Category Archives: Isabelle

On the Road

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With the coming of a new job at TimeGate began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. Today I hit the road back to Houston leaving behind Jennifer and the girls in Orlando. A man and his dog traveling the country side looking for a good cup of joe. Actually, me and Austin we were trying our fastest to get out of Florida and back to Texas. It was sad leaving everyone back in Orlando and I will miss them. Hopefully the house will sell soon for several reason beyond the obvious: being reunited with the family.

First, the house keeps breaking. No major breaks, just little annoyances, which keep digging me deeper in debt. We replaced the carpet and the blinds. Yesterday our kitchen faucet broke and we had to get a plumber out to install a new one. I tried to do it, but the connections were way up behind the sink and I couldn’t get the wrench to twist because of the tight quarters. At first we tried Roto Rooter, but once they got to our house and told us how much it was going to cost, Jennifer turned them away and called a local plumber. They fixed us up and it didn’t break the bank for something so simple.

Second, the neighbors are driving us crazy between our across the street neighbor, Jane, who pealed out backward from the bus stop today; and the old wind bag behind us who loves yelling at the girls telling them to be quiet. The Wind Bag decided to pay us a visit today to tell us what she thought of our kids. Now granted Emily can shriek at a pitch that can hit your spinal cord just right and make your eye twitch, but coming over to my house and complaining that the kids are too loud at 3:00 in the afternoon. What’s the home owners association going to do about that? Are they going to start advertising that our subdivision is not a family-friendly place to live? I doubt it. Wind Bag, go find a nice retirement community, there’s plenty of them. It’s Florida after all.

Universal Day

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Today the company I work for, EA-Tiburon, bought everyone tickets to Universal Studios Florida. It was foggy and misty this morning, but we decided to head out anyway. I had visited Universal once before, but this was the first time for Jennifer and the girls. Overall, everyone had fun. However, it wasn’t anything that you couldn’t see at one of Disney’s parks. The one exception being the Revenge of the Mummy, which is one of the best roller coasters I’ve ridden. We ended up riding the following rides: Jimmy Neutron, Shrek 4-D, Twister, Revenge of the Mummy, Jaws, Woody Woodpecker’s Nuthouse Coaster, Fievel’s Playland, and E.T. Adventures. We had to explain to Abby how each ride was based on a movie, since she had never seen Twister, Jaws, or E.T. We told her it might be a while before she can see Jaws, but we would try and add E.T. to our Friday movie night. Isabelle was quite funny during the Jaws ride. She kept burying her face into my side each time the shark would pop out. Everyone kept saying “awww” every time she would do it. By the afternoon the fog had burned off and the sun turned the park into a sauna. After that we only spent a few more hours because we all were starting to get cranky.

One other event of note is that we’ve been potty training Isabelle over the past week, starting last Monday. So far it’s looking like success. She now tells us when she needs to go instead of us asking every hour or so. It has been two days straight of her staying dry and she even survived the trip to Universal Studios and stayed dry all day. This is quite a momentous occasion for me as a parent. This now marks the end of seven straight years of changing diapers. Yea!

Austin: Menace To Society

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A week ago Austin bit Emily on the arm when she fell on his back. Since this is obviously as sensitive area for Austin since he had back surgery, his instincts took over and he ended up leaving one puncture on the inside of Emily’s arm. We would have thought nothing of it, but the wound started to show signs of being infected. So, we decided to take her to the doctor so we could get some antibiotics. Unfortunately, when a dog bites someone, they have to report it to the county and they did and we got a visit from animal control. Since it was our dog biting someone in our family, Austin had to be “quarantined” inside our own house for a week. This was a pretty simple punishment since he spends 99.9% of his time inside our house anyway. Today the county called us back and said that the quarantine had been lifted and Austin was a “free dog”.

Also today was Emily and Isabelle’s Preschool Christmas Program. We were treated to the likes of “Jingle Bells” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”. For Isabelle, this was her first performance. She was a little shy, but she did well during “Jingle Bells”. Emily is an old pro and sang really well. After the singing, we all had milk and cookies to eat and Santa came out and visited, giving all the girls and boys presents. Both Emily and Isabelle received books about Christmas.

Over in Abby’s First Grade class, it was dress up like a fairy tale character day. Over the weekend we bought some red felt and Jennifer made a cape and hood so that she could be Little Red Riding Hood. She had a basket and put some plastic food in there to complete the outfit.

Piecing Together Money

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Apparently money is still good even when it is cut into very very small pieces. For Halloween, Isabelle’s great-grandparents sent her a $10 bill. Not really knowing the value of money, but knowing that it does cut just like paper, Isabelle proceeded to cut the money using some scissors into itty bitty pieces. Jennifer actually did a good job of finding all the pieces on the floor and table and taped it all back onto a blank white piece of paper. She took it back to the bank today and they exchanged it for a new $10 bill. This time we will keep it away from the scissor wielding cutie pie.

8th Anniversary

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Today was our 8th wedding anniversary. Since, we pretty much celebrated last Saturday, Jennifer decided to go on a “ladies night out” with some of her friends from church to make chocolate. Thus, leaving me to put the girls to bed. Somehow this doesn’t seem fair, but Tuesday nights is usually softball night so I guess I can’t complain. She usually puts them to bed on this night.

Yesterday we found out that Isabelle is going to be on the cover of the November edition of the Orlando Kids’ Directory. Jennifer has started advertising in the magazine and she sent the publisher a few photos so that they could put together an advertisement for her. They like the picture of Isabelle in the spaghetti strainer so much, they are going to make it the cover. Hopefully, this will bring in some business. I will post the final cover once it’s released.

Dentist Round Up

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Abby on new background web

Today was dentist day for all the French girls. Even Isabelle made her first visit to the dentist. Isabelle was excellent. She watched her big sister Emily sit in the dentist chair and get her teeth looked at and cleaned. Then, she climbed on up just like the big girl she thinks she is and opened up her mouth real wide.

For Abby there was question on whether or not we wanted the dentist to pull one of her teeth that had been loose for a while. Abby ended up to scared to have it done, so we just decided that it would evenutally just come out on it’s own.

Long Week

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This past Sunday Jennifer left for a photography conference near Fort Meyer, Florida, leaving me with the kids for five days. This is definitely the longest I’ve ever had to take care of the girls on my own. So, I took off the week from work and played “Mr. Mom”. Everything went okay. We went shopping and played a little Guitar Hero II, but all and all it was a pretty normal week, except I was doing everything that Jennifer generally does. This was a rough time to take off from work as we are transitioning from our design phase into our production phase on the project I’m working on. I was able to push things along over e-mail, but I still felt out of the loop.

Emily on new back ground web

When Jennifer got home, she used some of the new lighting techniques she had learned to create a few great pictures of the girls. She also received a new background. She’s starting to get really good at photography. She now just needs to start getting more clients. She’s taken out more ads in the local newspapers. Hopefully, that will pick up some regular clients. She also learned a few marketing techniques at the conference that she’s considering doing.

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This weekend I worked on giving Frenchville another face lift. You’ll notice the new theme, but there’s a few more new features as well. In the right panel you will notice “On This Date in Frenchville History”. This section will show previous entries over the seven years of Frenchville. In order to get this to work correctly, I had to import all of the older entries from November 2000 – October 2004. I have most of them in, but I’m still working on getting them all in. I think this is a pretty cool feature. You will also notice, that I have links to Flickr. I’m going to start putting all of my pictures up there so that you can see all the pictures I take, not just the ones I’m posting on the web site.

Poor Austin

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When we got up this morning, Austin had gotten worse. He now couldn’t move his hind legs at all. For all practical purposes, he was paralyzed. After calling the Vet, Jennifer took him back in. It turns out it was a slipped disc in his back. He needed immediate surgery in order to fix it or it would get progressively worse until he couldn’t use his hind legs at all. Jennifer took him to another vet office that specialized in canine neurosurgery. Talking to the doctor, she said that the surgery has a 90% success rate. They took a CAT scan of the area and took him immediately into surgery. Afterward, she called us at home and told us that the surgery went well and that the problem was exactly what they thought it was. They are going to keep him tomorrow and he might be able to come home on Saturday. Otherwise, he would have to wait and come home on Monday. We all wish Austin a speedy recovery.

Today’s picture is from Isabelle’s first day of school.

Isabelle’s First Day of School

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Today was Isabelle’s first day of school. She started 2 year-old pre-school and she will be going Mondays and Wednesdays. I’m not sure why they started  her a week before Abby and Emily start school, so Jennifer said it was kind of weird around the house having the two older girls, but the younger one was off to school. Her teacher said that she did good and that they learned the song “Wheels on the Bus”. If you sing it to her she gets this big smile on her face and rotates her arms around in a circle. It’s pretty amusing. In today’s picture she’s carrying her lunch kit getting ready to leave for school.

On sadder note, Austin injured himself yesterday going down our stairs. He was in pain all last night and Jennifer took him to the Vet today. They are not sure what it is, but he seems to have pulled something in his leg. They were thinking it was a slipped disc in his back, but the x-rays they took didn’t show anything. So, we are giving him pain pills and we are going to see if it gets any better. He looks pretty pathetic because he really can’t walk anywhere. He sits in his bed with this sad look on his face.

Back to the Daily Grind

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We made it home all in one piece. Sunday was spent cleaning all the stuff that needs to go back into the camper. We packed up in the morning, so there was still dew on the camper. Because of this, when we get home, we have to open it back up in the drive way and let the sun dry it the rest of the way before we pack it up and take it back to storage. So, we did that and I had to get the lawn mowed.

Today it was back to work for me. Jennifer picked up Austin, who we left at the kennel while we were camping. Jennifer also went and got her hair done. She goes to a hair stylist at the RDV Sportsplex, a private gym across the street from where I work. She likes it because she can drop the kids off at the kids gym across the hall for a couple of hours while she’s at the hair stylist. It would be great to take them there more often, but memberships to the RDV are too expensive. EA offers subsidized memberships for me and Jennifer, but they don’t for the kids. Not sure why when there’s more and more people with families working at EA. Hopefully they will change that one of these days.