Category Archives: Abby

The Easter Bunny Arrives

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We were awaken early this morning to Abby’s exclamations that the Easter Bunny had arrived. They opened up their Easter baskets which were full of candy and presents. They each got a video: Emily received a Dora the Explorer video and Abby received Shark Tale. Once their baskets were open they ran around the house collecting eggs which the Easter Bunny had hidden. Emily was more interested in opening up and watching the Dora video than looking for eggs.

Afterwards, we went to church and I snapped today’s picture once we got home of the girls in their Easter dresses. After lunch Emily and Jennifer took a nap while Abby and I watched Shark Tale. It was better than Robots, but I still don’t think it’s up to Shrek quality.

For dinner we had a big meal with ham, mashed potatoes, and an apple pie for desert. We ate at our new dining room table for the first time in order to break it in. Hope everyone out there had a nice and safe Easter Sunday.

One last milestone today. This marks around a year since I created Frenchville.net. Previously it was called the French Family Web site and didn’t have it’s own domain. It was this time that I started doing regular blog entries. Here’s to many more years of blogging about the happenings of our family.

Easter Egg Hunt

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Today was the big Easter egg hunt up at church. This is actually our third time we’ve attended the event over our time here. How time passes so fast. The first year Emily was just a baby sitting on the picnic blanket. Last year she was just wandering around barely understanding what was going on. This year Emily was a pro. She was raring to go out and get eggs. As they have in previous years, they had a couple of bounce houses and horses for the kids to ride. Abby and Emily did both. We were quite impressed with Emily wanting to ride the horse. She wasn’t sure at first, but once she saw the other kids riding, she was up for it and giggled the entire time.

It’s a Girl? Part II

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Yesterday we went back for our second ultrasound appointment and they still couldn’t tell if the new baby is a boy or a girl. However, they are still leaning towards girl. Jennifer doesn’t know if we are going to have any more ultrasound appointments, so it might just have to be a surprise when the baby’s birth day rolls around. We are currently going under the assumption that it’s a girl so that if it’s a boy we will be all surprised and happy, but if it’s a girl, we will not be disappointed because that’s what we were expecting.

After the appointment we drove down to South Orlando in order to go to a huge McDonald’s which is down near Universal Studios. This McDonald’s has a few unique features in that it has want it calls McBistro. It serves sandwiches, pasta, and pizzas that looked to be at a higher quality than the usual McDonald’s selection. The main reason we were there was because it has an arcade and a gigantic play gym. The girls ran wild for about a half an hour, which was great, and fun was had by all.

Today Abby and I went to see Robots at the movie theater. Abby liked it and said her favorite part was where the robots were fighting at the end of the movie. I on the other hand didn’t think it was all that great. The story was pretty simple and I really didn’t think it was all that funny. Maybe I’m spoiled by Shrek. But, hey, Abby liked it and that’s all that really matters.

Emily’s Potty Training

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It’s been a while since my last post, but I’m back and should have pretty consistent entries for at least the next week. The reason being: I’m on vacation. I started my “Spring Break” today and won’t be back to work until a week from Monday. It’s nice to finally have some time off.

A couple of things have happened since the last entry. The dining room furniture that was Jennifer’s Christmas gift finally arrived. The furniture really looks great and it’s finally nice to have a dining room with furniture in it. I’ve always been embarrassed when I invite people over to our house and we don’t have anything in our dining room. The other event that happened this week is that we finally had the interior of the house painted. The painters have been working on it over the last few days and they finished up today. Jennifer did an excellent job picking out colors. Our bathroom looks about a billion times better than the pealing wallpaper that used to be in there. I made the comment to Jennifer that our house is starting to look like a “model home”. She really liked hearing that.

Because this was my first day of vacation, Jennifer thought it would be a good day to start potty training Emily. She’s been showing signs of wanting to sit on the potty, but we had a hard time getting Abby started, so we didn’t want to push her. After all, it is only two months after her two year birthday. Jennifer put panties on Emily and then promptly left me alone with her. I asked Emily every five minutes if she needed to go tinkle on the potty and even forced her to go sit on the potty, but no tinkle. Well, after two pairs of panties, two pairs of pants, and many paper towels later, I gave up and put a diaper on her. Fortunately later on in the day she did actually tinkle on the potty, which was a good sign. Just don’t leave me alone with her with nothing but thin cotton between her butt and the ground.

Today’s picture is from last week when we went to the park.

What Are We Going to Do?

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Abby has been acting like a wild child lately. She’s been really hyper and jumping around and talking constantly. It’s like she’s hopped up on sugar, but she isn’t (we hope). Yesterday she wrapped a ribbon tape measure around one of our lamps and pull it off the side table, making it shatter on the ground. Today while I was watching her she couldn’t sit still for a minute.

Meanwhile, Emily has been the angel. She’s been cracking us up with what she does. Today she pointed at a picture of Santa Claus and said, “Ho Ho Ho”. I was like, okay, Christmas was two months ago, how do you know that now and not back then? She also has two very funny expressions that crack us up, and thus she continues to do them. She’ll go “Hummm” and have her fist balled up against her cheek with a poutty look on her face. The other one is she’ll put both hands on her cheeks and go, “What are we going to do?” Both very funny.

Jennifer has started peeling the wallpaper down out of our bathroom. The previous owners did a horrible job wall papering and we’ve always hated it. She finally could stand it no longer and started peeling. We’ve been toying with the idea of getting the house painted because my Employee Stock Purchase Plan money is about to arrive. I also like making the joke that Jennifer is “nesting” because she’s pregnant. So far with every child, she’s done some sort of house remodeling while pregnant.

The Cookie Debate

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Hooray! I’m posting an entry two days in a row. Today Abby was off from school because of President’s Day, so Jennifer had set up a play date with a friend of Abby’s. When they arrived they were informed that everyone was sick, so they decided to go to the park instead.

Abby and Emily are getting quite funny together now that Emily is talking more. Today at the dinner table Abby wanted a cookie for desert and Emily was telling her no. The exchange went something like: “Mommie, can I have a cookie?” Emily would respond, “No cookie”. Abby would say “Yes” and then Emily would say “No”. This went back and forth until is escalated to screaming “Yes” and “No” at the top of their lungs and the parents had to step in and break it up.

Today’s picture is from Abby’s singing at church yesterday.

Working Too Hard to Post

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Sorry it’s been over a week since my last entry. It’s been another busy week at work. Fortunately I’ve been able to do all of my work from home, but it still takes it’s toll when you are having to constantly think and do work. Even when I was my busiest last year while we were finalling Madden 2005, I had time for a small entry. This past week I haven’t even had time for that, if that explains how busy I’ve been. I’ll try to get better from here on out.

Enough about work, this morning I was woken up by Abby screaming “Sister is throwing up!” Emily has had a runny nose lately and apparently coughed once to many times and ended up gagging. Up came all the milk she had been drinking in the morning. Because Jennifer’s queasy due to the pregnancy, guess who got to do the honor of cleaning up the mess.

Because Emily wasn’t feeling well, she and I stayed at home while Jennifer and Abby went to church. Today Abby was singing in the choir. She was giving one of the small choir robes and stood in front of the church and sang. We’ve been working on her stage fright and she did very well. We had to bribe her with a trip to “Burger Cheese” in order to accomplish it, but hey, she wasn’t a crying mess, so that was a bonus.

Getting Rid of the Body

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Once again another busy week at work and at home. Jennifer has been working very hard at Hanna’s Closet, the consignment sale fund raiser for her mother’s group at church. The sale ended up selling $26,000 worth of merchandise, 40% of which will go to the church group. The other 60% goes back to the people who put the items into the sale. She had fun, but it was a lot of work and she’s glad it’s over with.

One of our fish died this week. I’m not sure if it was Nemo or Dory. After Abby left for school, I was asked to “get rid of the body” so that she wouldn’t notice. She actually did notice later on that afternoon when she got back from school. When she was told that the fish had died, she was very apologetic for feeding the fish too much the other day. We thought this was pretty funny, but told her that it wasn’t her fault.

We just got back from going over to the Meador’s house to watch the first half of the Super Bowl. Greg was my boss on Madden NFL 2005 and just recently left Tiburon as well. So, now my boss and my former boss have left. Both of whom are moving to Austin. What’s wrong with this picture?

Late Nights and Slumped Shoulders

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It’s been a week since my last entry and boy has it been a busy week. As predicted, last week was pretty hectic at work. It was the end of our second milestone and I ended up working late every night. The last night I was there until 5:30 a.m. It’s funny now that I’m a manager, you would think I would have nothing to do and have no reason to be up there except for moral support, but our with our new Development Director’s help we are trying to get our schedule under control. Right now, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be settling down any time soon. I think if we could just get our schedule for the rest of the year nailed down we would be in a better position to take on the day-to-day problems. As it is now we are trying to do scheduling in the midsts of handling the day-to-day problems. Very difficult.

This weekend wasn’t very fun at home because Emily had a fever and kept throwing up. It’s never fun to have one of your kids sick. You can really tell when they aren’t feeling well because they stop acting the way they normally do. In the case of Emily, she would mope around with her shoulders slumped down and a pout on her face. Once the Tylenol would take effect, she was up and bouncing around again, but those times were few and far between.

Jennifer was busy Sunday and will be busy the rest of the week working on “Hanna’s Closet”. It’s a giant consignment sale of baby clothes, toys, and furniture that she’s been helping to set up at church. She will be up at church every day this week with the final sale on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Today’s picture is of Abby with her baby. She actually had me go get the camera to take this picture. She’s been telling me lately that she wants to be a “mommy” when she grows up instead of a “princess”.

The Drawing on the Wall Incident

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One thing that I forgot to mention that happened yesterday was that Abby, for some unknown reason, thought it would be a good idea to take a crayon that she found and start writing on nearly every wall in our living room. She thrust the crayon into Emily’s hand and wandered off waiting for the yelling to begin. Jennifer found Emily with the crayon in her hand and started to survey the damage. It was readily apparent that Emily wasn’t the one who decided to do some artwork on our walls. The lines were out of her reach and there were people’s faces drawn on the windows in our living room. A tale tale sign of a four-year-old not a two-year-old. Anyway, a lot of yelling and spanking happened and Abby was sent off to her room. Today Abby surprised Jennifer by apologizing for drawing on the wall.

Abby stayed home from school again today because of her sore throat. Right now we are to the point where we don’t know what to do with her. She won’t eat because “her tummy says that she’s not hungry” when it’s time for dinner, but once dinner is done she complains that she’s hungry. It almost sounds like an excuse not to eat what we are having for dinner.

I finished the Joel on Software book I picked up while on vacation in Houston. This was by far one of the best software management books I’ve ever read. I’ve been a fan of Joel’s site for years and you can pretty much read the entire book online by reading all of the articles on his site, but it was nice to re-read the articles in book form. He really gets down to the basic foundations of building a successfully software team. It isn’t some whiz bang method like Extreme Programming or some other crazy method. If you don’t have the basic methods he describes, you don’t have a good foundation to support your software project. Anyway, if you are in the software industry, I recommend this book highly.

Today’s picture is another one from our trip to the Houston Zoo. This time it’s Emily on one of the zoo animals on the merry-go-round.