Category Archives: Longhorns

EV1.Net Houston Bowl

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It’s been much warmer this week in Houston than it was when we were in Shreveport last week. That has allowed us to do much more outside, if you haven’t noticed. There’s also much more to do as a family here in Houston than in Shreveport. So, today we headed to the Houston Zoo. This blew the doors off of the Central Florida Zoological Park, which we went to in October. There was so much more to do and see. We saw monkeys, elephants, lions, and went to the petting zoo. Today’s picture is from a playground which was in the children’s zoo area.

After the zoo, I headed off to meet George at the EV1.Net Houston Bowl where Colorado was taking on University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). You would think we would be rooting for UTEP, since it would be a sister of Texas, but we were actually going for a fellow Big XII team, Colorado. We figured it would be embarrassing to have a team from the WAC to beat the Big XII. It was actually a really good match up. UTEP stunned everyone by going into the lead early and kept it well into the fourth quarter. Colorado kept up and then went ahead with about seven minutes left in the game. UTEP tried to come back, but their office was pretty one dimensional: passing only. It ended up being a pretty exciting game and it was fun to go to Reliant Stadium again.

Searching for Mongolia

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After church we went in search for a Mongolian Bar-B-Q restaurant that the Yahoo Yellow Pages said was in Maitland, a suburb on the north side of Orlando near where we go to church. The pregnancy has made Jennifer very hungry lately and we missed the Mongolian Bar-B-Q restaurant that was in Houston that we used to go to. We looked and looked, but it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. We concluded that it was closed and ended up wandering up to Jason’s Deli, another restaurant that we miss from back in Texas. Once I got home, I confirmed that the restaurant was closed by calling the phone number and got a residence. That must suck to have a phone number of an old restaurant.

Congratulations to the Texas Longhorns who were able to beat out Cal to get into the Bowl Championship Series. The Longhorns will be playing Michigan in the Rose Bowl on New Years Eve and we will be watching the game from Jennifer’s parents house in Houston, since we will be on our big Texas trip during that time.

I finished up Dan Brown’s Deception Point last weekend. It was a very good book about political games during a Presidential Election when a meteor is found that contains proof of extra terrestrial life. The data on the meteor doesn’t add up and it may lead to a government cover up. I still stick to my description of Dan Brown being “Clancy-esque”, in other words kind of like Tom Clancy. I’ve given up on The Successful Manager’s Handbook. I read about half of it and just can’t pick it up again. It’s pretty much like reading a phone book. I’ve read several technical and business books and none have been as boring as this one. For my next outing I’ve started on a pretty big quest. I’m going to read the complete Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I read the first four books about ten years ago and Stephen King just finished out the series with the last three books just recently. Since it’s been so long, I decided I would re-read the first four and then go on to the last three and so I picked up a copy of The Gunslinger today.

Longhorns Dominate Aggies Once Again

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This morning we went to breakfast instead of doing in on Saturday because we needed to get an early start so we could get the Sequoia to the Toyota dealership at 9:00. We figured if we planned to going to breakfast, we would be ready to get the truck in as early as possible so we could get it back on the same day. After noon, we got a call that the truck was ready and we went and picked it up. The scratches on the side are now totally gone. You cannot tell that there was even any damage.

The Longhorns rolled the Aggies today 26-13 in what ended up being a pretty wild game. Twice the Longhorns crossed the plane of the end zone and the referees didn’t call it a touchdown. One of these ended in a Vince Young fumble which the Aggies ran all the way back in the opposite direction for a touchdown. There was also an incident where a missed Longhorn extra point was advanced by the Aggies, but they ended up getting tackled in their own end zone for a 1 point safety. Everyone, including the announcers, were pretty much baffled on what was going on. But, once again the defense stepped up shutting out the Aggies in the second half. Now it’s a waiting game to find out if the 10-1 Longhorns will even make a BCS game. Last year they had the same record and were #5 in the BCS rankings and didn’t make it into a BCS game, because of how certain conference champions have automatic bids into the BCS. I know Tom is probably grumbling while reading this because his 11-0 Utes are in the same position.

Week In Review

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Sorry it’s been all week since I’ve made a new entry. I will have to make it up with this one. First off I would like to make the official announcement on Frenchville that we are now expecting a third child in June. Most of our families know already so this isn’t a surprise to many of our readers, but I thought I would go ahead and make an official announcement on Frenchville because the pregnancy is starting to have newsworthy events in our life. This week Jennifer has been queasy and not feeling well. I had to come home one day this week to help out because it got so bad.

Abby has been having a lot of fun at school as they have been singing Christmas songs. I know this because she will be sitting in her room singing Jingle Bells at the top of her lungs. I had to explain to her the difference between screaming and singing. Today’s picture is of Abby getting ready to slide down a giant inflatable slide at a Fall Festival we went to a couple of weeks ago.

We’ve been having a pretty bad problem with Emily this week. She has been taking off her clothes and diaper. We will come around the corner and she is running around naked. The wost part about it is sometimes her diaper isn’t empty when she takes it off and then we are cleaning poop off of the floor. Fun times had by all.

We lost in our softball game on Wednesday to the top team in the league. We were actually keeping up with them, but ended up losing in the last inning. I did fairly well. I was 2 for 4 and had some good plays, participating in a 6-4-3 double play.

The Texas Longhorns beat Kansas yesterday 27-23, but it wasn’t pretty. Once again the defense had to bail out the bad looking offense. They were down by 10 and had to come back and score two touchdowns in the last five minutes of the game.

Texas Win

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It wasn’t looking like I was going to be turning Frenchville orange at half time of today’s UT game. OSU was dominating us 35-14. Mack Brown must have said something inspiring at the half time, because the defense really stepped up shutting out OSU in the second half as Texas ended up rolling OSU 56-35.

Busy Saturday

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Today was a busy day. First, we went to a Fall Festival at church. It’s a fund raiser for their pre-school, which is the school that Abby went to last year. There were hay rides, jump houses, games, and face painters. Everyone was amazed that Emily would go up and down this giant blow-up slide by herself. She loved it and kept sliding down over and over again. As the picture to the right shows, Emily got very contemplative during the hay ride.

Later, we had a baby sitter come over to watch the kids while Jennifer and I went to see a musical, Miss Saigon. It was really good, especially when you have second row seats. I originally saw Miss Saigon on a trip to New York thirteen years ago. Back then I saw it from the second row from the back of the balcony. Makes quite a difference being that close.

This was the first time we had a baby sitter come in and watch both girls since we moved into our house. It’s nice to have a regular baby sitter and we hope to use her more so that we can go out occasionally.

Finally, the Texas Longhorns crushed the Colorado Buffalo 31 to 7. It wasn’t looking too good during the first quarter after Vince Young threw two interceptions. Colorado was actually winning 7-0 after the first quarter. It was good that Vince didn’t panic. He brushed himself off and had two very good solid drives which started the steamroller which ran all over Colorado.

Looking for a New Camera

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Today was a normal Saturday where we try and clean the house and do laundry. I went up to the RDV Sportsplex and joined as part of Tiburon’s corporate membership.

We all went to Best Buy to look for a new digital camera. Our current camera hasn’t been fairing too well. The screen on the back of the camera has stopped working. One of the reasons there wasn’t too many pictures from our trip to the zoo last week was because the camera ran out of batteries. The low battery power indicator is on the screen, so we couldn’t tell it was almost out of power. There wasn’t a camera there that I liked so we’ve decided to wait a little bit. At least our current camera still takes pictures.

Tonight I watched the Longhorns roll all over the Texas Tech Red Raiders 51 – 21. They looked more improved tonight. Vince Young had some good passes down field, which seemed make their offense look a lot less one dimensional.

Longhorns & Astros Win

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Today we didn’t do much that was out of the ordinary. We went to our usual Saturday morning breakfast. Abby went to one of the neighbor’s 2nd birthday party. Emily wasn’t feeling too good so she and I stayed at home and watched the Longhorns and Astros.

The Longhorns were victorious today over Missouri 28-20. Overall I didn’t think they looked all that great. Their passing game was horrid, with Vince Young throwing two interceptions. Perhaps I’m still bitter over the loss to OU.

The Astros were also victorious over the Cardinals 5-2, but the Cardinals are still winning the series 2-1. Clemens pitched a great game all the way into the seventh inning, which is where the Astros pitching was failing in the last two games. Beltran is awesome. He has had at least one home run in every game against the Cardinals. Hopefully the Astros will be able to sweep the Cardinals at home and then win one more in St. Louis to go to the World Series.

Fifth Anniversary

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I finally got to drive the new Sequoia today. We went to our usual Saturday breakfast and then we went shopping for Abby a new car seat. Her current one really dug into the Camry’s back seat and we want to get a new one that doesn’t mess up the new truck.

The Longhorns once again couldn’t defeat OU. They lost 12-0 and it was the first time that they had been shut out since 1980. They really didn’t look that good at all. It appears that they still haven’t learned to tackle. Their offense looked very one dimensional: either Young would hand off to Benson or he would keep it. It wasn’t until the forth quarter that a wide receiver caught the ball.

The Texas loss was very disappointing, but was made better by the Astros beating the Braves to go up in the NL Division series 2-1. If they win tomorrow, they will be advancing to the NL Championship for the first time ever.

Tonight we celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary by going out to eat at The Melting Pot. We left the girls across the street with Jane, Lucas, and Connor. We called for a reservation earlier in the day, but they said that they were booked solid. Since we weren’t in a hurry we decided to go ahead and go to the restaurant and take our chances. It turned out that we were seated immediately anyway and in a very secluded booth which was off by itself. So, we had a great dinner and reminisced about the last five years.

Making Room for the Sequoia

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The Texas Longhorns defeated the Baylor Bears 44-14 today.  They are looking pretty good, but it’s hard to say against such weak opponents. We are only one week away from the true test: #2 Oklahoma.

We spent the afternoon cleaning out the garage to make a little more room for the new Sequoia. The last owners of our house left a ton of paint in the garage. We went through them and loaded the ones we want to throw away into my truck. I’m going to take them to the dump tomorrow.

Tonight we watched Ocean’s Eleven. It was pretty good. It has some slow parts in the middle, but seeing the plan all come together at the end of the movie was cool.