Monthly Archives: December 2007

The Trip to Nana & Poppy’s House

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Two days on the road and we made it to Nana and Poppy’s house yesterday. The drive was fairly uneventful. The first day took us through Florida where we once again stayed in Mobile, Alabama. We found a pretty nice hotel which actually had a suite: two bedrooms and a fold out couch in another. So, Abby & Emily had one room and Isabelle had her the fold out couch. Jennifer and I had our own room. This all actually helped when getting them all to bed and we could stay up and watch TV while they went to bed.

The second day we went up diagonally through Mississippi and hit I-20 in Jackson. From there it was a straight shot to Shreveport. We were able to make the second trip with only one stop for lunch in Vicksburg. When we got to Shreveport, Poppy and Jill were waiting for us. That night the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. Jennifer and I went to see I Am Legend and when we got out of the movie theater, we almost froze to death just walking to our car. It’s currently 80 degrees back in Florida and you suddenly dropped us into 32 degree weather.

Today Jennifer and I continued some Christmas shopping and stopped off to eat at one of our favorite Italian restaurants in Shreveport: Monjuni’s. Excellent bread and lasagna. While we were doing that Poppy and Jill took Abby and Emily to see Alvin and the Chipmunks. Abby and Emily both said the movie was good, but they didn’t really give specifics on what their favorite parts were.

We allowed the girls to open up one present tonight as well. Abby got upset because the other two opened up toys while she opened up clothes. We took pity on her and let her open up one more present.

Austin: Menace To Society

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A week ago Austin bit Emily on the arm when she fell on his back. Since this is obviously as sensitive area for Austin since he had back surgery, his instincts took over and he ended up leaving one puncture on the inside of Emily’s arm. We would have thought nothing of it, but the wound started to show signs of being infected. So, we decided to take her to the doctor so we could get some antibiotics. Unfortunately, when a dog bites someone, they have to report it to the county and they did and we got a visit from animal control. Since it was our dog biting someone in our family, Austin had to be “quarantined” inside our own house for a week. This was a pretty simple punishment since he spends 99.9% of his time inside our house anyway. Today the county called us back and said that the quarantine had been lifted and Austin was a “free dog”.

Also today was Emily and Isabelle’s Preschool Christmas Program. We were treated to the likes of “Jingle Bells” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”. For Isabelle, this was her first performance. She was a little shy, but she did well during “Jingle Bells”. Emily is an old pro and sang really well. After the singing, we all had milk and cookies to eat and Santa came out and visited, giving all the girls and boys presents. Both Emily and Isabelle received books about Christmas.

Over in Abby’s First Grade class, it was dress up like a fairy tale character day. Over the weekend we bought some red felt and Jennifer made a cape and hood so that she could be Little Red Riding Hood. She had a basket and put some plastic food in there to complete the outfit.

All I Want For Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth

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After you’ve been with EA for seven years, they give you an extra seven weeks of vacation which they call the “sabbatical”. That’s above and beyond the four weeks I normally get off and the week everyone gets at Christmas. So, there’s no way I’m going to be able to take off seven weeks all at one time, so I’m dividing it up into three parts. I took a week at Thanksgiving. I’m taking two weeks here at Christmas and then I’m going to take four weeks once the game I’m working on ships. So, I started my first week off this week and I don’t have to go back to work until January 9th.

I decided to treat myself to some lunch all on my own today. I went up to our favorite pizza place, American Pie. It was good being free from the kids just eating pizza and reading my book.

Later on in the afternoon it was time to rock. Jennifer went to a hair appointment and since she doesn’t care for Rock Band too much, it was time to get out the drum set and rock. I first looked over to see if there were any new songs to download from the music store. I picked up “My Sharona” by The Knack, one of my dad’s favorite songs. Mainly because he claims to have come up with the melody for the song. I’ve completed all the solo drum songs on “Easy” and now I’ve started going through all of them on “Medium”. Well, it appears I rocked too hard, because I think I pulled something in my ankle. I can barely move my foot around.

In another bit of news, Abby pulled her other top front tooth out tonight. So, she will be getting another visit from the tooth fairy and she will be without her two front teeth for Christmas. She was very exciting when it started bleeding coming downstairs and to inform the entire family. She then spent the next thirty minutes wiggling it until it finally broke free.