Now that Head Coach is done, we’ve moved our annual trip back to Texas to the summer instead of around Christmas, like it usually is. Currently, we are in “the most inconsiderate town in America“, Mobile, Alabama. This time it hasn’t been as bad. I think the key is not to travel on the weekend. There’s a lot less activity on a weekday.
The drive wasn’t all that fun. Isabelle just doesn’t understand what is going on. She’s cranky and it’s hard for her to fall asleep in her car seat. Abby asks every few minutes if “we are there yet” and Emily isn’t much better with “We at Poppies?” The best one on the trip was Austin. He just sat under Emily and got hit on top of the head with plastic horses, cups, and shoes.
For dinner we tried out the Chuck E. Cheese which was down the street. We went a little on the early side and missed the crowd. Once again, I think it helped traveling on a weekday. Today’s picture is Emily standing in front of Chuck E. Cheese taken with my mobile phone.
It’s been a busy last couple of weeks as we’ve been finishing up NFL Head Coach, but it’s out the door and I’m off of work for the next three weeks.
This past week was also that last week of school, which means that Abby has graduated from pre-school and is on her way to Kindergarten in a couple of months. Today’s picture is from Abby getting her pre-school diploma. They start the year pretty early: July 31st. Can’t believe she’s about to go to “big school” as we’ve been calling it.
This past week Isabelle has really started walking a lot more. She will randomly walk around the living room, but when she wants to really get around she still relies on the speed crawling.
One last thing I wanted to call out was my Xbox 360’s blog. While I was at work a lot, it got very lonely and started writing bad things about me in it’s blog. Now that I’m back, it’s pretty stoked that I’ve been playing a lot of NFS Most Wanted.
It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to write on Frenchville. We are still in our crunch time on NFL Head Coach and I haven’t even turned on my computer in 2 weeks. In an attempt to get something posted to Frenchville, I’m writing this at work, right before I leave.
Today Jennifer took all the girls down to the Outlet Mall in order to get out of the house and go do something. They also went to the giant McDonalds down on International Drive for lunch. Lately Abby has been noticing that some people smoke cigarettes. She asks us why and we tell her that it’s bad and we don’t know why people do it. Today Jennifer and the girls were getting ice cream and Jennifer told Abby to go outside while she paid. After a few seconds, Abby came back in holding her nose saying that people were outside smoking and that it stinks. Jennifer said it was pretty funny.
Isabelle is on the verge of walking. She can easily stand up in the middle of the room and take one step. Then, she switches to her preferred mode of transport: crawling. It probably doesn’t help that Abby picks her up and carries her around the house all the time. Why learn to walk when you have a big sister who can carry you around.
Since I’m still off from work I took Abby and Emily to pre-school this morning. I usually take Abby on Tuesdays and Thursdays and we talk about what she’s learning in school. This morning we talked about counting. I was surprised that they had been working on counting to one hundred. I asked Abby if she could and she took off counting. She did pretty well. She had trouble bridging between thirty and forty, however. She went, “38…39…80…81…82”. I didn’t correct her and she continued, “88…89…40…41…42” and then, “49…80…81”. I felt we were going to get into an endless loop, so when she got to “89” for the second time, I corrected her that the next one was “90”. Then it was smooth sailing to “100”.
One of the good things about staying home from work while the girls are in pre-school is that Jennifer and I can get out to a restaurant. Isabelle is so much easier to take out that Abby ever was. I remember us going to eat at Jason’s Deli in Round Rock because the place was so loud it would drown out her cries. Isabelle just sits there in her carrier and laughs and has a great time. Jennifer feeds her a jar of food and Isabelle feeds herself a bottle of formula while we eat. The real question is: was Abby bad at eating out or have we’ve gotten better at parenting? I’m leaning towards the former.
On Monday Abby and Emily sang in a musical performance at school. This was the first time I’ve seen Abby stand up there and sing with the other kids. She usually gets a severe case of stage freight right before the performance. In the picture you will notice that she’s dressed up. The 4-year-old class was dressed as different professions. Abby was dressed as a teacher. Emily did well too. She didn’t know many of the words to the songs. However, she did know she was supposed to bark during “How Much is that Doggy in the Window?” At the end of the program, the kids handed out Valentine’s Day cards to their parents. Emily gave hers to Jennifer and Abby gave hers to me.
My eyes are getting a little better. I’m being very impatient and I want perfect vision right now. I know it takes time, but it can get frustrating at times. I’m okay to drive and watch TV, but looking at stuff from a long distance is still blurry.
Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written. We’ve been busy getting ready for our big trip to Texas as well as buying presents for Christmas. At work, I was moved onto a new project: NFL Head Coach. They are about to start finaling and I’m going to be working on getting them through the process. It’s tough since I just finaled Madden Next Gen, but I think I can be a lot of help. NFL Head Coach is another football game, but instead of being the player you are the coach. It’s more of a strategy game than an arcade game like Madden.
Abby was counting the days until we leave for Texas. Each morning she would ask, “How long until we leave for Grandma and Poppa’s house?” Well, the past two days were spent traveling from Orlando to Houston. We are staying with Jennifer’s parents for the next week through Christmas day. We spent the night in a hotel in Mobile, Alabama and traveled through the Katrina hurricane damaged areas of South Mississippi and Louisiana. It was amazing how much damage was still visible from the Interstate. We saw some crumpled “Golden Arches” and a lot of miscellaneous garbage on the side of the road; and, of course, a ton of downed trees. Mississippi was worse than Louisiana, but then we didn’t go down to New Orleans. We took I-12, which bypasses New Orleans and goes directly to Baton Rouge. Once we passed all that, we hit all the damage from Rita in South Louisiana and Texas. There were a ton of blue tarps which reminded us of Orlando two years ago.
Anyway, we safely made it to Houston and we are glad to finally not be in the Sequoia anymore. Within fifteen minutes of being here Emily had already broken one of Grandma’s nativity scenes. For dinner, Christiana and Mike came over and we all had dinner together. I brought out the Xbox 360 and showed them Madden and Mike and I played some Need for Speed: Most Wanted.
We left Austin’s bed at home so we had to go out to Target and get him another one. We also stopped by Best Buy so I could get a 512 MB card for our camera. I swiped the one we had previously so that I could use it in my new Palm pilot. I’ve been using it as an MP3 player, my PSP has gotten too bulky. My Palm pilot worked great and I listened to all the Podcasts I was behind on all the way from Orlando to Houston. I caught up on This Week in Tech, Security Now!, and Inside the Net. There are still several hours that I still need to listen to in order to officially “catch up”. I got behind while I was finaling Madden Next Gen.
Yesterday we realized we were almost out of diapers for Isabelle and knew we were in trouble. First, the stores were closed yesterday because of Thanksgiving. Second, tomorrow was the media named “Black Friday” where the hordes of shoppers flood the stores.
So, we roughed the storm and headed to the store. First we had to head to Old Navy because Abby has been having a lot of pants problems. She’s tall and skinny, so all the pants we buy her fall down and she whines a lot it. Old Navy had pants with adjustable waste bands and they were only $10, so we had to go there first.
What was going on inside of Old Navy could only be turned a mad house. There were tons of people with a huge line waiting to get checked out. We found a couple of pairs of the pants that we were looking for and then headed to the front of the store. If you have young kids, you will know that they are incapable of waiting in a line, especially one of this size. So, I offered to wait in the line while Jennifer and the kids headed to Target. I have to hand it to Old Navy, though. Even though the line was long, they had every register open and they were pumping people through the line at a fast rate. Kudos to them for having it well organized with one line which approaches all the registers. That’s much better than having eight different lines that you have to guess which one is moving faster.
We got into target and shied away from the toy department, where all the chaos was. (Actually, I dived in there solo and picked up Call of Duty 2 for my Xbox 360, a quick in and out operation). We got our diapers to keep Isabelle’s hiney dry.
I knew the Aggies would give us a run for our money, but the Longhorns went to Kyle Field and defeated A&M 40-29. The Longhorns did a great job of not panicking when the Aggies went up by a point a couple of times in the game. They just stuck to their game plan while the Aggies’ trick plays started wearing thin. There’s one more game that the Longhorns have to win in order to make it to the Rose Bowl: The Big 12 Championship, which is next Saturday in Houston. Right now it’s unknown who the Longhorns will be playing. The Colorado Buffaloes lost today so if the Iowa State Cyclones win their game tomorrow, then we will be playing them. Both teams are un-ranked, so I’m hoping that the Longhorns will be victorious and the Rose Bowl tickets that I have won’t go to waste.
Today’s picture is from Abby’s Birthday party again: all the kids playing on the new play gym.
Today we stayed home and cooked for our Thanksgiving meal. Jennifer bought the smallest turkey (or as Abby calls it chicken) she could find, which is still pretty big. Jennifer did a great one woman job of cooking the turkey, with real mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, and rolls. It was all tasted great. Abby said the prayer giving God thanks for “the sun, the trees, and Mommies and Daddies”.
Today’s picture isn’t our Thanksgiving table, it’s the food and cake layout from Abby’s party.
Last Saturday was Abby’s 5th birthday. We had a simple party at our house, inviting Abby’s friends from school and the neighborhood. The new play gym got a lot of use during the party. It was so nice outside, that we opened up the back doors and just freely roamed from inside and outside. Abby got several Barbies. We were amazed that no one gave her the same one, though. Right now we just can’t believe that we have a five year old running around the house.
Yesterday was the Madden Next Gen and Xbox 360 Launch Event at work. The Jacksonville Jaguar’s Cheerleaders and mascot were there and they had Madden Next Gen up on the big screen. The family came up and we ate some food and Jennifer got to finally see the game I worked on for so long. She also got to meet some of the new guys I’m working with on my new project.
I also purchased an Xbox 360 from work yesterday. They raffled off the right to buy the new console and I was one of the lucky ones to win. I spent last night playing Need for Speed and Halo 2. Today I moved our wireless router upstairs so that I could plug the Xbox into it and play games online. I just finished playing two games of Madden online, which I’ve never done on the console version of the game before. It was pretty cool and very addictive.
This past week it was back to work for me. I’ve moved onto another project and we are starting our Pre-Production phase, so I’ve been busy doing planning for that project. The game I just finished, Madden NFL 06 for the Xbox 360, was just released to stores today, even though the Xbox 360 console won’t be in stores until November 22nd. I’m still hoping to get my hands on an Xbox 360 before leaving for Christmas.
We’ve mainly been busy getting ready for Abby’s birthday party on Saturday. We aren’t doing anything fancy for Abby’s party this year. We are just having a normal party with her friends from the neighborhood and school coming over to celebrate. It’s still hard work getting everything together, order balloons and food for the party, etc. Jennifer has been handling all the logistics for that, as usual.
Emily had to stay home from school today. She crawled into our bed last night and was burning up hot. Jennifer gave her some Tylenol, but she’s had a fever all day. Now we are just waiting for each one of the girls to get sick. We seem to have this pattern lately where Emily brings it home and then starts giving it to each of us.
Frenchville 