Category Archives: Isabelle

Isabelle and the Duck

Posted on by
Reply

Sorry it’s been a while again. I just can’t seem to get back into writing on Frenchville. This week we started our finaling period on NFL Head Coach. That’s where we stop working on new features that will be in the game and just work on fixing bugs. That’s also the time where I put in the most hours. So, sounds like a good time to take a week off. I was approaching my limit on PTO, so my boss told me to take a week off so that I don’t hit the limit. I can’t complain with that. So, I’ve been home since Thursday and I don’t go back to work until next Thursday. You would think that we would get out and do stuff, but we’ve really just been hanging around the house. We did go play putt-putt golf on Thursday, but that’s the extent of our excursions.

The terrible three’s have arrived from Emily. She just doesn’t listen to what we are saying. She is just off doing what ever Emily wants to do. Jennifer and I are reaching our wits end. Today she pushed Isabelle over and she bumped her head. Emily ran for her life once Isabelle started screaming.

Speaking of Isabelle, she has really been getting around the house. She crawls pretty much every where now and can walk down the edge of the couch. Yesterday she’s started wheeling herself around in this walker we have. We’ve been using it for weeks now, but it hasn’t been until recently that she’s noticed that she can roll herself around. Today’s picture is actually a movie. It’s suggested for high bandwidth Internet connection because it’s almost 8 MB. Isabelle has a special interest in this plastic duck.

I finished The Da Vinci Code yesterday. It was pretty good. I guess I was expecting much more since the book was so popular. To tell you the truth, Angels and Demons was better. I can’t wait to see the movie. Unfortunately a preview for the movie spoiled the ending of the book for me. I kept waiting for this one particular scene to happen and guess what? I happened at the end of the book. Overall, though, I thought it was a good book. I’ve now read all of Dan Brown’s books. I really like him as an author and I plan on reading anything he writes in the future. Now I’m back to the Dark Tower series again: Wizard and Glass.

Chicken Pox Baby

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been an interesting week in the French household. First, Isabelle has had chicken pox all week. She must have picked it up from the church nursery since that’s the only place she goes besides home. We started noticing red spots appear on her just over a week ago. At first we thought it was bite marks from a bug. We washed all of her bed linens, but once we took her to the doctor, it was confirmed: chicken pox. Fortunately Abby and Emily have been immunized against it. Poor Isabelle really didn’t know what was wrong. The worst part was a fever that she had a few days ago. On the bright side, she doesn’t have the hand/eye coordination in order to scratch, so it didn’t really spread that much. It’s pretty much over now. She has a few scabs here and there. Me and Abby gave her the name “Chicken Pox Baby”.

On Friday, Emily was discovered with scissors in one hand and a clump of her own hair in the other. She apparently decided it was time for her to have a haircut. She pretty much clipped away all of her hair on one side. We took her to the salon yesterday in order for them to clean it up. In order to even it out they pretty much had to cut her hair short. Jennifer thinks she looks like a boy, but I think it’s very stylish. One of the neighbors said she looked like a blonde Winona Ryder.

Month in Review

Posted on by

Everyone has been telling me how much they enjoyed my Rose Bowl coverage. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back into the habit of writing on Frenchville. Things are starting to settle down, so hopefully I can get back into the routine.

One of the first things that happened once we got back was Emily’s 3rd birthday party. We rented out The Little Gym and we were really worried if anyone was going to show up. We ended up inviting some of Abby’s friends in order to round out the group. We only had one out of Emily’s six classmates show up. For the cake, Jennifer made a new creation: a group of cup cakes which had candy lions, zebras, tigers, and elephants. They ran around the Gym for two hours and had great fun. It has been though planning Emily’s parties since they are so close to Christmas. This year was no different.

At work I moved on to a new product tentatively entitled NFL Head Coach. It’s a new NFL franchise we are creating at Tiburon that is a strategy game where you attempt to build and manage a football team. I’ve come in to manage the Gameplay and Online aspects of the game. The game will be available in stores spring 2006 for the Playstation 2, Xbox and PC.

A couple of weeks ago Tiburon paid for everyone’s family to go to Disney World’s Epcot. The girls had fun going to a park that we don’t normally go to. (We usually go to Magic Kingdom.) We went from “country” to “country” decorating a mask at each one. I finally got to ride Mission: Space, which is only at Epcot. It’s a simulator ride which really makes it feel like you are taking off in a space shuttle. It was pretty cool. However, I was feeling a little dizzy when I got off. It spins you around like you are in a centrifuge, but you can’t tell it since you are locked into a simulator room.

A week ago last Wednesday Electronic Arts laid off 5% of their work force. It was a cost cutting move that typically happens during what we call a “transition year” (the time between generations of hardware). 35 people were laid off from Tiburon. It was sad because this was the first time that we had to go through this. Last transition (1999-2000) the lay offs happened at other studios because Tiburon was so small. Now that we are approaching 600 employees, it was time to downsize our work force. Although I wasn’t personal friends with some of the people that got laid off, I knew some of them and, like I said, it was sad to see them go.

This weekend I took the plunge and had laser eye surgery. I went in Friday morning. It was really easy there wasn’t much pain at all. I could tell a difference right after the surgery. I went home and slept for several hours and I could see much better. It’s quite amazing. My vision isn’t 100%, but it’s getting better every day. There were two strange events that went on. First, a very tall lanky guy comes up to you and says in a real calm voice, “Dr. Filutowski is going to be your surgeon today. He requests that everyone have a massage to relax you for your surgery. Would you care for a massage?” That was weird, but a guy who works on NFL Head Coach who got the surgery two weeks ago pre-warned me of the event. The other strange thing is that immediately after the surgery, Dr. Filutowski has you give a “thumbs up” and they take your picture with him. It’s framed and given to you when you leave. Besides the two strange events, I’ve been really happy with my surgery so far. I was amazed how easy it was.

Finally, Isabelle has made a lot of progress over the month. During Christmas vacation she was sitting up on her own. Now she crawls all over the house and will stand up against any kind of furniture that will let her. At first she would stand up and then she couldn’t get down, but now she’s fully mastered getting up and down. This is the first time we’ve had a baby so young that is mobile in a big area. When Abby and Emily were mobile we were living in apartments and we could section off the areas of the apartment. Isabelle is going from room to room getting in trouble. Abby has been a great help watching over her and moving her from room to room when necessary.

Weathering the Black Friday Storm

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday we realized we were almost out of diapers for Isabelle and knew we were in trouble. First, the stores were closed yesterday because of Thanksgiving. Second, tomorrow was the media named “Black Friday” where the hordes of shoppers flood the stores.

So, we roughed the storm and headed to the store. First we had to head to Old Navy because Abby has been having a lot of pants problems. She’s tall and skinny, so all the pants we buy her fall down and she whines a lot it. Old Navy had pants with adjustable waste bands and they were only $10, so we had to go there first.

What was going on inside of Old Navy could only be turned a mad house. There were tons of people with a huge line waiting to get checked out. We found a couple of pairs of the pants that we were looking for and then headed to the front of the store. If you have young kids, you will know that they are incapable of waiting in a line, especially one of this size. So, I offered to wait in the line while Jennifer and the kids headed to Target. I have to hand it to Old Navy, though. Even though the line was long, they had every register open and they were pumping people through the line at a fast rate. Kudos to them for having it well organized with one line which approaches all the registers. That’s much better than having eight different lines that you have to guess which one is moving faster.

We got into target and shied away from the toy department, where all the chaos was. (Actually, I dived in there solo and picked up Call of Duty 2 for my Xbox 360, a quick in and out operation). We got our diapers to keep Isabelle’s hiney dry.

I knew the Aggies would give us a run for our money, but the Longhorns went to Kyle Field and defeated A&M 40-29. The Longhorns did a great job of not panicking when the Aggies went up by a point a couple of times in the game. They just stuck to their game plan while the Aggies’ trick plays started wearing thin. There’s one more game that the Longhorns have to win in order to make it to the Rose Bowl: The Big 12 Championship, which is next Saturday in Houston. Right now it’s unknown who the Longhorns will be playing. The Colorado Buffaloes lost today so if the Iowa State Cyclones win their game tomorrow, then we will be playing them. Both teams are un-ranked, so I’m hoping that the Longhorns will be victorious and the Rose Bowl tickets that I have won’t go to waste.

Today’s picture is from Abby’s Birthday party again: all the kids playing on the new play gym.

Camping at Disney World

Posted on by

We got back from our big camping trip at Disney World yesterday. All the girls did great sleeping in a tent for three nights. We arrived on Thursday afternoon and setup our camp. Once we got to the campground, it became evident quickly that we were going to have to rent one of the electric carts to get around the property. Everything was so spread out and there was no way we were going to be riding the bus everywhere. I swear that it’s planned that way. How can Disney squeeze every dime out of their visitors. That night, we then went to Mikey’s Bar-B-Q, which was on the campground property. Abby and Emily had fun dancing around with the Disney characters, but the food was pretty crappy. It was just hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, and ribs.

The next day, we got up early and headed out to the Magic Kingdom. It’s just a boat ride away from the campground. We rode several of the rides until lunch and got back on the boat to ride to our camp to eat and then for Emily and Isabelle to take a nap. After that, we went back to the theme park and rode more rides and watched the fireworks show, which was amazing. All the fireworks are timed to the music that is playing. Once we got back to the camp site, the kids were wiped out and went right to sleep.

On Saturday, we mainly just stayed around the campground, but in the morning we got back on the boat and went to one of the other resorts to have “Breakfast with the Characters”. Abby and Emily got to have breakfast with Mikey, Minnie, Goofy, Chip, and Dale. They had fun, but Emily was scared to have her picture taken with the characters. She would just cower in her seat when you asked her to pose with them. When we got back to the campground, we went to the pool for a little bit where I got to seem Abby and Emily’s new swimming skills. Both of them did really good, although Emily needs to work on it some more.

Sunday, we packed up camp and headed home. One thing that’s nice about camping at Disney was that we were only forty-five minutes from home. That allowed us to rest and recover from the trip for the remainder of the day.

Restaurant Test

Posted on by
Reply

I was correct. I got the call from work today that a major bug that was found with our game. So, I have to go back into work tomorrow in order to get that issue resolved. Hopefully it won’t be too long and I can get out of there at a regular time.

Hurricane Wilma was pretty weak in our area. There were just a few dead limbs down on the ground at that’s about it. Once it blew through the skies were blue and it turned real cold (for Florida).

Jennifer braved the storm to take Isabelle to the doctor. The diagnosis was an ear infection and we got some antibiotics and are keeping her nose clear. Hopefully she gets over it soon. She sounds so pathetic when she coughs.

I was able to get a reader for my camera’s memory card so I’m now able to extract my pictures. Today’s picture is of Isabelle from a couple of weeks ago (before she got a cold).

At work they raffled off the right to purchase an Xbox 360, since they will probably be in short supply when the new console comes out on November 22nd. I’m not guaranteed to get one when it comes out, but hopefully I will get one before our trip back to Texas so that I can show my parents and grand parents the game I worked so hard on this year.

We also went out to dinner tonight to Carrabba’s Italian Grill. All five of us. It’s usually difficult to take all the kids out to a nice restaurant, but they all did really well. Abby colored on the kids’ menu and Emily played with some dough that the waiter gave her. They ate all their dinner and did such a great job that we were amazed. We’ve attributed it to our eating breakfast all the time. We think it’s teaching them the right way to act in a restaurant.

Lazy Sunday

Posted on by
Reply

I didn’t have to go into work today! The phone was silent, so everything must be going fine at work. Although, it’s Sunday, if something goes wrong, it probably won’t happen until tomorrow.

We didn’t do much today. We just hung around the house. I played several games of NFL Street 2 and Abby and Jennifer went to the nail parlor and go get their nails painted. Abby came back with orange toe nails with white ghosts on them.

Isabelle is still not feeling well. We may take her into the doctor’s office tomorrow.

For those who are following the news on Hurricane Wilma. It’s going to the south of us. We will probably get some wind and a lot of rain, but that’s about it. They canceled Abby and Emily’s school for tomorrow, though. I was looking forward to finding out what it was like with a quite house.

I’ve lost the cable to my camera, so I can’t take any of the new pictures off. I’m having to post a picture which is a couple of months old. I’m going to go to Best Buy tomorrow and see if I can find a replacement cable.

The Astros lost again in the second game of the World Series. They came back and tied it in the ninth after giving up a grand slam, but they gave up a home run in the bottom of the ninth. The series goes to Houston for the next three games. The rain and the cold in Chicago has looked like miserable playing conditions. At least Minute Maid Park has a roof.

I finished The Drawing of the Three today. Even though I’m having a great time with The Dark Tower series, I decided to pick up The Da Vinci Code for my next book. A movie is currently in production and I would like to have the book read before the movie comes out. Dan Brown became popular with this book, but I read Digital Fortress and Deception Point before reading this one. I enjoyed both of these books and since this one has had so much press (both good and bad) I’m sure I will enjoy it as well.

I’m Back

Posted on by
Reply

I can’t believe it’s been exactly a month since my last entry in Frenchville. It’s been a wild ride at work. A whole lot of extra hours for many days in a row. It’s been: go to work, come home for dinner (sometimes), go back to work, come home and go to sleep. It’s finally letting up. We aren’t done completely (I had to go into work for four hours today), but it’s slowed down. I don’t plan on going back in for the next two weeks unless I’m called in.

Let’s see. Month in Review…

We were having our shower re-tiled since I found water underneath the old tile. We had door problems, but that finally got resolved and we are back into the shower in our bathroom.

Abby and Emily finished up their swim lessons. They are both now “expert swimmers”. I haven’t actually taken them swimming yet, so I don’t know how well they are doing. Next week we are planning on going camping at Disney World. They have a swimming pool at the camp grounds and we will probably be swimming there.

The whole family had coughs and more recently fevers. Currently Isabelle has been sick. She’s had a pretty bad runny nose and you can tell she’s been pretty miserable.

The Texas Longhorns defeated OU and then took on Texas Tech and crushed them today. We went ahead and bought tickets to the Rose Bowl, where the National Championship is being played this year. Hopefully the Longhorns can keep up their winning streak alive. The tickets include a tour of Pasadena and tickets to the Rose Parade. Jennifer has always wanted to go see the Rose Parade and so we got the tickets as our anniversary gift to one another.

The Houston Astros have finally made it to the World Series for the first time. I remember watching them against the Mets in 86 and of coarse last year against the Cardinals and making it one game away from the Series. It’s too bad they lost tonight’s game, but hopefully they can come back and win the next four.

It’s good to be home and to finally have a couple of weeks off. Now that I have more time, there will be more and more entries in Frenchville.

Isabelle’s Christening

Posted on by
Reply

I can’t believe it’s been over two weeks since I’ve made an entry in Frenchville. Last weekend was pretty busy. Jennifer’s parents, sister and her husband, Mike, and grandparents all visited. They were here for Isabelle’s Christening at church. Everyone is doing good and they had a good time visiting. Isabelle’s Christening went off without a hitch. No crying and even Abby and Emily behaved during the ceremony. Jennifer did a great job cooking each meal for so many people. Needless to say we were all pooped when everyone left.

Today is a big game for the Texas Longhorns as they take on a pretty tough team in the Ohio State Buckeyes. It has a little more meaning for myself because I’ve made a bet with the Lead Programmer on Madden NFL 06 Xbox 360, Ryan Burnsides, who went to Ohio State, that the looser must shave their head. #2 clippers, so not completely bald, but if my Longhorns don’t pull through then I will probably be nearly as bald as Isabelle in this picture.

Back to Frenchville

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been very busy at work lately which has kept me away from Frenchville. Today I was home from work, resting up, and I thought I would stroll through the streets of Frenchville once again.

Over the past few weeks, Emily has started pre-school. She now goes two times a week. So, on Mondays and Wednesdays, Jennifer just has Isabelle at home and she’s loving every minute of it. Emily is enjoying school. Jennifer says that Emily just gives her a kiss, says “bye Mom” and goes off to playing when she drops her off. She says that’s pretty rare in her class as there’s a lot of kids that are crying when they are dropped off.

Abby and Emily have started swim lessons. They go every afternoon for 20 minutes and it’s one-on-one with an instructor. The first day Abby through a fit, but today she was doing great. Hopefully these swim lessons will stick.

Isabelle has started sleeping through the night. She goes to bed around 9:00 p.m. and has been sleeping all the way until 6:00 a.m. Jennifer has been very pleased that she hasn’t had to get up in the middle of the night anymore.

That’s about it. I will try to post more often, but we are getting into the busy time at work.