Category Archives: Jason

The Great Escape

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We’ve been apprehensive to leave Isabelle with a baby sitter so young. We had the bright idea the other day that we could just go out after 8:00 p.m. once all of the girls are in bed and just hire the baby sitter to be in the house and she wouldn’t have to do anything. Isabelle has been going to bed around 7:30 – 8:00 and then she’s out for the night. So, tonight Jennifer and I escaped to The Melting Pot, our favorite “going out” restaurant. It was nice to get away from the girls and we are going to try and make this a regular event.

Abby and Emily Free Day

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Yesterday was the first time I got to experience what it was like to have both Abby and Emily in school. It was great. The house was so quite. Me and Jennifer (with Isabelle) went out to lunch to Logan’s and it was great being able to sit there and actually eat. I went ahead and extended my vacation one extra day and I’m glad I did so I get to experience one more Abby and Emily Free Day.

Abby and Emily went to “Kid’s Connection” (the Wednesday night children’s activity get-together at church) in their Halloween costumes. Abby is going to be a princess (no surprise there) and Emily is a poodle puppy. I’ll have pictures of them in their costumes on Halloween. They got candy and made Halloween crafts.

Tonight was the Madden Next Gen Wrap Party. Most of the team met at a Chinese restaurant called The Crazy Buffet. We had dinner and toasted champagne to celebrate finishing the game. Unfortunately, the game is still going on. I haven’t been called in, but my boss, Brian, has taken over what I was doing in order for me to get some rest with the family.

Well, the Astros lost again, getting swept in the World Series by the White Sox. I don’t think the Astros did a bad job. It was a thrill for them to get to the World Series for the first time ever. Every game came right down to the last few innings. Hopefully they can make another run next year.

I’m Back

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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

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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.

Searching for a Photographer

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Wow. Look at this. Two entries in Frenchville in so many days.

Today Jennifer went out to DeLand to visit a photographer, Elizabeth Carol. Ever since we left Austin, one of the things she has missed has been the photographer she really liked: Jennifer Turner. Jennifer was walking through the mall the other day and saw a photograph that reminded her of Jennifer Turner, so she did some investigation and it turns out that this photographer has a lot of the same props that Jennifer Turner did. She was really impressed and has an appointment to get Isabelle’s 3 month old pictures taken with her.

I’ve been clamoring about getting a laptop at work by making hints in several meetings. Finally today, the Executive Producer on Madden said, “If we get you a laptop, it better be attached to your hip. You will be taking notes in every meeting.” I was thinking, “mission accomplished”.

They came to install our shower door today. It was the last piece to our bathroom re-tiling. Unfortunately, there isn’t a stud behind where the shower door would go, so they couldn’t hang it up. We now have to get the tiling contractor to come back and some how shore up that wall so that the door will hang. Right now we are at a loss for what to do. We were thinking that all of our projects would finally be done today, but once again we hit another snag.

I’ve been a little behind on doing the laundry and Abby didn’t have pajama bottoms. So, she had to go to bed in a pajama top and some panties. She didn’t like that. She kept saying that someone was going to see that and laugh at her. It’s funny that lately she’s been starting to get modest. It must be something she’s picking up at school.

For the past couple of days I haven’t had time enough to shave because I’ve been busy at work. Today I decided to shave it into a goatee. When I got home from work Jennifer noticed it for the first time. Needless to say, I will be shaving tomorrow.

Another Frenchville Reunion

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I had a pretty uneventful birthday on Sunday, but isn’t that what’s it’s supposed to be like once you have kids? The focus moves from your birthday to the kids’ birthdays. We went to breakfast that morning and that was a treat. We thought about going out to the beach, but with Isabelle in tow, doing stuff like that has become more and more tough.

Jennifer was sick today, so I stayed home from work. The girls and I watched the space shuttle take off on TV and then ran outside to see if we could see it in the sky, but I forgot that there’s still a time delay even in live TV, so we missed it. It had already gone behind one of the clouds by the time we got outside.

I had another Frenchville reunion today. An old high school friend, Jincy Pace, stumbled upon my blog. She’s living in San Jose, California and is a local police officer there. She investigates traffic accidents and tries to reconstruct what happens. It was good to hear from her. I’m glad Frenchville has been a great tool for getting back in touch with old friends.

Sand Arrives This Week

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It’s been a very busy week for the French household. First, Abby and Emily attended Vacation Bible School at our church each day this week. It was pretty tough because we had to be up and out of the house by 8:15 each morning. It’s not so hard for me because that’s around the time I leave for work, but for Jennifer and the girls, it’s quite a chore to get them up and going that early in the morning. They had a great time up there and we are going to hear Abby sing at church tomorrow.

The sand arrived for the play gym this week. Abby exclaimed that it was like being at the beach and they ran to the garage to get all of their beach toys. So, the play gym is still in pieces and there’s a ton of beach toys in the sand pit. Unfortunately, they didn’t bring enough sand to make it entirely level, so they are coming back this week to put more in. On Thursday, the other guys are coming back to put the play gym back together. The end is in sight for the play gym installation. (yippee)

Our next project is getting the tile replaced in our bathroom. A couple of months ago I discovered water underneath the tile in shower of our master bathroom. (I have a knack for finding water underneath our floors.) We pulled up some tile and discovered that water was getting underneath and the shower needed to be “re-floated”. So, we’ve hired a contractor and Jennifer ordered some tile. We are going to go ahead and get the whole bathroom re-tiled since we are at it. We’ve never like that tile, so we thought it was a good opportunity to go ahead and get it done.

Play Gym Vindication

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Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted my last updated. Between Isabelle and work, my plate has been full. At work, this weekend is the end of our Production period as we entering Alpha. This is the time where we switch our focus from creating new features for the game and just fixing the bugs in the features we’ve been creating for the past several months. So, this past week and this weekend are pretty busy for me at work.

Very good news on the play gym front. Our homeowners’ association has approved our play gym for the full height of 11 feet 3 inches. That means the whole this will be going up intact! Yea! Last weekend was spent buying big crape myrtles to block our neighbor’s view of the play gym once it goes back up. I tried to pick them up with our Sequoia, but they wouldn’t fit. I would have been dragging them all the way home. So, that was no good. I had to borrow a friends, truck in order to haul the home. I dug giant holes to bury them in and all was good. We also bought some plants to put along the fence line in order to grow into a hedge row. Next, we’ve hired someone to bring in sand and put it into the sandbox that I made. That will happen on Thursday, weather permitting. After that, we will call the play gym people and they will set it back up.

Last weekend I also bought a friend’s Play Station Portable (PSP). I rented a few games from work, but I spent most of the weekend trying to get videos to play on the device. I bought a case and I’ve been mainly using it as an MP3 player until a really good game comes out for it. So far I’m really enjoying it. I’m going to try and get into some Podcasts which are out there. Podcasts are radio broadcasts recorded to an MP3, which you can download and put on your player and listen to them any time you want. The main one I’ve been listening to is This Week in Tech, which is hosted by some guys who used to host a show called The Screen Savers which was on TechTV before it got sold to G4 and was shut down. I think I’m going to search for some other similar Podcasts once I get some time.

Isabelle has been doing well. However, Jennifer and I are running low on sleep. Me because of work. Her because of Isabelle getting up at 3:00 and it taking her two hours to get her back to sleep. We are surviving, but it hasn’t been easy. Between Isabelle, the two other girls running around the house, and Austin, we really have our hands full right now. Abby and Emily are going to be going to some Vacation Bible School next week, so hopefully that will get them out of Jennifer’s hair for a while so she can get some peace. Even if it’s only for a couple of hours.

Beagle Puppy Jail Break

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Rough Isabelle night last night. Jennifer was up with her most of the night and I was even called into duty a couple of times last night.

Good news: Today our fence was completed. Bad News: Austin can slide between the bars and get out of the back yard. Fortunately he’s still a growing puppy so, we just need to feed him more and that should stop his escaping.

Emily’s Potty Training

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It’s been a while since my last post, but I’m back and should have pretty consistent entries for at least the next week. The reason being: I’m on vacation. I started my “Spring Break” today and won’t be back to work until a week from Monday. It’s nice to finally have some time off.

A couple of things have happened since the last entry. The dining room furniture that was Jennifer’s Christmas gift finally arrived. The furniture really looks great and it’s finally nice to have a dining room with furniture in it. I’ve always been embarrassed when I invite people over to our house and we don’t have anything in our dining room. The other event that happened this week is that we finally had the interior of the house painted. The painters have been working on it over the last few days and they finished up today. Jennifer did an excellent job picking out colors. Our bathroom looks about a billion times better than the pealing wallpaper that used to be in there. I made the comment to Jennifer that our house is starting to look like a “model home”. She really liked hearing that.

Because this was my first day of vacation, Jennifer thought it would be a good day to start potty training Emily. She’s been showing signs of wanting to sit on the potty, but we had a hard time getting Abby started, so we didn’t want to push her. After all, it is only two months after her two year birthday. Jennifer put panties on Emily and then promptly left me alone with her. I asked Emily every five minutes if she needed to go tinkle on the potty and even forced her to go sit on the potty, but no tinkle. Well, after two pairs of panties, two pairs of pants, and many paper towels later, I gave up and put a diaper on her. Fortunately later on in the day she did actually tinkle on the potty, which was a good sign. Just don’t leave me alone with her with nothing but thin cotton between her butt and the ground.

Today’s picture is from last week when we went to the park.