Category Archives: Family

Frenchville Down

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The service provider which hosts Frenchville was down Wednesday and Thursday. We tried to call the customer support number, but there was no answer. Jennifer and I feared the worst: they went out of business. The wost part of it was that I was stupid enough not to have a backup of all the text from two years of Frenchville (I have all the pictures backed up). We breathed a big sigh of relief when it all came back up today. I also immediately backed up all the text.

Our e-mail was down for two days as well, so if any of you sent us an e-mail you might want to re-send it, but it appears we didn’t miss any.

We are going to stick with this provider for now since we have a year contract, but if this happens again we are just going to cut our losses and go with another one. But one the contract is over, we are definitely going to be switching.

My Poor Xbox

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Today my Xbox died. The past couple of days it’s been locking up randomly and today it finally gave up and just flashed some red lights on the front when I tried to turn it on. I called customer support and they had me send it back in to get repaired. I heard a rumor on the Internet that some of the early Xbox 360 models were overheating because a heat sync on the graphics chip wasn’t installed properly. Oh well, it’s coming up on a year, so I was afraid that my warranty was going to expire soon. So, I made sure and called them today.

Today Abby went on a field trip with Jennifer for Jennifer’s photography class. They went to Rollins College to take some pictures of their unique architecture. Jennifer had been enjoying the class and has learned a lot. Her ultimate goal is to start her own business taking children’s photographs. Today’s picture is one of Abby posing for Jennifer while on their field trip.

The Longhorns rolled all over Oklahoma State tonight. Winning easily: 36-10. I was worried more about this game than I was against Texas Tech. Fortunately, Texas didn’t let OSU get ahead like they did Nebraska and Tech. They started out strong and kept it up the whole game.

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.

Week of Birthdays

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Today we went to a former neighbor’s birthday party. I say former neighbor because they used to live two houses down from us, but moved over into another neighborhood. They have a daughter who was turning four and she used to play with Abby and Emily. It was a “princess” party, so Abby and Emily got dressed up in their princess outfits and ran around with the other princesses around the kingdom. Activities included getting your fingers painted, as seen in today’s picture. Fun was had by all. I could tell because of the random high pitched squeals, which is typical of a princess party, I suppose.

It was an active week for birthdays. Abby had a classmate have a party on Wednesday and Emily had a classmate have a party last Sunday. This has left us wondering what we are going to do for Abby’s sixth birthday, which is coming up real quick.

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 4

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We are finally home. We had breakfast at the camp and then packed it all up. It barely fit back into the truck and I was slamming the hatch back down. Jennifer then spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning it all the Disney dirt off the bottom of the tent and getting all the dew off of everything. I spent the afternoon washing all the clothes.

I’ve put some pictures from our trip back into my previous three entries.

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.