Category Archives: Abby

EV1.Net Houston Bowl

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It’s been much warmer this week in Houston than it was when we were in Shreveport last week. That has allowed us to do much more outside, if you haven’t noticed. There’s also much more to do as a family here in Houston than in Shreveport. So, today we headed to the Houston Zoo. This blew the doors off of the Central Florida Zoological Park, which we went to in October. There was so much more to do and see. We saw monkeys, elephants, lions, and went to the petting zoo. Today’s picture is from a playground which was in the children’s zoo area.

After the zoo, I headed off to meet George at the EV1.Net Houston Bowl where Colorado was taking on University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). You would think we would be rooting for UTEP, since it would be a sister of Texas, but we were actually going for a fellow Big XII team, Colorado. We figured it would be embarrassing to have a team from the WAC to beat the Big XII. It was actually a really good match up. UTEP stunned everyone by going into the lead early and kept it well into the fourth quarter. Colorado kept up and then went ahead with about seven minutes left in the game. UTEP tried to come back, but their office was pretty one dimensional: passing only. It ended up being a pretty exciting game and it was fun to go to Reliant Stadium again.

Visiting with George & Heather

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Today we headed down to Galveston to go to Moody Gardens, where there’s a series of glass pyramids with different types of environments that you can visit. First, we traveled under the sea into their aquarium. The girls were amazed looking at all the sharks and penguins and Abby got to touch a star fish. After the aquarium, we traveled through a rain forest. When we entered there was so much humidity, it was like being back in Florida. Jennifer’s glasses and our camera fogged up. Emily met some birds and when she would say “hello”, the birds would squawk in response and she would laugh.

For dinner we went over to George’s new house. He and his wife, Heather, just moved into a townhouse near downtown. It’s not in a very good part of town, but George is now only about twenty minutes from work. The neighborhood is slowly being converted into a a bunch of new townhouses, but until then they have to put up with a shack across the street. They will probably make a ton of money on their townhouse once they are ready to sell. They got in on the ground floor on this area and once it’s all converted over they could probably sell their townhouse for twice what they paid for it. George had a huge HDTV, which was really nice. I guess that’s the type of thing you can spend your money on when you don’t have kids. It was nice visiting and seeing them again.

Merry Christmas

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The last few days have been a whirl wind. While we were in Natchitoches, Poppy took Abby to see The Incredibles. Her review was that “the baby was a monster”. I’m not sure if that means the movies was good or not.

My sister arrived in Shreveport on Thursday and we went ahead and opened packages. Abby asked Nana, “Can we open presents?” She then marched into the den and announced that we were opening the presents because Nana said so. We figured “why not” since the girls would get to play with their toys a day longer before we left Shreveport.

On Christmas Eve we just hung around the house and watched the kids as they played with their toys from the day before. We watched the now Christmas classic, Dodgeball. It was a pretty good movie. Silly, but it had some pretty funny moments.

In the morning, the girls woke up and called me into their room. Abby said that Santa didn’t come. I asked her how she knew that. She said, “I didn’t hear his jingle bells.” I thought this was pretty funny and I told her that she needed to go check. She exclaimed that she could check to see if he ate the cookies and ran off into the den with Emily hot on her tail. When they arrived in the den, they were all excited to see new toys under the Christmas tree.

After the girls played with their new toys from Santa for a while, we headed off to Lindale, Texas, where my grandparents live. We met by my Aunt Marci, Uncle Chuck, my cousin Kevin, and his wife Christie. We opened presents and visited for a while. It was nice to see everyone again. It had been two years since we had been back to Texas to see everyone.

This morning, we packed up the Sequoia and headed to Houston, Texas to Jennifer’s parents’ house. The drive was pleasant and it was finally starting to warm up from being so cold for the past few days. We are starting to plan our week now and I will keep everyone up to date here on Frenchville.

Playing at the Duck Pond

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We had a big day in Shreveport with Nana and Poppy. First we all piled into the Sequoia and went to the duck pond where Abby and Emily played on the gym equipment. They had fun running around and playing with Nana and Poppy. At one point a group of ducks and geese swam by while Abby and Emily were watching.

Jennifer and I went out to eat by ourselves to one of my favorite restaurants in Shreveport, Monjunis. It’s an Italian restaurant with great lasagna. They also put bread and marinara sauce on the table like they do chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant.

After Monjunis, we went to Horseshoe Casino. Jennifer ended up winning $300 playing roulette and I ended up loosing money at the dollar slot machines. It’s a good thing Jennifer made up for my loss and then then some.

While we were out on the town, Nana and Poppy took Abby and Emily to Chick Olé and then they drove around looking at Christmas lights. They had fun and then fell right to sleep when they got home.

From Shreveport, Louisiana: Day 1

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We finally made it! Driving in the truck was wearing thin very very fast. Both the girls and Jennifer were very cranky and just wanted to get to our destination. Our trip took us from Mobile, Alabama and up through Mississippi to connect up with I-20. Then we swung over to Shreveport. We didn’t have much trouble finding my parents’ new house once we got into town. It’s very nice and much bigger than their old house.

My parents had Abby and Emily open up a huge box which contained a Barbie PowerWheels Jeep. Abby drove around the yard while Emily was in charge of the music. There’s a kid sized juke box in the passenger seat.

My parents had me and Jennifer open a present too: a stay at a Bed and Breakfast in Natchitoches. We are pretty excited to get away from the kids for a day. My parents also love getting us out of the house so that they can pamper the kids.

Singing Through the Tears

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Today at lunch I went up to watch Abby sing at her school’s Christmas program. We were thinking that it was probably a good thing that we weren’t with Abby before the program started because the past few times that we’ve been there when she is going to sing in front of a crowd, she has a meltdown and starts crying. We figured if we weren’t there she wouldn’t have the opportunity of start crying. We were wrong. They walked out on stage and once they started singing and Abby saw us in the audience, the tears started to flow. Jennifer and I tried to show our encouragement from the audience and after the first song it started to work. Abby’s tears cleared up and she started singing with much enthusiasm. Afterwards, she was happy to see me and we told her we were very proud.

Very big news from work today. It was announced that Electronic Arts has signed an exclusive deal with the National Football League. This means that starting with Madden 2006 and for the next five years, Electronic Arts will be the only video game which will be allowed to use the real NFL teams, players, and stadiums. This is a very big deal and we were all very excited about it at work today. I’m sure our competition, ESPN NFL Football isn’t all that pleased at this moment. The question I’m wondering now is will they even make a football game for the next five years? We will have to wait and see.

Emily: Independent Child

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We didn’t do much today. We didn’t even go to our usual Saturday morning breakfast, instead we opted for bagels from Einstein’s. Jennifer then took off Christmas shopping leaving me to stay with the kids. One thing I’ve noticed about Emily lately is that she’s trying to do everything herself. When it was time to go for bagels, she wanted to put her socks and shoes on herself. Well, if we had about an hour to wait for her to accomplish this, we could have waited, but we were hungry for some bagels.

She did another thing that was pretty funny today while I was watching her. She was caring around this baby doll and then she walked off to the baby’s bedroom where we still have a changing table where we change Emily’s diapers. After a while I went in there to see what she was doing and she had climbed to the top of the changing table and was using the baby wipes to wipe the butt of her baby doll. I suppose the baby doll had pooped and she was cleaning it up.

During Emily’s nap, Jennifer and Abby worked on a gingerbread house. Well, actually Jennifer worked on the house. Abby mainly tried to eat all of the candy until Jennifer banished her from the kitchen. Today’s picture is of their work of art.

The Christmas Program

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I left work early to attend Abby’s Christmas program up at church. She had learned five songs over the past few weeks and this is the first time I’ve heard her sing with a group where the audio recording wasn’t singing along with them. It was a struggle to get her up there to sing in the first place. Right before they were going to start, one of her teachers came out carrying her while she was crying. I took her and she told me that she was scared. I tried to explain to her that she was a good singer and that there wasn’t anything to worry about. She just wasn’t going to do it, so we started to leave. We retrieved Emily from the nursery and started to leave the church grounds when Jennifer asked her one last time if she wanted to sing. Jennifer even bribed her with going to “Burger Cheese” afterwards. She finally gave in. We rushed back in where the kids were assembled to sing. Too late. The program had started and all the kids were about to start singing. The teacher that brought her out earlier saw her wanting to go up and escorted her up there. Once up there, Abby just sung with all of her heart. There were several times that I even heard her over the other kids. When it was over she asked, “Can we go to ‘Burger Cheese’ now?”

Tonight was the last softball game of the season and it was against our inner-work rivals: the EA Sports team. Well, it was a tough battle, but we lost: 10-3. It was actually a very close game and we just had one inning where we flubbed a few plays. I ended up 1 for 2 with a walk and a run. On my first at bat I was hit in the hip with the ball by the third baseman while trying to reach first. I shook it off and it’s okay right now, but I will probably be feeling it in the morning. We ended the season in the cellar with a record of 1-7. Oh well, here’s to next season.

Jennifer forgot to bring the camera to Abby’s Christmas program, so today’s picture is just another one from Thanksgiving. I call this picture, “Won’t you go ahead and take the picture already?”

Searching for Deadly Squirrels

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Jennifer heard the scratching in the attic again last night so I did my husbandly duty of climbing up into the attic this morning to see if I could see where the squirrel was getting in. I grabbed a flashlight and the ladder to get into the attic. For some reason here in Florida, no one builds houses with those nifty ladders that fold up into the ceiling. The only way to get into the attic is to buy a ladder and then stand on the top step, you know, the one that says “DO NOT STAND OR SIT”. So, I climbed through the attic and reached the other side of the house where our bedroom is. There was no evidence of any squirrel or any entry point. I sat up there looking and looking, but to no avail. I even had one of those horror movie moments when my flash light winked out and I had to bang the side of it for it to come back.

Today’s picture is of Abby decorating the Christmas tree. If you look close enough you will see the hint of a fish tattoo on her hand. This was her prize from our visit to Chuck E Cheese the other day.

Happy Thanksgiving

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I hope everyone is having a happy and safe Thanksgiving. We stayed at home today (since everything is closed) and fixed our Thanksgiving dinner. Jennifer worked hard to fix a very big dinner only for the four of us. We had a big turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, and pumpkin pie. Can you say “leftovers”?

We also got the Christmas tree out and started decorating it. Now the battle begins of keeping the girls away from the tree and picking off all the ornaments. Currently we are at the rate of yelling at them once every 15 minutes.

I put together another one of my game tribute sites. This one for Madden NFL 2002 PC. It was the first game that I worked on for Electronic Arts – Tiburon.