Category Archives: Emily

The Shoeless Wonder

Posted on by
Reply

The day was dominated in the search for shoes for our child who doesn’t like shoes: Emily. The kid has the magical ability to repel shoes right off her feet. We will put shoes on her before leaving the house, I buckle her into her car seat, get in my seat, glance back to make sure I really did buckle her in, and she has no shoes on. How is this possible? I’ve even tried putting her shoes on one extra notch in the buckle, but it is no use. They still pop off. When we were looking for shoes, there was a perfect pair, but they were laces instead of buckles. Jennifer and I were in agreement that there was no way we were going to get a shoe with laces. It’s just more work for us having to tie the shoes every time they pop off. We found two good pair of buckled shoes at the mall today which should suffice for the fleeting moments when Emily is actually wearing shoes.

We watched Moulin Rouge today. For those of you who don’t know, once you have kids, you’re time of going to the movies on a regular basis ends. That’s why we have a subscription to Netflix. We alternate each week on who picks the movies. This week was Jennifer’s movie. Anyway, that was definitely an interesting movie. The look of the film was unique and the use of modern music’s lyrics in a traditional musical format was different. It was a little jarring because you were sitting there trying to play “Name that Tune” instead of paying attention to the movie. Jennifer didn’t like it. She thought it didn’t live up to the hype that was going on about the movie when it was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

Today’s picture is of the shoeless one hanging ornaments on the tree. If you could see her feet in the picture, they would not have shoes on.

Happy Thanksgiving

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Shopping at the Outlet Mall

Posted on by
Reply

Today we all went down to one of the outlet malls in southern Orlando looking for some shoes for Emily and to do some Christmas shopping. We made the mistake of saying yes to Abby’s request to eat at Chuck E Cheese, so after every shop that we went into we would get, “Now we go to Chuck E Cheese?” We also had Abby driving Emily around in the umbrella stroller, which was pretty humorous. Abby would spin Emily around in circles which would make Emily giggle. Yes, after the outlet mall, we went to Chuck E Cheese.

Afterwards, Jennifer went to a Girl Scout meeting. She’s been helping out this troop which is meeting up at our church. I was left with the kids and I figured Oreo cookies would be a good snack for the girls. That was until Emily came out of the play room with her hands and face covered in black and Abby screaming, “Emily’s a mess!” in that “I’m telling Dad on you” voice.

Tonight I finished up Sly 2: Band of Thieves game. It was a pretty good platformer, but not as good as the original, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. The plot was good, but sometimes the missions started to feel the same and I never really felt challenged. I would only recommend the game if you like platformer games and you’ve played the original game. Next, I will be starting a new series of games, another platformer by the name of Ratchet & Clank. The latest game, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal has been getting good reviews, so I figured I would start with the original game since it was in the bargain bin for $20.

Today’s picture is of Abby opening presents at her party last Saturday.

Saying Cheese Amidst a Sea of People

Posted on by
Reply

I took the whole week off from work, but today they were having a company photo, so I went up there to participate in that. I missed our last company photo because we were still living in Austin at the time. All 250 or so employees were down in our lobby area while the photographer was up on the third floor balcony. We’ll have to wait and see if you can actually see me amidst a sea of people. We also video taped a “cameo” video for the beginning of our game. We all yelled “EA Sports! It’s in the game!” and cheered.

Jennifer went to the Toyota dealership to see how much money it was going to take to fix the scratch on the Sequoia. It turns out that it will be about the same amount that Jennifer saved by complaining to Rent a Jumper. They are going to have to repaint the area that was scratched. We are going to take the truck back in on Friday and leave it there so that it can get fixed back up.

I put the final touches on the Close Combat: Battle of the Bulge tribute site. This was the second game I worked on and the last while I was at Atomic Games. I’m slowly going through all the games I’ve worked on and getting tribute sites up. The next one will be Madden 2002.

Today’s picture is of Emily playing on the bounce house at Abby’s party.

Fly Away Balloon

Posted on by

Today Jennifer and Emily went to the store in order to get supplies for Abby’s birthday party this weekend. There, Emily got a balloon from one of the workers. When they got home they were outside and Emily let the balloon go. Emily started to cry and Jennifer tried to explain to her how the balloon flew away. They went inside to put the groceries away and came back outside thirty minutes later. Emily start pointing to the sky and saying, “Fly away balloon”. Jennifer thought it was pretty cute.

Typical Sunday

Posted on by
Reply

Today was a typical Sunday. We started out by going to church where it was our turn to serve coffee. Abby also helped serve punch. She held the cups while I poured the punch. Everyone was impressed that she was helping and her only response was, “I am four.” I had to keep correcting her that she wasn’t four until Friday.

When Emily got up from her nap, we found that she had stripped all of her clothes off and she also had taken all of her and Abby’s clothes out of the dresser and had them all dumped on the floor. Fortunately there were no “accidents” while she was sleeping naked.

We decided today that Emily is going to be a dentist. She will sit on your lap and make you open your mouth wide and inspect your teeth. She’s also gotten so that she can identify all areas of the face: eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and tongue.

Today’s picture is of Emily sliding down the giant inflated slide. Many people were amazed that Emily would go up and down the slide all by herself.

Week In Review

Posted on by
2

Sorry it’s been all week since I’ve made a new entry. I will have to make it up with this one. First off I would like to make the official announcement on Frenchville that we are now expecting a third child in June. Most of our families know already so this isn’t a surprise to many of our readers, but I thought I would go ahead and make an official announcement on Frenchville because the pregnancy is starting to have newsworthy events in our life. This week Jennifer has been queasy and not feeling well. I had to come home one day this week to help out because it got so bad.

Abby has been having a lot of fun at school as they have been singing Christmas songs. I know this because she will be sitting in her room singing Jingle Bells at the top of her lungs. I had to explain to her the difference between screaming and singing. Today’s picture is of Abby getting ready to slide down a giant inflatable slide at a Fall Festival we went to a couple of weeks ago.

We’ve been having a pretty bad problem with Emily this week. She has been taking off her clothes and diaper. We will come around the corner and she is running around naked. The wost part about it is sometimes her diaper isn’t empty when she takes it off and then we are cleaning poop off of the floor. Fun times had by all.

We lost in our softball game on Wednesday to the top team in the league. We were actually keeping up with them, but ended up losing in the last inning. I did fairly well. I was 2 for 4 and had some good plays, participating in a 6-4-3 double play.

The Texas Longhorns beat Kansas yesterday 27-23, but it wasn’t pretty. Once again the defense had to bail out the bad looking offense. They were down by 10 and had to come back and score two touchdowns in the last five minutes of the game.

First Florida Snake

Posted on by
Reply

Today was my first snake encounter since moving to Florida. Since Florida is essentially one big swamp I expected my first snake to happen sooner and not 21 months since moving here. Anyway, I was walking into our garage to put the garbage into one of our trash cans in there when I noticed a very tiny baby snake sitting there in my way. I picked up a broom and swept it out of the garage. It started heading for the front door and since I really didn’t want it heading toward the house, I picked up a shovel and encouraged it to get onto the shovel. I then carried it into the front lawn and let it go. Since it was a baby snake now I’m worried that his brother and sisters are all hanging out in my garage. Hopefully he was just lost and needed to be shown the way out.

Today’s picture is another one from Halloween. Abby and Emily look over their pile of candy that they received over the night.

Don’t Wake Til Sunrise

Posted on by
Reply

Ever since last week when the time changed it’s been horrible in the mornings because the girls have been getting me up around 5:30 in the morning. Back before the time changed this was pretty normal around 6:30. Last night Jennifer had a great idea to tell Abby that if it isn’t light outside that she shouldn’t get up and should go right back to bed. It worked like a charm and the kids didn’t get up until 7:00 this morning.

It finally started turning cooler and we had highs in the upper 70’s this weekend. It was so nice that Abby, Emily, and myself went to the park this afternoon. When we got there, all of Abby’s friends, Lucas, Connor, and Sarah, were already there playing. They had a great time running around. Emily is quite the monkey. She had me help her on the monkey bars, but she was pretty good at swinging her feet up and then hanging there upside down.

Trick-or-Treat

Posted on by
Reply

Jennifer and Abby spent the afternoon carving our two big pumpkins that we got the other day. Jennifer looked up some face templates on the Internet and carved out some great looking pumpkins. Abby was so excited that it was Halloween that she was bouncing off the walls.

Once it got dark, Abby and Emily donned their Rose and Mermaid Princess costumes. We were out about thirty minutes and got half way down our street before I started hearing “I’m tired”, “I’m sweaty”, and “my wings hurt”. Ah, the life of a Rose Princess.