For my birthday coming up I ordered a new phone, a Treo 750. I haven’t gotten it to work and I’m assuming that I have to get it fully charged. I’m going to let it charge up over night and hope for the best. Otherwise, it’s back to AT&T for another one. We also upgraded Jennifer’s phone to a Razr, since it was free.
I also played NCAA Football 08 at home for the first time tonight. It’s much better playing in at home than at work. It was the first time I got to sit down and play the Campus Legendmode. This is really cool. You get to create a player. I created a free safety #37 who played for Lindale High School (this is the position & number I played in junior high). The mode starts out with you playing through the state high school championship tournament. How well you play in the tournament determines the school you will play at in college. It was fun although the position of free safety isn’t all that exciting.
Today was the first day of Vacation Bible School for Jennifer and the girls. Even Isabelle got to go now that she’s two. Almost 400 people are attending and Jennifer said it was a sea of kids in the Family Life Center gymnasium up at church. Fortunately, Jennifer only sees a hand full of kids at a time and only for around twenty minutes until the next group comes in. Today’s picture is some of the decorations that were put up this weekend.
At work, I conducted the first team meeting for my new team. It was pretty much silent as I explained the plan for figuring out the type of game we were going to build. I also had to give some bad news to some guys who were going to moving off to a new team. Of all the things I don’t like about being a manager, it’s delivering bad news. It’s a fact of life that it’s part of my job and I know I have to do it and I don’t have a problem doing it. I just don’t like doing it. I guess no one really does, unless you are sadistic.
NCAA Football 08 comes out tomorrow and the Marketing department had some extra Xbox 360 Faceplates, so I snagged one for my 360. The requests for copies of NCAA from some of my friends started coming in this weekend. I plan on picking up my copy tomorrow. A pretty good commercial featuring the Texas Longhorns was sent around work today as well.
Today is Jennifer’s birthday and we spent it running around getting her presents and getting a cake. We started off the morning picking up a new bicycle from Target. Abby and Emily helped me pick it out. Abby said we needed to get a red one since that was Mom’s favorite color. We also got a baby seat for the back of the bike for Isabelle. We picked up a cake and some flowers and then presented all of what we found to Jennifer when she came home from shopping with Isabelle.
Later that evening Jennifer and I went out to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and then went to see a movie. Jennifer got a free desert since it was her birthday. She chose a banana cream pie, which was very good.
Today’s picture if from when we went putt-putt golf on our recent Disney vacation.
We had some really good Teriyaki Chicken Kabobs on the grill last night and then we headed over to watch Finding Nemo on the outside movie screen. We figured since Hercules was rained out the night before, we should at least try and see a movie. The girls made it most of the way through and said they were starting to get tired. We packed it up, but it was almost 10:00 so we headed over to the beach and watched the first few minutes of the fireworks that were being shot over at Magic Kingdom. Exhausted, the girls all passed out right when we got back to camp.You would thing they would sleep in, but no. Isabelle was back up at 7:00 and when she’s up, everyone’s up. We had some French Toast for breakfast and we’ve been hanging around camp this morning. Right now the girls are taking a nap. Maybe it’s still residual tiredness from the previous night.
The day started with a syrup dilemma. We were going to fix French Toast and the camp site, but we forgot the syrup. This lead to a change of plan and we headed over to the Trail’s End restaurant that’s on site for a breakfast buffet. I say it every time we come here: way over priced.
We didn’t feel like going to one of the water parks today so we headed out on the bus to one of the putt-putt courses, Fantasia Gardens. The only way to get there was to go to the Swan Hotel and we leaned a valuable lesson. When going from resort to resort, just get on the first bus you see and then catch a connecting bus to you destination. The directions we had said we had to go to Downtown Disney. When we pulled into Typhoon Lagoon for the second time we figured out what we did wrong.
On the way back from putt-putt, Isabelle fell asleep and now we are just hanging around camp waiting for her to wake up.
The morning started at 6:50 a.m when the kids started to stir. Overnight rain started to fall and we could hear it pelting the thin roof of the camper. We got up and started cooking eggs & bacon on the outside stove.
Afterward, we headed off for the other water park, Typhoon Lagoon. The campground is considered a resort and we were able to get in 15 minutes early and get a prime spot for our “home base”. We were also able to ride the family raft ride a few times with no line. Jennifer doesn’t like the ride because they make you work for your fun. You have to roll a giant inner tube up some stairs before you can start you ride. Isabelle started to get chilly so we decided to go back to the camp for some lunch.
Back at camp we had some sandwiches and now we are laying in the camper waiting for Isabelle to take a nap.
It’s been awhile since I’ve written on Frenchville and I apologize. Work has been super busy (as it usually is) and I just haven’t had the chance to write. I will try to change that habit moving forward.
Today was the first day of Summer vacation. Abby successfully navigated kindergarten and will be moving on to the 1st grade. To celebrate the end of the school year, I took a week off from work starting today and we pulled out the pop-up camper and headed to Disney for four days of camping.
This was the second time we took the new camper out. Our inaugural camping trip was three weeks ago on a long weekend. We wanted to take baby steps and it paid off. We had the camper fully put up with beds made and awning out in just under an hour. It took us twice as long last time. Jennifer has also won the job for pulling the camper in. She picked up the camper last night and pulled it into our driveway unassisted; then today, she pulled it into the camping slip in one try (I can’t say the same when I tried pulling in a couple weeks ago).
After setting up camp we headed out for a few hours at Blizzard Beach, one of Disney’s two water parks. When we were here a couple of weeks ago, we decided to get season passes for the water parks. The plan was to come camping several times over the summer and visit the water parks.
Last week I was at the book store and I picked up the book Campfire Cooking. It looked like a pretty cool cookbook with chapters entitled “On a Stick” and “Wrapped in Foil”. Tonight’s dinner came from the chapter “In a Skillet” and was called “Cowboy Casserole”. It wasn’t too bad. It consisted of ground beef, bacon, and beans. You placed biscuits on top and shut the lid. When it was done you remove the biscuits and ladle the concoction on top. Our charcoals didn’t seem to be very hot and the biscuits didn’t get all the way done, but it was still good.
Right now we are trying to get the girls to settle down and go to bed. In the distance you can hear the fireworks going off from either Epcot or Magic Kingdom. I will report more tomorrow on our adventures.
This year Jennifer’s parent drove over from Texas to visit for Easter. They drove because Jennifer bought a photography set from someone over the Internet who lives in San Antonio. The lady didn’t want to ship it so Jennifer convinced her brother to pick it up and her parents then carted here. Tomorrow they are heading back and they are taking our old crib and a few other baby items to Jennifer’s sister, Christina.
On Friday, Jennifer had her first three customers for her new business. She’s currently giving free sitting fees from some of her friends from church and they took her up on her offer. She was also shooting some of them for a candidate for her first advertisement which is going into a local kids circular.
On Saturday, we did the same thing we’ve done for the four years we’ve been here in Florida: we went to the church’s Easter Egg Hunt. This year Jennifer had a hand in setting it up so she had to leave early that morning while her parents and I made our lunches for the picnic. The event went off without a hitch. This was the first year Isabelle was old enough to hunt for eggs and she had no trouble figuring out what needed to be done. Emily got to ride a horse, so she was quite thrilled with everything.
The next morning the Easter Bunny arrived and brought the girls each an Easter Basket filled with candy and toys. They were so taken by the baskets, they didn’t notice all the eggs that the Easter Bunny had hidden around the Living Room. They finally caught on and went around the room finding the eggs. However, they did a pretty bad job. We were finding them all day long.
Jennifer has been getting on to me for a while to update Frenchville. Especially, since I had a Christmas tree at the top. Well, it’s now changed. We’ve been pretty busy for the past month, so I guess I will do a month in review.
For me, it has just been work, work, work. We are starting to wrap up our planning phase for the game I’m working on and we will start the actual construction of the code and making of the art assets. I can’t write any details on the web, but hopefully soon EA will put out a press release and then I will write a little bit more about it.
Jennifer has been getting more and more stuff for her photography studio (a.k.a. our front office). She has lights and a couple of sets she’s is working on. She’s been taking test photos of the girls in order to get the lighting just right. She will be starting to take photos of some of the neighbor kids in order to practice.
Abby has been doing fine in school. I’m amazed at how much they learn in Kindergarten. She has spelling words she has to learn. I don’t remember having to take spelling tests way back then. Of coarse, I don’t even remember Kindergarten, but oh well. She’s been struggling with writing out the numbers 11 – 99. She sometimes gets them reversed. We’re working on it often.
We had sad news a couple of weeks ago. Jennifer’s Grandmother, Helen Musselman, passed away. Her funeral was the following weekend, so we had to buy plane tickets and meet Jennifer’s parents in Muskegon, Michigan. The high temperature the day we arrived was 17 degrees and snow was on the ground. We flew into Grand Rapids and then had to rent a car and make a forty minute drive to Muskegon. We stayed in a hotel there in Muskegon and had the funeral on Saturday. On Sunday, we dove over to Jennifer’s other grandparents and visited with them and all of her aunts and uncles. Abby and Emily had fun playing in the snow, having never seen it before. It was tough having to always bundle up when we went outside. We were happy to get back to the warm weather in Florida.
Two weeks ago we celebrated Emily’s fourth birthday party at Pump It Up. It’s a warehouse type place which is filled with blow-up bounce houses. We thought this was appropriate since when Abby turned four we rented a bounce house for the back yard. Anyway, Emily had a couple of their friends from school show up and a lot more neighbors and friends from church. They had fun bouncing around for and hour and then having cake. Jennifer made a special horse cake just for Emily’s birthday.
Frenchville 