Category Archives: Emily

Empty Traps on the Roof

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On Wednesday we tried to find out how much money we could spend by bringing people to our house. First we called someone to take a look in our attic and find out what was doing all the scratching. He did his inspection and found two entrances in the roof. He suspected that it could be one of three creatures: a raccoon, a rat, or a squirrel. He put traps on the roof at each of the entrances and then put some rat traps in the attic. He’s going to come back next week to check it out. That night we heard the creature in the attic again, but that was the last time. We haven’t heard it again, but the traps are still empty…

That night was also the first night it had gotten cold enough to put on the heater, but guess what. It didn’t come on. So, after I messed around with it for a while, we decided to go ahead and call some else out for that. They came out that day and found a blown fuse and a control box which was burned out. He said that the control box had been burned out for quite some time, so he didn’t even know how the air condition unit was even operating. So we got that all fixed up and in total spent $650 split almost equally between the wildlife guy and the heater guy. Isn’t home ownership wonderful? There’s nothing like unwanted, unaccounted for expenses to brighten up your day.

Today we met our new neighbors. They moved in today to discover that our former neighbor had left his house a complete mess. We predicted this and felt sorry for them. Good news for us: they have two chidren, a 4-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son. The kids will be arriving tomorrow and I’m sure Abby and Emily will be ready to greet new friends.

Merry Christmas

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I hope everyone is having a safe Christmas out there. This was the first time in two years we didn’t drive back to Texas for Christmas. Having visited twice in the last year, we were tired of making the long 16 hour drive and it’s just too expensive for five plane tickets.

The morning started out with Abby coming into our room to inform us that Santa had come and given them gifts. Abby received a Lite Bright Cube. She was very happy and was amazed that Santa had written “To: Abby; From: Santa” and had drawn a picture of himself on side of the cube. Emily received a toy train set, which she just loves controlling the train and rearranging the tracks. Finally, Isabelle received a little car she can ride around on and a grocery cart with fake bread and fruit to push around.

Most of the afternoon was spent cooking for our Christmas dinner. We invited our neighbor Jane and her two sons, Lucas and Connor, over for dinner. Jennifer cooked a spiral ham, mashed potatoes, and rolls. Jane brought over some corn, carrots, and a desert cake. We had dinner and then the kids ran around and had fun.

Nana and Poppy Visit

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The past month has been pretty much a big preparation for Christmas. We’ve been shopping, going to the EA Holiday party, and shopping. This all lead up to Nana and Poppy flying in last Saturday. Allegiant Air now has a direct flight from Shreveport, LA to Orlando-Sanford, a smaller airport which is only about 15 minutes away from our house.

Abby was excited when Poppy said he was coming because she had a long list of movies for them to see. So, on Saturday, Poppy took Abby and Emily to see Flushed Away. They had a great time, even though there were no Nerds on a Rope at that movie theater. They came out of the movie singing “Roddie got flushed down the potty.”

On Sunday, we went out to eat at Peach Valley Cafe and took a tour of Baldwin Park, a nice neighborhood which is closer to downtown. We’ve been thinking about moving closer to downtown so that my commute times to work would be less. Also, Jennifer and I went to see the musical The Lion King, which was playing at the Bob Carr. It was okay, not stupendous. Jennifer said that she knew all the funny lines because she’s seen the movie a thousand times.

On Monday, we took Nana and Poppy to our new favorite pizza place, American Pie Pizza Company. We played video games and ate very good pizza. When we got home we decided to go ahead and open our Christmas presents so that we could share Christmas with Nana and Poppy. The girls got a whole lot of new toys and were running around playing with them the rest of the day.

On Tuesday, Abby, Emily, and Poppy went to see Happy Feet. While Jennifer and I escaped to go out and see The Holiday and then go out to eat with the kids in tow.

Early this morning it was time for Nana and Poppy to catch their flight home. We had to leave the house at 6:30 a.m. so that they could make their 8:30 a.m. flight. The girls enjoyed having them and Emily gave Poppy her ceramic hippo that she made at Abby’s birthday party. Poppy wrapped it tight so that it wouldn’t break and told her he would put it in his bike room.

Abby’s Sixth Birthday

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It’s hard to believe I have a daughter who is six years old, but it happened today. It was also a long day. With Abby’s Sunday School class, we boxed up Thanksgiving dinners for the Greater Orlando Food Bank. It was mass chaos as around 100 kids kindergarten through fourth grade walked in a line with boxes and put canned goods, stuffing, and other non-perishable food into card board boxes. They were taped up and will be sent to the food bank for distribution to the needy.

After Sunday school we headed into church where Abby sang in a kindergarten and first grade choir. Her group blew away the second through fourth graders, who you could barely hear. Abby’s group knew their song well and you could actually understand what they were singing as opposed to the other group. Sorry, older group, but the younger kids out sang you.

After Church we headed to the Cheesecake Factory for a birthday lunch for Abby. Abby went for the French Toast and bacon, while Emily went for the grilled cheese which was bigger than her head. I wish I would have taken a picture of it, but we didn’t think of taking the camera into the restaurant.

Finally, we celebrated Abby’s birthday at All Fired Up, a pottery painting place in Winter Park. Abby invited some of her friends from school. Abby painted a mermaid statue and Emily painted a hippo. Emily’s statue started out multi-color, but ended up gray as she kept adding multiple colors one right on top of the other. It will be interesting to see what color it comes out as once it’s gone through the oven. Abby had fun with all of her friends as we had cupcakes and sang Happy Birthday.

She opened up her presents when she got home and Nana and Poppy gave her a digital camera. This last picture is one Abby took of Isabelle with her new camera.

Halloween 2006

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The girls came up to work today for some trick-or-treating. On Halloween Tiburon allows everyone’s kids to come up and go from desk to desk and get candy. We traveled around the floor I work on and Madden’s floor and took away a truck load of candy. “The Three Princesses” we very cute running from cubicle to cubicle. Well, it was more like Abby and Emily running and Isabelle bringing up the rear.

After work we headed home for some trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. Since we had such a haul at my work, Jennifer only took the girls to a few houses while I stayed at home and handed out candy. After they were done, Abby and Emily were excited to help me pass out the candy. There wasn’t a very big turn out in our neighborhood. We only had about a dozen people come to the door for candy.

Parent’s Night Out

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On Monday Jennifer and I had our seventh wedding anniversary. We didn’t do much on Monday because Jennifer had her photography class. Also, for the first time ever, EA Tiburon had a “parent’s night out” on Friday. All the kids of employees came up to work and they had hired a company to watch all of them while the parent escaped for a night out of the town. They had crafts and watched Finding Nemo on our giant projection screen. We took all the girls up there and then Jennifer and I went to our favorite “date” restaurant: The Melting Pot.

Texas once again crushed Baylor, this year 63-31. It wasn’t looking good when Baylor jumped to a 10-0 lead, but I had faith that Texas would come back. there was no way that Baylor would beat us. The defense once again looked great. They stepped up and caused turnovers, two of which they brought back for touchdowns. Florida lost, so that should move Texas one step closer to a rematch with Ohio State in the National Championship.

Disney Camping 2006, Day 3

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Today we woke up and cooked breakfast at camp: bacon and eggs with tortillas. It was good but it’s been tough getting used to our new camping stove. It burns much hotter than our electric stove at home. The bacon ended up a little over cooked. Later in the day I tried to cook popcorn on the stove and ran into similar problems: burnt popcorn near the bottom.

Today was the first time since we got here that we turned on the truck. We headed down to International Drive to go play some putt-putt golf. Isabelle was quite upset when she had to give up her golf ball at the end. The lady at the place was nice enough to give her another one before we left.

After dinner at the camp, we headed over to Chip and Dale’s Campfire Sing-a-long. It’s actually the only thing that I know of at Disney which is free. We sang songs and watched the first 30 minutes of Robin Hood on a big projection screen before the girls started to fall asleep.

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Disney Camping 2006, Day 2

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Today we headed out to Animal Kingdom for the first time ever. We decided to go to a part of Disney we had never been before. It’s the last park that Jennifer and the girls haven’t been to. I personally haven’t been to MGM Studios.

We headed out to the Kilimanjaro Safaris first, which was okay. Most of Animal Kingdom is very similar to a zoo. Looking at different animals and walking through different terrain. It reminded us of the rain forest at Moody Gardens in Galveston.

The best parts of the park were the non-zoo-like parts: Expedition Everest, Kali River Rapids, and DINOSAUR. Abby and Emily liked the Kali River Rapids the best. Emily and I rode this one together and got soaked. Jennifer and I liked the Expedition Everest roller coaster the best. Believe it or not Abby rode Everest twice: once with Jennifer and once with me. She didn’t like how at one part the roller coaster went backwards, but after riding it once she was and old pro and had no problem riding it with me.

Disney Camping 2006, Day 1

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The girls have Fall Break this week, so we are spending it at Disney World camping out at Fort Wilderness. This is going to be the last year the girls have Fall Break. Too many people complained about the kids going to school too early in the year (July 31st this year) so they are doing away with it. Also, I don’t have my computer with me. I set it up so I can post Frenchville entries from my Treo mobile phone. So, I will have to post pictures later and forgive any mis-spellings.

We left the house around 9:30 and dropped Austin off at the kennel. He wasn’t too happy once he realized where he was going. He probably thought he was going camping with us. Poor Austin. It only takes about an hour to get down to Disney World from our house.

Once we got there it turns out we were placed almost in the same spot as last year. We set up the tent and situated our camp site by dragging everything out of the truck.

We rented a golf cart and then headed down to a beach area on the lake at Fort Wilderness. We were greeted by some hungry ducks and a “No Swimming” sign. How can you have a beach area with no swimming? So, we headed down to the pool instead. Isabelle was vary funny sticking her head in the water and then coming up laughing.

After swimming we took the bus over to Downtown Disney for some shopping and dinner. This was our first visit to that area and I have to say we weren’t impressed. It looked like any other part of Disney, nothing all that special. Universal Studio’s City Walk is much much better. We ate at the Rainforest Cafe, which is aptly named because it’s pretty much eating in the middle of a rain forest. However, I’ve never been in a rain forest with over-priced sub-par food.

We headed back to camp and tried to get the girls to calm down enough to go to sleep. It wasn’t easy and took almost an hour of threats before there was silence.