Today was a lounge around the house day with the kids while Jennifer went up to church to set up for vacation bible school. Jennifer is teaching crafts next week at our church’s vacation bible school, so she had to spend the afternoon up there getting ready for almost 400 kids to show up. They decorated nearly every room in the entire church. Jennifer was originally expecting around 325 kids and it kept increasing over the week. There was a mad dash this afternoon for some extra supplies, but they found what they were looking for and they should all be set.
Abby and Emily pretty much played on Jennifer’s computer while I watched TV and did the laundry. I also spent some time updating the look for Frenchville.
We started out the day by heading up to where I work. I recently moved to a new project and, thus, moved to a new office. When ever that happens, that means that I have to re-hang all my game plaques. Now totalling eight, it’s not an easy project. I try not to do it during the day, because I never have enough time and I don’t want to be banging on the walls with a hammer. So, it’s a family trip up to the office to hang the pictures. Jennifer did most of the work arranging them in a pattern. Because there’s now eight and I had a smaller area to hang them, we went with a double stacked approach. It also left some room for a new plaque when I finish the project I’m on a year from now. The girls ran around the cubicles and found some Nerf darts that some of the guys on the team sling across the cubicles. Abby was actually pretty good at firing them.
After that we went to pick up the camper. We bought some bike racks for the top of the camper. We noticed after we bought it that it had a Yakima rack system on top. So, I visited the web site and found some bike racks so that Jennifer and me could take our bikes. We didn’t buy four because we didn’t know if Abby and Emily’s bikes would fit. However, once we got them up on the camper, we tested their bikes and what do you know, they also fit. I’m going to go and buy two more so that we can fit all the bikes on top of the camper.
Abby today lost her second baby tooth. It was the other lower tooth right next to the one she lost a few weeks ago. She was very excited and made sure to put it under her pillow. Last time the tooth fairy brought her $5 and I have a feeling that she will be bringing that much again. Abby told me it was loose and she just started wiggling and wiggling it until she just yanked it out. Of course all of this was going on while they were all in the car riding home.
Today is Jennifer’s birthday and we spent it running around getting her presents and getting a cake. We started off the morning picking up a new bicycle from Target. Abby and Emily helped me pick it out. Abby said we needed to get a red one since that was Mom’s favorite color. We also got a baby seat for the back of the bike for Isabelle. We picked up a cake and some flowers and then presented all of what we found to Jennifer when she came home from shopping with Isabelle.
Later that evening Jennifer and I went out to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and then went to see a movie. Jennifer got a free desert since it was her birthday. She chose a banana cream pie, which was very good.
Today’s picture if from when we went putt-putt golf on our recent Disney vacation.
The day started with a syrup dilemma. We were going to fix French Toast and the camp site, but we forgot the syrup. This lead to a change of plan and we headed over to the Trail’s End restaurant that’s on site for a breakfast buffet. I say it every time we come here: way over priced.
We didn’t feel like going to one of the water parks today so we headed out on the bus to one of the putt-putt courses, Fantasia Gardens. The only way to get there was to go to the Swan Hotel and we leaned a valuable lesson. When going from resort to resort, just get on the first bus you see and then catch a connecting bus to you destination. The directions we had said we had to go to Downtown Disney. When we pulled into Typhoon Lagoon for the second time we figured out what we did wrong.
On the way back from putt-putt, Isabelle fell asleep and now we are just hanging around camp waiting for her to wake up.
After dinner we headed over to the campfire sing-a-long to eat some s’mores and watch Hercules on an outside movie screen. Unfortunately right as the movie was going to start, it started to rain. We hopped into the golf cart we had rented and headed back to camp as quickly as we could as the sky opened up on us. It’s going to end up being an early night since we are about to head to bed.
Abby and I gave up on Isabelle falling asleep and headed back to Typhoon Lagoon on our own and I think we did a lot more heading out by ourselves. We stood in the wave pool and jumped into the giant tidal wave that would periodically get whooshed out. Abby and I would hold onto each other and try to jump over the wave and would just end up getting water up our noses. We also rode two other rides we hadn’t ridden before: a tube ride and a water slide.
We kept going until it was almost closing time on the park and then we headed back to camp for hamburgers on the grill.
It’s been awhile since I’ve written on Frenchville and I apologize. Work has been super busy (as it usually is) and I just haven’t had the chance to write. I will try to change that habit moving forward.
Today was the first day of Summer vacation. Abby successfully navigated kindergarten and will be moving on to the 1st grade. To celebrate the end of the school year, I took a week off from work starting today and we pulled out the pop-up camper and headed to Disney for four days of camping.
This was the second time we took the new camper out. Our inaugural camping trip was three weeks ago on a long weekend. We wanted to take baby steps and it paid off. We had the camper fully put up with beds made and awning out in just under an hour. It took us twice as long last time. Jennifer has also won the job for pulling the camper in. She picked up the camper last night and pulled it into our driveway unassisted; then today, she pulled it into the camping slip in one try (I can’t say the same when I tried pulling in a couple weeks ago).
After setting up camp we headed out for a few hours at Blizzard Beach, one of Disney’s two water parks. When we were here a couple of weeks ago, we decided to get season passes for the water parks. The plan was to come camping several times over the summer and visit the water parks.
Last week I was at the book store and I picked up the book Campfire Cooking. It looked like a pretty cool cookbook with chapters entitled “On a Stick” and “Wrapped in Foil”. Tonight’s dinner came from the chapter “In a Skillet” and was called “Cowboy Casserole”. It wasn’t too bad. It consisted of ground beef, bacon, and beans. You placed biscuits on top and shut the lid. When it was done you remove the biscuits and ladle the concoction on top. Our charcoals didn’t seem to be very hot and the biscuits didn’t get all the way done, but it was still good.
Right now we are trying to get the girls to settle down and go to bed. In the distance you can hear the fireworks going off from either Epcot or Magic Kingdom. I will report more tomorrow on our adventures.
Well, I was pissed a few weeks ago when we got a ton of money back from the government for our taxes. You’re probably re-reading the last sentence. Yes, I’m pissed. I don’t want my money at the end of the year. I want it in my pay check every week. I have my W4 set to the maximum number of deductions, but EA continues to take too much out of my check and gives it to the government as a interest free loan. The best tax year would be when you don’t owe anything and you don’t get anything back (in my opinion).
Anyway, since the money was burning a hole in our bank account, we decided to do something with it: we bought a pop-up camper. We’ve wanted one for some time. Just the thought of being able to go away for the weekend and drive it up and boom, we are camping is quite appealing. Jennifer found a couple on craigslist and we out and looked at them this weekend. We found one that was barely used and we bought it.
We were under the mistaken idea that we were going to be able to store it in the garage. We spend an hour Saturday night trying to roll it up the driveway just to find out that it doesn’t fit by one inch. We had to shut the garage about half way down. Jennifer is going to start looking into places where we can store it this week.
Today I took my annual trip to see the Astros play a Spring Training game in Kissimmee. The difference this year: I took Emily along. She had a great time. We bought her a kid’s Spring Training shirt and a hat with a pink Astros star. We sat right in front of the bull pin where the pitchers warm up. When Roy Oswalt, the lead off pitcher was done warming up, the catcher tossed Emily the ball. Of course, when we got home the ball became a chew toy for Austin, which upset Emily quite a bit. She wanted me to get a new one and I told her that wasn’t possible. Oh well, we had a good time and I’m looking forward to taking her again next year.
Jennifer has been getting on to me for a while to update Frenchville. Especially, since I had a Christmas tree at the top. Well, it’s now changed. We’ve been pretty busy for the past month, so I guess I will do a month in review.
For me, it has just been work, work, work. We are starting to wrap up our planning phase for the game I’m working on and we will start the actual construction of the code and making of the art assets. I can’t write any details on the web, but hopefully soon EA will put out a press release and then I will write a little bit more about it.
Jennifer has been getting more and more stuff for her photography studio (a.k.a. our front office). She has lights and a couple of sets she’s is working on. She’s been taking test photos of the girls in order to get the lighting just right. She will be starting to take photos of some of the neighbor kids in order to practice.
Abby has been doing fine in school. I’m amazed at how much they learn in Kindergarten. She has spelling words she has to learn. I don’t remember having to take spelling tests way back then. Of coarse, I don’t even remember Kindergarten, but oh well. She’s been struggling with writing out the numbers 11 – 99. She sometimes gets them reversed. We’re working on it often.
We had sad news a couple of weeks ago. Jennifer’s Grandmother, Helen Musselman, passed away. Her funeral was the following weekend, so we had to buy plane tickets and meet Jennifer’s parents in Muskegon, Michigan. The high temperature the day we arrived was 17 degrees and snow was on the ground. We flew into Grand Rapids and then had to rent a car and make a forty minute drive to Muskegon. We stayed in a hotel there in Muskegon and had the funeral on Saturday. On Sunday, we dove over to Jennifer’s other grandparents and visited with them and all of her aunts and uncles. Abby and Emily had fun playing in the snow, having never seen it before. It was tough having to always bundle up when we went outside. We were happy to get back to the warm weather in Florida.
Frenchville 