Category Archives: Jennifer

Ninth Anniversary

Posted on by
Reply
IMG_0766

Another week back into the grind. Nothing major happened. I started out the week with a slight cold and since my company does make a distinction between vacation days and sick days, I decided to go ahead and stay home. That didn’t really help my situation at work, just making me more and more behind for the week. Looking like I’m going to have to put in a few extra hours in order to catch up.

On Thursday was mine and Jennifer’s 9th wedding anniversary. Can’t believe it’s been 9 years. It’s gone by fast. We didn’t do much for the anniversary. I stopped by Target and picked up a bouquet of roses and we stayed at home watching Survivor with the kids. We had purchased our anniversary gifts the weekend before. The Xbox 360 Wireless Network adapter for me and a cutting machine for scrap booking called the Cricut for Jennifer. Here’s to hoping that our house sells in Orlando before our 10th anniversary so we can do something just a little bit more exciting.

Price Reduction

Posted on by
Reply
IMG_0614

On Thursday we gave in to the request from our Realtor to drop the price of our house. Another house around the corner from us, which is just like ours, but with a pool, was now just $25,000 more than us. They felt we should drop our price by another $25,000 in order to stay comparable with the other house prices in the neighborhood. We agreed to drop our price by $20,000. Every price drop means less house we can buy in Houston, so we are trying to keep hold of every penny. We hoped this would peak more interest in the house this weekend, but I guess it was too soon to expect a flood of people. We didn’t have any showings this weekend.

On Friday, Jennifer was very brave and took all three girls out to our favorite date restaurant: The Melting Pot. I can’t believe she went there with the three of them all on her own, but she said it was a success. They went early so to avoid a big crowd. They had a full four course meal and Jennifer reported that they all behaved themselves very well. Emily enjoyed it so much, she told Jennifer that she would “love her forever” and she gave her a big hug.

Standing on a Soap Dish

Posted on by
Reply
04-03-08_1937

The biggest issue Jennifer has had with having to watch the kids all by herself culminated this evening with a stunt pulled by Abby. While taking a shower she decided it would be cool to stand on top of the soap dish. Although still a little girl, soap dishes were probably not stress tested with seven-year-olds standing on top of them. The result: the soap dish came crashing down and put a nice hole in the tub. Basically the kids are either messing up the house faster than she can clean it, or repair it in this case. Jennifer was so furious that she had to walk away to keep her cool. She ended up grounding Abby for the rest of the week: no television and she couldn’t go next door and play with her friend. She tried to explain to Abby the cost of repairing things and how no one will want to buy the house if it’s damaged. Abby went to her room and came back out with the money she had been saving up from the Tooth Fairy and Easter, around $50, and offered it to Jennifer to repair the tub. Jennifer told her to keep her money. Maybe there’s a glimmer of hope for Abby after all.

One Week In

Posted on by
Reply

I made it safe to Houston and just finished my first week at TimeGate Studios. It’s a whole new game and a whole new company to get used to. A lot to take in over the last week. It funny how you don’t really know what it means to miss someone until you have to do it for a long period of time. I really miss Jennifer, Abby, Emily, and Isabelle. I will be flying back to see them in a few weeks, but the time can’t pass fast enough. I know this has been though on Jennifer. The three little terrors nipping at her heels while she has to try and keep the house cleaned up just in case that last minute house hunter wants to jump in and see. It’s hard to say “no” because you know that person who just drops right in might be the ticket that sells our house in Orlando and reunites us. Anyway, next time to see us wish us luck, because it’s only been a week and I don’t know how we are going to last very long.

On the Road

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Home Sweet Home

Posted on by
Reply
IMG_0072_crop

We finally arrived home yesterday evening from our long two week Christmas trip to Texas & Louisiana. That last day was grueling. We started at 8:00 a.m. Central Standard Time and didn’t get home until 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Basically: sunrise to sunset. Everyone was tired and the girls are very whiny in the back seat. We were all tired from the 16 hours in the car. I’m not sure if we are going to be making that trip again by car. It’s just too tough.

The last week was spent in Houston at Jennifer’s parents house. I went to see the last Houston Texans’ game of the season thanks to my friend George. They won ending their season 8-8, their best record ever. Afterward, Jennifer picked us up and we met up with George’s wife Heather for some dinner at a restaurant.

IMG_0023

The rest of the week was just driving around and eating or looking at places where we used to go. The highlight of the week was Jennifer’s parents taking Abby and Emily to one of the many stables near their house and setting them up with horse riding lessons. They both enjoyed it and will remember that for years to come.

Though the driving was long, we had a nice trip. Thanks everyone for the gifts and for letting us come and visit. I’m anxious to get back to work and the swing of things. I can now say that I’m working on NCAA Football 09 as the Development Director. They announced that there will be an NCAA 09 over the break as a tie in for the Bowl Championship Series. We are about half way through Production and will soon be heading into Finaling at the beginning of March.

One last thing I have to mention is that today is Emily’s 5th birthday. It was 5 years ago today at 1:11 p.m. in the afternoon that Emily was born. We are having her party on Saturday. We always have to have her party on the weekend after because no one is back from vacation on the weekend closest to her birthday. In celebration, we went to have some ice cream after dinner. I will have some more posts and pictures from the actual celebration.

8th Anniversary

Posted on by
Reply
IMG_1969

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.

Anniversary Dinner

Posted on by
Reply

It’s always easy to remember my wedding anniversary. It’s near Texas-OU weekend. For a while the day of my wedding was the last time Texas had defeated OU. Well, 6 out of 8 times OU has been the victor in this match-up and they won again today beating Texas 28-21. It wasn’t as much of a blow out as I thought it was going to be. Texas was hanging in with them, but in the end McCoy couldn’t pull out a two minute drill to go down the field and tie it up. Like I said, they didn’t look as bad this week. Maybe they can win the rest of the games and go to a respectable bowl this year (hopefully in Florida).

Near the end of the game, we had to leave for our anniversary dinner. We hadn’t been there in a while so we decided to hit The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant. It’s a slow meal so you have plenty of time to talk. It’s our eighth anniversary, so we had plenty to reminisce about. We used to make it our “date” place all the time, but got tired of it. It was once again good and we both looked forward to eating there all week.

While we were there, Jennifer noticed a sign for a “Ladies Night” and that it had sponsors. She talked to the manager and got on the list to display her photographs and to put a coupon in a “gift basket” they are going to be handing out. We’re hopeful that this will start to drum up some business for Storybook Portraits.

Picture Show Off

Posted on by
Reply
Izzy on new back ground web

Jennifer printed a huge 20×24 version of the picture of Emily that I had in one of my previous posts. It’s very nice and she showed it off when she picked up Emily from pre-school and when she took the girls up to Kids Connection up at church today. Everyone was very impressed even more so that she took the picture in the studio in our house and that the picture was taken on Saturday and she already had it printed.

Long Week

Posted on by
Reply
izzyrocks

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.

1464550222_e2c7405148_o

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.