Category Archives: Abby

Madison Visits

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Our friends, Tim and Leslie, who have been without power since the storm, found out that their power won’t be restored until Thursday. Because of this, they decided to go to a hotel and we offered to watch their dog, Madison. The girls have enjoyed having the dog at the house. Emily has been pretty funny around her. When Madison barks, Emily puts her finger up to her lips and says, “shush”.

Abby’s school was canceled again today because there’s still power outages in our county. Because of this, Jennifer and the kids had to once again get out of the house and go to lunch at “Burger Cheese”, also known as McDonalds, so that they could run around and get some of the energy out of their systems.

Today’s picture is of one of the trees on our street which got knocked down during the hurricane. This one was amazing because the tree trunk snapped.

Rainy Saturday

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Well, not much has happened over the past few days. Abby went to her second day of pre-school yesterday. Today’s picture is of Abby in her classroom when we took her on the first day. They are learning the alphabet and she made a picture of an ant yesterday. She will tell you that, “‘A’ is for ant; ‘A’ is for apple; and ‘A’ is for Abby”.

We went out to breakfast this morning at the Peach Valley Cafe, which is a rarity because the girls can’t sit still for more than a couple of minutes. However, they did very well this morning and we tried our best to entertain them while they cooked our food. The food was good and it was even better since the girls behaved themselves.

The rest of the day was pretty boring since it rained all day. Jennifer ventured out still in search of a contractor to fix our warped floor. There’s much debate on whether or not the floor can be sanded and stained to match the old floor. We are still getting a couple of quotes together in order to submit them to State Farm.

I played my gave vs. Texas in mine and George’s Strange Brew College Football League on NCAA Football 2005. In order to have a challenge, I’m not playing Texas, but I’m playing Baylor, which is turning out to be very difficult. I’m currently 2-2 for the season and I was crushed by Texas 34-0, but I felt I held my own because it was only 3-0 with 1:00 left in the half. At half time it was 10-0. I panicked and abandoned my fairly good running game for my non-existing passing game because I felt I was falling behind. I should have held my ground and kept running the ball. Oh well. The first year of our franchise is always a “rebuilding year” for Baylor.

First Day of School

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Today was the first day of school for Abby. She is attending a new pre-school closer to the house and is now going Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 9:00 to 2:00 p.m. Which means she’s at school nine more hours per week than last year. It was mass chaos dropping her off this morning as there was no meeting with her teacher ahead of time and none of the parents knew were to go or what to do, including ourselves.

Afterwards, she said that she had a fun time at school. She said that they read a book named “Mickey’s Water” (we don’t know the actual title). Apparently it was a story about Mickey and Goofy going on a boat trip. There was an incident where a boy in class had Cheetos as his snack and Abby cried because she wanted Cheetos too. The teacher had to explain to her how everyone had different snacks. She also told us that she shared her Jell-O, which was the desert in her lunch.

Naked

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Not much happened today. Just getting ready for Abby’s first day of school tomorrow.

There was only one thing that happened today with the kids. While Jennifer was napping on the couch, she awoke to Emily yelling, “naked”. When she opened her eyes Emily had taken off all of her clothes and her diaper and was standing there buck naked. Funny that Emily can say a half dozen words and one of them is “naked”. Today’s picture is of Emily, who on her own, climbed up into her rocking chair with a blanket and started reading a book.

The Price of a Dollar

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The day started off with Jennifer going to the dentist. She chipped her lower tooth while eating the other day. She chipped the same tooth a could of years ago and she had it bonded. The dentist filed it down this morning, but Jennifer says that it’s still too sensitive. The only other option is to replace the tooth with a crown.

Jennifer called some contractors to take a look at our floor so we can get it all cleaned up. Both contractors are pretty much telling us that it’s not possible to match the old floor and the new floor. We just now have to get a quote from the contractors to turn over to State Farm so that they will give us more money.

My parents have gotten moved into their new house over the past weekend. The new house has a car port instead of a garage and their lawn mower got stolen over night. I guess it’s a house warming gift in reverse.

Today we saw a report on the news about how kids were collecting money to buy phone cards for soldiers over in Iraq. There was a shot of a jar full of dollar bills. When Abby saw it she started to explain to me how Mom uses dollars to get cookies and to let Abby ride on the horses at the mall. It’s interesting how she’s starting to understand how money works. I tried to explain that Dad has to go to work and that they give me dollars which I then turn over to her mother so that she can buy the cookies among other things.

Today’s picture is the twin to the picture of Emily at the airport watching the fountain. It is Abby sitting at the same fountain watching the water. She wasn’t as mesmerized as Emily. Abby starts back to school on Wednesday.

Jak II Completed

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This morning Jennifer went to a meeting at church about Sunday coffee and whether or not we are ever going to get help serving or not. Afterwards, she went and test drove a Toyota Sequoia.

Once the girls got up from their nap, we headed to Wal-Mart to get new tires for my truck. Since we are going to be trading in my truck soon, we decided to get some cheap tires since the ones that are on there now are nearly completely bald. However, Wal-Mart was out of tires that fit my truck. Oh well. I’m going to try Discount Tire Company tomorrow. After Wal-Mart we went shopping at the mall.

During the girls’ nap I finished playing Jak II. It was a fairly good game. I just get the feeling that it suffered from an identity crisis. While it’s predecessor was a pure platformer. Jak II tried to be more that it really was. There were so many different types of games that it got a little frustrating. There was a racing mini-game, you would ferry people around in floating cars, you had weapons to shoot enemies, and even a whack-a-mole type mini-game. Only about 50% of the game was an actual platformer. Another frustrating part of the game was that you would have to move around the city in order to get from one mission to another. This seemed a little excessive. It sounds like I didn’t like the game, but I did. The story was good and I can’t wait for Jak 3 to come out and to continue the story.

For my next game I decided to get away from the platform and console games and go with a first-person shooter (FPS) on the PC. I haven’t played an FPS since Return to Castle Wolfenstein and I haven’t been able to play one at home for a long time because I haven’t had a computer powerful enough to play. Now that I have my new laptop, it was time to get a game to take it for a test drive. Looking at Game Informer magazine I decided to go with Unreal Tournament 2004. So far it’s pretty fun. I got online and took on some people in a capture the flag game. I figured I would suck, but I was able to hold my own.

Today’s picture is from the trip to the beach. Abby is flying the kite all on her own.

Sand It Down and Stain It

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The day started off with me and Abby taking Aunt Marci to the airport. She called us later to tell us she had arrived back in Dallas safely.

When I got home, Jennifer went off to ProSource to get some samples of different types of flooring. When she got back we had received a check from State Farm for the repairs. At this point we don’t think that that is going to be enough to repair the floors to our satisfaction. State Farm wants us to hire someone to install the new floor, sand it down, and stain it so that it matches the old floor. It just seems like it’s going to be quite hard to get a new floor to look like the existing floor. Jennifer called around to various places to see if this process was even possible. We are going to get some estimate from a few contracters at the beginning of next week to see what they say.

To keep Jennifer’s mind off of the floor situation, we went car shopping after dinner. We test drove the Honda Pilot. I wasn’t all that impressed. It wasn’t big enough for our needs and it just seemed a little cheap, like an econmy SUV. We still have to pay off our Toyota Camry before we can get a new car, but we would really like to get it before we make the big Christmas drive back to Texas. We’ll see.

Today’s picture is of the kite that we flew on yesterday’s visit to the beach.

Night On the Town

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The morning started out with a trip to New Smyrna Beach with Aunt Marci. We all packed into the car early and we were there by 10:00. While we were there, we flew a kite. Today’s picture is of me helping Emily keep a hold of the kite. We all had fun sitting near the shore and letting the waves crash over us. Near the end, Abby and I went deep into the water and jumped in the waves together.

When we got back, Jennifer and I got ready for our night on the town. We took Marci up on her offer to watch the kids while we went out. We went to eat at Fleming’s Steak House in Winter Park. It was very good and very expensive. It’s one of those places where the steak is so good it melts in your mouth. We had a four course meal with a cheese tray as a appetizer, salad, steak with baked potato, and “Chocolate Lava” for desert. It was all very good and we were busting at the seams by the time we were done. It’s nice to sit and have a dinner which lasted for an hour an half without having the kids under foot. After dinner, we went to the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre and saw the musical Cats. I had seen it 14 years ago back in college, but Jennifer had never seen it. My big beef about Cats has always been that it doesn’t have a plot. It’s just a collection of songs about cats. We enjoyed the night out, but both of us just couldn’t get into Cats. Perhaps it’s because we are “dog people”.

The Matching of the Floor

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We didn’t do much today. It was a day of rest before we go to the beach tomorrow. In the morning we went to Winter Park and showed Marci where we attend church and then we went shopping along Park Avenue.

The water extraction guy showed up early in the morning to check how the floor drying was going. It was still wet directly underneath the air conditioner so he left most of his equipment and concentrated some of the blowers to the wet spot. In the afternoon the claims adjuster from State Farm showed up. He said that they were going to pay to redo the flooring in the hallway under the air conditioner and the kitchen. The problem with this is that with new wood in the kitchen, there will probably be a seam that would be visible between the kitchen and the living room. The claims adjuster said that if we have trouble matching up the new wood floor, that we should contact him. Jennifer went to ProSource and the guy there said that we would definitely have trouble matching the floor, so Jennifer is currently working on getting a quote together from ProSource to go ahead and do the entire floor over.

Today’s picture is of Abby sliding down one of the water slides from yesterday’s trip to “Mickey’s Water”.

Happy Birthday To Me

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Today was my 32nd birthday. We didn’t do much today. We mainly cleaned the house for Aunt Marci’s arrival. Jennifer and Abby made me a football cake. It was Abby’s idea for the cake to be shaped like a football. This day in history: 20 years ago I got my first computer for my birthday, a Commodore 64. Ironically I also received my first Electronic Arts game: Bill Budge’s Pinball Construction Set.

Abby went to one of the neighbor’s birthday party today. They were supposed to dress up as pirates, but Abby dressed up as a princess.

The fans drying the kitchen are driving us crazy because they are so loud. We’ve resorted to watching TV upstairs just to escape the constant noise. Today I equated it to Chinese water torture.