on by

I took Abby and Emily to Pizza Hut for lunch today. Apparently Pizza Hut is a big sponsor of my child’s education. They have a “Book It” program where if you read 200 hours to your child per month, they will get a free personal pan pizza. We accomplished that for October, so we had to go and redeem our free pizza.

Abby also received her first report card this week. I thought it was funny that it had a big Pizza Hut logo on the sleeve the report card came in. Apparently if you child has good grades, you can take the report card in and get a free personal pan pizza for that as well. I just thought is seemed kind of weird to have a Pizza Hut logo on a report card, but oh well.

On a whole different subject, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about what we (especially the girls) want for Christmas. I’ve setup a gift list at WishBin.com. I’ve put stuff in there for the girls which I think they will like and I’ve put their clothes and shoe sizes in there as well. You can mark things as bought in there as well, so that multiple people don’t by the same thing.

Frenchville Down

Posted on by
Reply

The service provider which hosts Frenchville was down Wednesday and Thursday. We tried to call the customer support number, but there was no answer. Jennifer and I feared the worst: they went out of business. The wost part of it was that I was stupid enough not to have a backup of all the text from two years of Frenchville (I have all the pictures backed up). We breathed a big sigh of relief when it all came back up today. I also immediately backed up all the text.

Our e-mail was down for two days as well, so if any of you sent us an e-mail you might want to re-send it, but it appears we didn’t miss any.

We are going to stick with this provider for now since we have a year contract, but if this happens again we are just going to cut our losses and go with another one. But one the contract is over, we are definitely going to be switching.

My Poor Xbox

Posted on by
Reply

Today my Xbox died. The past couple of days it’s been locking up randomly and today it finally gave up and just flashed some red lights on the front when I tried to turn it on. I called customer support and they had me send it back in to get repaired. I heard a rumor on the Internet that some of the early Xbox 360 models were overheating because a heat sync on the graphics chip wasn’t installed properly. Oh well, it’s coming up on a year, so I was afraid that my warranty was going to expire soon. So, I made sure and called them today.

Today Abby went on a field trip with Jennifer for Jennifer’s photography class. They went to Rollins College to take some pictures of their unique architecture. Jennifer had been enjoying the class and has learned a lot. Her ultimate goal is to start her own business taking children’s photographs. Today’s picture is one of Abby posing for Jennifer while on their field trip.

The Longhorns rolled all over Oklahoma State tonight. Winning easily: 36-10. I was worried more about this game than I was against Texas Tech. Fortunately, Texas didn’t let OSU get ahead like they did Nebraska and Tech. They started out strong and kept it up the whole game.