We didn’t realize it until this morning, but we were in a smoking room at the Horseshoe Casino. When we complained at the front desk, they just blew us off. Jennifer said that she’s going to write them an angry letter. We visited the floor below us and couldn’t believe the difference. When we first went to our floor, we figured the whole hotel smelled like cigarette smoke since people are allowed to smoke in the casino.
Today we took everyone out to buy Isabelle’s birthday gifts. We found the Toys R’ Us and allowed Abby and Emily to pick out a toy for Isabelle. We also gathered the ingredients for the bear cake which each girl has had for their first birthday.
Today’s picture is from a few days ago, Emily looking sadly outside the window at Nana and Poppy’s house.
Today we went to the park and had a picnic. We stopped over at Subway and picked up some sandwiches and headed over to a park near my parents’ house. The park had a nice play gym, but it turned out to be too hot, so we didn’t stay for too long.
Once we got back from the park, my mom had to go to work and while she was pulling out of the driveway, she scraped the side of our Sequoia with her car. It scratched the rear wheel panel and the running board. Now we have two cars to take into the shop: one from a crazy neighbor with a wine bottle and one with a crazy Nana with a car.
Later in the evening, Jennifer and I headed to Horseshoe Casino, to stay overnight. It was our little get away from the girls. We ate at a nice Chinese restaurant at the casino and then tried to win a lot of money. We ended up breaking even. We entered with $400 and left with $400. It was looking like we were going to be big losers, but Jennifer was able to win back our losses right at the end at the roulette table.
Today’s picture is from a couple of days ago when Emily was watching Poppy put up the shutters.
Today was Jennifer’s 32nd birthday. I went out with the girls last weekend and got her presents and then we packed them with us for the trip. She received a diamond circle necklace that Abby picked out, a triple scoop ice cream maker, a cook book, and a plug for her portable CD player. We also went to Strawn’s here in Shreveport and picked up a banana cream pie for the occasion.
After the movie we went out to eat at Superior’s Steakhouse. It was really nice (which means expensive). It was nice to be able to order a Shiner Bock in a restaurant. One of the things I miss from leaving in Florida.
I had some time today so I added a few features to Frenchville today. First, you will notice on the right of the page is “Jason’s News Shelf”. This is a list of tech news stories that I find interesting. This is provided by a site called digg. They call it a “social book marking” news site. Basically news stories are added by and voted upon by the users. The more “diggs” a story gets the higher it is elevated in the list of popular stories. The stories on “Jason’s News Shelf” are stories that I’ve “dugg” recently. Another addition is my Xbox Live Gamer tag under “Jason’s Game Shelf”. This shows the most recent games I’ve been playing on my Xbox 360 and other Xbox Live stats. Finally, I’ve added Google Ads and search on the left. The Ads are free and if I get some click throughs, then I get some money. So, I figured why the hell not.
Jennifer went to something different tonight. It’s called Super Suppers. You get together with friends and make meals that you go home and freeze and have later in the week. One of her friends at church heard about the place and so they went to check it out. She thought the place was the best thing since sliced bread. She came home very excited and with meals for the next 12 days.
Jennifer was up with Isabelle early this morning and she decided to wake everyone up since it was almost 6:00, so that we could get an early start. What she didn’t know was that the clock in our room was set one hour ahead so it was actually almost 5:00. So, needless to say, we got a really early start for our final leg home. It was good to finally see home again. Three weeks away seems like an eternity. Thanks to everyone who let us stay at their house. Thanks to my parents for watching the girls while we were in Los Angeles. Thanks to MaMaw and PaPaw for watching Austin.
Today’s picture is from our trip to the Rose Bowl. It’s the classic shot of the stadium’s marquee.
The last day of our trip started at 2:10 a.m. We had a 6:00 a.m. flight out of LAX and so the shuttle service said that they would pick us up at 2:40 a.m. They were 30 minutes late and didn’t actually pick us up until after 3:00. We ended up getting to the airport and to our flight on time. Since we only got two hours of sleep after the game, we tried to sleep on the plane, but that’s always hard to do. It’s tough to get comfortable sitting in one of those small airplane seats.
We arrived in Dallas where Aunt Marci picked us up from the airport. We had lunch with her and then headed back to Shreveport. Three hour drive with two hours sleep. We had to stop a couple of times in order to stock up on caffeine and snacks in order to stay awake.
We arrive in Shreveport and the girls were happy to see us. Emily exclaimed, “Daddy, you came back!” It was good to be reunited with the girls. It was good to get away from a week, but we missed them. Thanks to Nana and Poppy for watching them for the week.
Wow, what a game. Well worth the price we paid for the trip. To be there in person for the Longhorns’ coming back from a 12 point deficit and winning the National Championship is priceless. Frenchville will be burnt orange for some time. I was feeling a little bleak when Reggie Bush scored that touchdown to go up by 12. But Vince Young showed everyone how good he really is. His passing was spot on and his scrambling ability was amazing. To see him in person and how fast he moves on the field, it’s so different from seeing it on TV. On the last score he ran into the end zone right where we were sitting. I saw it opening up and he was running right through where I thought he should go. Everyone in the stands erupted and were all jumping around. It was amazing.
Why couldn’t the Rose Parade have been today? It was nice and sunny so we decided to go view the floats up close. We skipped it yesterday because of the rain. So, we walked quite a distance down to a Park N’ Ride for the post parade viewing of the floats and rode a bus to where the floats were. It was nice seeing the floats up close. They weren’t in as bad shape as I thought they would be, but you could still see quite a bit of rain damage.
In the evening we rode with the six elderly University of Texas nurses, who we met on our first day at the hotel, to the Longhorn Bash. It was a gathering of 7,000 Longhorn fans in Los Angeles at the Century Plaza Hotel. There was beer, BBQ, and bands playing music. Bevo and the cheerleaders showed up and lead Texas cheers with the whole group. Jennifer said that she’d never seen such a sea of orange.
51 years without any rain and today it down poured. Today was the 117th version of the Rose Parade and we sat through the cold and the rain to see most of the parade. We left about 15 minutes before the end so that we could beat the crowds out of there. We had rain slickers (thanks to Aunt Marci), but as we sat there, rain was still getting though. We were soaked from the legs down. This combined with the cold wind that was coming up through the grandstands made it a pretty rough ride.
We were supposed to have lunch at a restaurant near the parade route, but we were soaked and we decided to walk back to the hotel. We were pretty pissed at the tour guides for not taking us back to the hotel before lunch. Who wants to eat lunch in soaked clothing. After lunch we were supposed to go see the floats, but we decided to skip that as well.
Since we had the afternoon off, we walked across the street to a movie theatre. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a movie. The last one we saw was Pooh’s Heffalump Movie a year ago with the girls before Isabelle was born, which is pretty sad. We went to see Cheaper by the Dozen 2. It was a cute movie and passed the time until dinner.
Today was a free day for us, but since we had so much fun on the float tour we decided to crash a Los Angeles city tour today. We talked to our tour guide, slipped her some extra money, and voila we are on the tour.
We started off by driving through downtown Los Angeles and seeing the Walt Disney Hall and Performing Arts Center. From there we headed to the Kodak Theatre which is now the permanent home for the Academy Awards. It’s kind of weird because it’s part of this big mall and the tour guide was saying that they put red curtains up to cover up the shops for the award show. Right around the corner from there was Grauman’s Chinese Theater, where they have various celebrities put their foot and hand prints into the cement. We saw old stars’ prints like John Wayne, George Burns, and Debbie Reynolds; as well as some new stars’ prints like Stephen Spielberg, Harrison Ford, and Johnny Depp. After that we went to Farmer’s Market to have lunch. There was every ethnic variety of food available. It was amazing. Unfortunately that’s when the rain started. After that the rest of the trip was from the bus. We drove down Rodeo Drive and through Beverly Hills. Overall we weren’t too impressed with the tour, but at least we can say, “we’ve been there; done that.”
Once we got back to the hotel we rested a bit and went out for a dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. It was raining and cold all afternoon, but there were still whole families that had started lining up along Colorado Boulevard in order to get a good spot for the Rose Parade tomorrow. It was amazing and sad at the same time that people were camping out in such miserable weather in order to see the parade tomorrow. We did some shopping for some Rose Bowl souvenirs and then called it a night.
Frenchville 