Continuation of an ErA

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Two months since I’ve updated Frenchville. A lot has gone on since then. The biggest news being that we are moving back to Orlando and I’m resuming my job with EA – Tiburon. I just spent the weekend driving from Houston to Orlando and in a couple of weeks I’m going to fly back and do it again, but this time with the family. I’ve learned over the past year that it isn’t really where you live, but your job that matters. You have to enjoy what you are doing for a living. I always enjoyed my job with EA Sports, playing their games and it was extremely hard playing NCAA 09 last year knowing that I started working on that game and didn’t finish it.

We have a contract out on a house in Oviedo, a suburb east of Orlando. It should be about the same drive as I had when we lived up in Lake Mary. We close on the house on June 30th. It’s in short sale, so we are getting a good deal on it, but the movement has been fairly slow because everything has to go through the bank. It recently appraised for lower than we offered. Our realtor went back to the bank and made sure our offer was lowered to the price it appraised for. That’s going to end up saving us quite a bit of money when we close on the house in a few weeks.

Last week was also Izzy’s 4th birthday. Nana, Poppy, and Aunt Marci came down to help us celebrate. Their cousin, Kinley, also came over. Of course, Izzy requested to have a Mickey Mouse cake and Jennifer made it once again. After lunch and cake, we headed over to the Sienna Plantation pool for some swimming.

Last Sunday was also Abby’s dance recital. Five months of dance lessons leading up to this final recital. It was a two hour show with about 15 groups of kids doing two numbers each. Abby’s first dance was to the Austin Power’s theme. If I would have known that, I would have shown her the opening number to the movie before she went on so that she could have seen some of the proper dance moves. Abby did very well. I thought she was one of the best dancers out there, but I might be a little biased.

So, currently, I’m in Orlando, the family is back in Houston and in a couple of weeks we will be reunited. Now that we are going to be in Florida once again, I guess I’m going to have start writing more often in Frenchville. That was the original reason I set up this blog so long ago.

Indoor Easter Escapade

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I awoke early this morning to the sound of the girls rifling through the baskets that the Easter Bunny had left for them. He was pretty generous this year, for the first Easter away from our house in Orlando. The biggest gift being new ceramic piggy banks for each of them. Once they were loaded up with some candy, we had some breakfast and headed to church.

The church service today was supposed to be at the Sienna Plantation amphitheatre, but had to be moved to the Middle School because of weather. Instead of an open field, a school gymnasium had to serve as the field of (egg) battle. The combatants were split into two age groups, Izzy being on the top edge of her’s and having an advantage. When “go” was shouted, chaos ensued as with blinding speed kids ran to every corner of the gym. I fortunately had taken cover in a spot where there were no eggs. They were all limited to ten eggs and had no problem accomplishing that goal. During church service, they were able to go through their spoils and find out exactly what goodies they would be playing with, or if they were lucky, eating.

Jonathan Coulton & Austin Trip

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Last week we decided to spend the first part of Spring Break in Austin. Jennifer needed to have a meet and greet with some of the distributors of the product she’s selling, so me and the girls decided to tag along and make it a mini-vacation.

First though, was the Jonathan Coulton concert on Friday night before our vacation. For those of you who don’t know who JoCo is, it’s kind of hard to describe his type of music. It’s kind of folk music with a humorous geeky twist. It’s best to just go to his web site and listen to a few of his songs. The concert was great, very funny and entertaining. Can’t wait for him to swing back this way. The new House of Blues was a great venue. My only complaint was that it cost $7 for a small 12 oz. can of Shiner Bock.

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Sunday, we packed up and headed to Austin. We used Priceline in order to get $65 / night hotel rooms at the Hilton near the Airport. It was a very nice place, even though it was near the airport, and kind of far away from most of our destinations. We visited with a few of my old co-workers and ate at some of restaurants that I missed (Rudy’s & Chuy’s).  Monday, while Jennifer was meeting with one of her distributors, me and the girls were dropped off at the State Capitol building. We wandered around and then headed up to the University of Texas campus to take  a few sites in. We stopped by Dobie Mall to get something to drink. I was amazed that it hadn’t changed in the thirteen years since I’ve been there. On Tuesday, we drove down to Natural Bridge Caverns. Abby has really been into geology lately, so we wanted to take her there so that she could see all the different rock formations. All the girls enjoyed it even though it was quite a hike. Afterwards, we were all tired and piled back into the Sequoia and headed back home.

Day Care & First Soccer Game

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This was a momentous week because it marked Jennifer’s return to the workforce. We signed the girls up for day care and so it was a little nerve wracking making sure Abby and Emily knew they had to ride the bus from school to the day care. Abby said it best when she said she was both nervous and excited. I told her there’s a word for that: anxious. Everything went fine they made it to day care and Izzy’s getting used to new friends to play with during the day.

Saturday also marked Emily’s first soccer game. When you are in Kindergarten, it’s three-on-three with no goalie. So, it’s was pretty simple. Emily could really run, but she always hesitated getting into the middle of the fray. She got a few good kicks in and they ended up winning 9 – 5. At the end of the day Emily asked me why today was different than the other days she went to soccer. She didn’t really get the concept that that was a game and that they were playing another team. It was pretty cute.

Back into the Workforce

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I have some good news. This past week, Jennifer got a job with Coverings, Etc. as a sales person. They specialize in engineered stone surfaces, specifically recycled or as they put it “eco-friendly”. She’s pretty excited about it and will be going to sales training in Miami next weekend, leaving me with the girls for three days. It’s a commission job, but we think it’s a pretty good opportunity.

This week we moved our cell phone numbers to ones in Houston, so we no longer have our Florida phones. With this change, I upgraded to an iPhone. I’m still getting used to the interface and I don’t really enjoy using iTunes. It’s just too hard to use. I suppose it takes “Mac thinking”, which I don’t have.

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This Christmas I had most of my family give me gift certificates to Amazon so that I could buy their digital book reader, the Kindle. However, I was going to hold off until the new “Kindle 2” came out so that I could get the latest design. Well, I got impatient at the end of January and decided to go ahead and order it. I was disappointed when it turned out that it was on backorder for over a month. This week I got the good news. The reason it was on backorder was because they were waiting for the “Kindle 2” to come out. I got an e-mail from Amazon saying that I would be getting the latest version of the Kindle in a couple of weeks.

After a few requests from friends, I bowed to the peer pressure and went ahead and bit the bullet. I created a Facebook account. I always figured, why would I need a Facebook account with my own family blog, but I now see the advantage. Just like I use Twitter, it’s a way to connect with old friends. In a week I now have 41 “friends” from people I know from EA, family, UT, and high school. It was cool seeing pictures from some people who I hadn’t seen in almost twenty years.

For Valentines Day, we decided to take advantage of living in the same city as Jennifer’s parents. For the first time, we sent the girls over their the grandparents while Jennifer and I went out to eat. We went to our favorite place, The Melting Pot, which we discovered while in Florida. It’s a fondue restaurant, where you cook your own meal right in front of you in a boiling pot. It’s really good and very filling. When we got home, the house seemed pretty desolate. It was almost too quiet with the girls and the dog gone. I guess we’ve just gotten used to them in our lives. It seems weird when they aren’t there.

January Update

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I can’t believe a month has gone by without me updating Frenchville. It seems like it was just Christmas and now we are rolling into February. Of course we celebrated Emily’s birthday. We decided to keep the celebration small and asked her what she wanted to do. She decided that she wanted to go to the Houston Zoo, so we asked her cousin Kinley if she wanted to go and we headed into town even though Poppy had warned us about the monkeys who fling their poo. It was a little on the cold side and by the end we were really tired from walking around so much, but Emily enjoyed seeing all the animals. We got there right as they were training the elephants so we got a special show as they explained how they train them.

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Another momentous occasion during the month of January was that Izzy got her first haircut. She’s three and a half and she was finally getting her haircut. It was getting a little wild on the side. Now that it’s cut, it still does cute curls, but they are a little more under control.

The past few weeks Emily has been working on getting Girl Scout Cookies sold. She went door-to-door in our neighborhood, got on the phone and asked relatives, and even made me take it up to work. I usually don’t like doing that sort of thing, and I did catch some flack from some of the guys, but in the end that put her over the sixty boxes she needed to sell in order to get her cookie sell patch.

A question I get often is how the guitar lessons are going. I actually stopped lessons back in October right after the hurricane. I used the money I got for my birthday to fund the lessons and, at the time, our house still wasn’t sold in Orlando. It was hard to justify spending $100 a month on that. At the beginning of the year, I found a good site, justinguitar.com, which has free online lessons. I decided in the end, all you really want to do it learn how to play songs you know. That’s the real motivator. So, he suggests for beginners just spending 15 minutes each day learning cords, transitions between cords, and then working on a song. I figured I can spare 15 minutes a day, and I’ve been pretty good about it so far. I’ve been working on the following cords: C, D, A-minor, G, and E-minor. And then working on “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. The calluses on my fingers are starting to return and I’ve gotten almost through the intro. Like I said, working on music you like and the fact that you can spare 15 minutes a day has really helped.

Finally, we have been attending a new church here in Sienna Plantation called The Harvest United Methodist Church. It’s a small church without a building, they are meeting in the middle school which is here in the neighborhood. They have land right across from the middle school and are planning on building eventually once they have enough money. We never thought we would like a small church, but we’ve really been enjoying the fact that we are meeting other people here in the community. Today was a pot luck breakfast, so we brought up some breakfast tacos and enjoyed some of the other treats brought by some of the other families.

That’s pretty much January in review. I’ll try not to make it so long between updates.

Christmas Update

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We had a nice Christmas this year. The first time in a long time we haven’t had to drive 1500 miles from Florida to Texas, which was nice. We spent Christmas Eve cleaning the house so that Jennifer’s parents and sister could come over and have dinner and open presents.

Then, in the morning we got up early, checked to see what Santa brought the girls and then crammed everyone into the Sequoia in order to drive to Lindale to see my side of the family. The trip is about four and a half hours and it’s funny how the girls can only last around three hours before they become restless. The “stop touching me” or similar statements start coming from the back seats.

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Once there, we got to see how big my cousin’s little girl Addison has gotten. She’s now walking around quite good now and is very cute. We had another round of opening presents there and just sat around and visited the rest of the day.

In the morning, we went and visited my Mom’s father in Grand Saline. It was nice to see him again and I know he enjoys seeing the girls. After that, we headed back to Houston and spent the next day cleaning up the house from the party on Christmas Eve.

It was a whirlwind trip, but we enjoyed the company and thank everyone for the presents. I know the girls enjoyed it and I hope everyone had a safe and great Christmas.

Welcome Baby Boy Epperson

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Just a few minutes ago Jennifer’s sister, Christina, and her husband, Mike, welcomed the latest addition to their family into the world. They are still debating the name, but he was 7 lbs. 9 oz. and 19″ long. Everyone is resting and doing well. Here’s hoping that their new bundle of joy doesn’t keep them up too much in the up coming days. Congratulations!

Swimming & Carpet Selection

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The weekend went pretty quick here at the French household. On Saturday, we broke into two groups. Jennifer, Abby, and Isabelle went with Jennifer’s mom to pick out carpet and paint for the construction that’s going on at their house. The house is being repaired after roof damage from Hurricane Ike. The roof is being completely re-done and a lot of the sheet rock and carpet are being replaced inside the house.

While they were off doing that, Emily and myself went to a pool party for her “boyfriend”, Zachary. I was a little confused about having a pool party in December, until I found out it was at an indoor pool. Emily still being timid around water, I took my swimsuit with me just in case she chickened out, which she did. She and I kept to the shallow end, but she had a good time.

Sunday we went back to our new favorite breakfast spot, the Avalon Diner. We discovered this place when my parents were down. The only problem being that it’s all the way into Sugar Land, which means about a 20 minute drive.

Long Awaited Update

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I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I last updated. Since then a lot has happened. We had Halloween where Abby went as an Egyptian princess, Emily went as a cowgirl, and Izzy went as bumble bee. One of the neighborhood mothers had arranged a Halloween block party so we went to that for a while before making it about half way around the block doing some old fashioned door-to-door trick-or-treating. We both went out with the girls this time and just left a bowl of candy at the door.

Emily has started Girl Scouts and was officially added to a new Daisy troop. She received her sash and one of the following weekends went and helped put together food boxes for needy families for Thanksgiving.

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Also in that past month, we now have an 8 year-old in Abby. Since we don’t know too many people yet, we just made it a family affair. Mom and Dad drove down from Shreveport, Jennifer’s parents and sister joined us at the Incredible Pizza Company for pizza and games. Can’t believe that Abby is already 8 years-old. One of Abby’s gifts was tickets to the Nutcracker here in Houston. The Sunday after Thanksgiving, Abby, Jennifer, and Jennifer’s mom headed downtown and watched the ballet. Abby was looking quite the young lady in her new dress.

The following weekend was Thanksgiving and we had all of Jennifer’s family over for Turkey. Jennifer started the bird cooking in the morning and was ready by dinner time. Our dining room set is so stuffed into our rent house that we had to turn it length wise so that it was sticking out into the hall in order to get everyone around it. It was nice having everyone over. It’s one of the reasons we moved back to Texas so that we could get together with family more often.