Category Archives: Family

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.

New Tires

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Got new tires from Discount Tire Company for my truck today. Instead of waiting at the place, Jennifer picked me up and I went and test drove the Toyota Sequoia. Much nicer than the Honda Pilot that I test drove the other day. The Sequoia drove much more like my Blazer, but with a little better acceleration, more like our Camry. I liked it and hopefully we can get one before the end of the year for our trip to Texas.

Tonight, Jennifer went out to eat to The Cheesecake Factory with a bunch of the wives from work. She had a pretty good time visiting and getting away from the kids for a while.

Today’s picture is from when we picked up Marci from the airport the other day. There is a fountain inside the airport and Emily was mesmerized by the water.

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”.

Mickey’s Water with Aunt Marci

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Today we left Emily at a friend’s house and Jennifer, Marci, Abby, and myself went to Blizzard Beach, also known as “Mickey’s Water” to Abby. We all had fun and are very tired from being there all day. The only place I got sun burned was the tops of my feet. Of all the places to forget to put sun screen. Abby did a very good job waiting in line. For anyone who knows her, she usually isn’t very good standing still for long periods of time. We were waiting in a very long line for a giant slide in a family sized inner tube, when the ride broke down right as we were about to get on. Abby was a trooper and waited diligently. Before long we were sailing down the giant slide. Today’s picture was taken at the end of that ride by the people in the park waiting to snap your picture.

NFL Free Agent Once Again

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What is Ricky Williams thinking? I figured I had several more years as a Dolphins fan before I would be moving on to another player from the University of Texas. However, Ricky dropped a bombshell on the NFL today by announcing his retirement. As a result, I am once again an NFL team free agent. For those of you who do not know the reason behind me being a Miami Dolphins fan, the only reason is Ricky Williams. Originally, I was a Houston Oilers fan. I grew up in Houston and we would go to games in the Astrodome back in the “Love ‘Ya Blue” days of Earl Campbell and Dan Pastorini. Well, in 1997 the Oilers picked up shop and moved to Tennessee to eventually become the Titans. From that point I became an NFL team free agent. I went back to my University of Texas roots and followed a player up from the team to start their NFL career. It happened that that player was Ricky Williams. I had season tickets the year he broke the single season college rushing record and saw him break it on the last game of the season against Texas A&M. The idea was that I would follow a UT alumni for their NFL career and then, when they retired, I would go back to UT and follow another kid as they left UT and entered the NFL draft. To my surprise that is going to start all over again today only five short years since it began with Ricky Williams. So, for this year I will have no NFL team that I will root for. I will be watching UT games with more attention trying to pick out the player I will follow next. I contemplated becoming a Detroit Lions fan and following Roy Williams who just graduated last year, but I like taking a year off. Today’s picture is from a preseason game that I went to in Jacksonville to see the Dolphins play.

On family related news, Aunt Marci made into town fine. We picked her up from the airport today and I showed her where I worked. She was impressed with Tiburon’s building. She stated that it must be a fun place to work.

The water extraction guys came back to take a look at how well the floor and walls are drying. They are still a little damp and the fans are still here blowing away. The Chinese water torture continues.