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.
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.
The first day of our Christmas trip back home has begun. We packed up the Sequoia last night and we were off at 7:30 this morning. We toured several Burger Kings, eating there for breakfast and lunch. Unfortunately neither one had a play gym for the girls to play in. The TVs in the truck worked until about five hours into the trip. Then, Abby pretty much kept asking “When are we going to get there?” over and over again.
The most interesting part of the trip was going through Pensacola, Florida, where Hurricane Ivan passed through a few months ago. The hurricane wiped out a bridge there and we were worried that we were going to have to go around, but it turns out that they already have some temporary bridge up so that you can cross. All the damage was on the East bound side so it didn’t effect us, but we will go over the temporary bridge on our trip back. The picture is from a news story on the bridge being wiped out by Ivan.
We are now in a hotel in Mobile, Alabama and we will be heading to my parents house in Shreveport, Louisiana tomorrow morning. We chose this hotel because it has an indoor pool. Right when we got here, we got our bathing suits on and went down to the pool. Right now, Abby and Emily are jumping on the bed and will hopefully start settling down soon to go to bed.
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.
Today we went over to the Carbone’s and watched the finale of Survivor. We had a great time, but poor Olivia, their daughter, had to play host to our two heathens. I’m sure they ran circles around her and all she could do is stand back and pray that all her toys would end up in one piece. Thanks Olivia for being such a good sport. Abby said that she had a good time while I was carrying her out to the car. Of course the two were dead asleep before we left their subdivision.
This season’s Survivor was good, but the finale was pretty predicable. Going into it we pretty much said that all Chris had to do was win immunity on the last two challenges and then take Twila to the final two and he would win a million dollars. That’s exactly what happened tonight. It was good that the show was very predictable because I didn’t have to worry about missing too much while I was checking out the girls to make sure they hadn’t killed Olivia.
We didn’t do much today. We started out with a trip to Peach Valley Cafe for breakfast and then came back to the house and did chores. It’s finally turned cooler here in Florida. High temperatures only got up into the 60’s today. All last week we were in the 80’s.
This evening Jennifer and I watched the film Runaway Jury. This movie was on my Netflix list because while developing Madden 2005 I heard that they had a reference to our game, actually The Madden Challenge, in the movie. That aside, the movie was very good. John Cusack plays a juror on a ground breaking case against a giant gun manufacturer. I turns out that he wanted to get onto this jury so that he could influence it either way to the highest bidder. Both Jennifer and I enjoyed the movie thoroughly and recommend it.
Only six more days until we leave on our big Christmas trip back to Texas.
After church we went in search for a Mongolian Bar-B-Q restaurant that the Yahoo Yellow Pages said was in Maitland, a suburb on the north side of Orlando near where we go to church. The pregnancy has made Jennifer very hungry lately and we missed the Mongolian Bar-B-Q restaurant that was in Houston that we used to go to. We looked and looked, but it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. We concluded that it was closed and ended up wandering up to Jason’s Deli, another restaurant that we miss from back in Texas. Once I got home, I confirmed that the restaurant was closed by calling the phone number and got a residence. That must suck to have a phone number of an old restaurant.
Congratulations to the Texas Longhorns who were able to beat out Cal to get into the Bowl Championship Series. The Longhorns will be playing Michigan in the Rose Bowl on New Years Eve and we will be watching the game from Jennifer’s parents house in Houston, since we will be on our big Texas trip during that time.
I finished up Dan Brown’s Deception Point last weekend. It was a very good book about political games during a Presidential Election when a meteor is found that contains proof of extra terrestrial life. The data on the meteor doesn’t add up and it may lead to a government cover up. I still stick to my description of Dan Brown being “Clancy-esque”, in other words kind of like Tom Clancy. I’ve given up on The Successful Manager’s Handbook. I read about half of it and just can’t pick it up again. It’s pretty much like reading a phone book. I’ve read several technical and business books and none have been as boring as this one. For my next outing I’ve started on a pretty big quest. I’m going to read the complete Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I read the first four books about ten years ago and Stephen King just finished out the series with the last three books just recently. Since it’s been so long, I decided I would re-read the first four and then go on to the last three and so I picked up a copy of The Gunslinger today.
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.
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?”
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.
Frenchville 