One of our friends from Houston and when I worked at Atomic Games, Tom and Kelly Kent, had their second daughter, Francesca Dolores Kent today. Unfortunately due to complications, Francesca had to be delivered 14 weeks premature. They are all currently at Seton Medical Center in Austin. So, the next several weeks are going to be quite a challenge for all involved. So, please have a pleasent thought and/or prayer on their behalf and hope for good recovery for Francesca and Kelly. Our prayers are with them in this tough time.
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.
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.
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.
I headed up once again to UCF today for a game against Memphis. We were having a team event for up at work in the form of a tailgate and then had tickets for the game. The tailgate was fun, company paid for the food and our executive producer paid for the beer. We cooked up some burgers and hung out and tried not to talk about work. That sometimes is hard since we do work for a game company.
There was an uproar over the past week because of the water debacle during the Texas game. Since they ran out last week around half time, they quickly installed some water fountains (I didn’t actually see them) and they handed out a free bottle of water as you entered the gate.
I didn’t stick around to see if they ran out of water again this week. At half time the score was UCF 42 and Memphis 0. So, I decided it was time for me to head out. After all, I needed to get back home by 7:00 to see Texas play against Rice. Finally the Horns blew out a crappy opponent. When Fox Sports Florida turned the game over to another one, Texas was winning 58-7.
Today I spent all day up at the University of Central Florida (UCF) as the Texas Longhorns came into town. We ordered BBQ over the Internet from The Salt Lick in Austin, Texas and I spent the morning cooking it up for our tailgate. Others were in charge of chips and Shiner Bock. We rolled onto campus in the Sequoia with the Rose Bowl playing on the televisions in the back of the truck around 11:00. We found a choice spot under some trees to set up camp and broke out the beers. After a while, we broke out the BBQ and just sat around and talked and ate until it was time to head over to the stadium.
We packed up camp and started our trek all the way across the campus to the new Brighthouse Networks Stadium. This was the first game in UCF’s new stadium. It was a big deal on the news this morning that no water fountains were built in the stadium. They reassured everyone that there would be plenty of water to purchase. Of course, I went down at half time to buy some water: they were out.
Well, overall the game was pretty frustrating as a Longhorn fan. They UCF fans were quite annoying celebrating every single first down (apparently this is a tradition). The Longhorns looked pretty pitiful and I’m not very hopeful when they play Oklahoma in a few weeks. So far they’ve struggled against Arkansas State, TCU, and now UCF. The play calling is very questionable and Colt McCoy is looking very “Simms like”. Not good.
Today Jennifer made her first photography sale. She took a few pictures for a balloon artist for a brochure that he was making. He came back today and bought two pictures and then re-shot a few more poses in order to buy two more. So, congratulations to Jennifer for making her first sale as photographer. I guess that officially makes her a “professional”. Hopefully, this is the first in a long line. She’s added advertising in a couple more directories in hopes of drumming up a few more clients. She’s also going to a lighting conference next week.
An article in the Orlando Sentinal came out today about where I work, EA-Tiburon. Lately there’s been a rash of practal jokes going on around the studio: they filled one of the circular conference room tables with plastic balls; while one of the managers was on vacation, they removed his door and drywalled it in; when one of the engineers left during the finaling of Madden, they filled his cube with alumninum cans and put a web cam on them so he could see it online.
Sorry that it’s been so long since I’ve blogged on Frenchville. Jennifer started poking me last night to get back on the wagon and start it up again. Let’s see what’s been going on since I wrote last…
Abby and Emily had their first day of school. Jennifer has been loving having Mondays and Wednesdays off without any of the kids. Of coarse, she didn’t get this past Monday off because Emily was up until 1:30 in the morning throwing up everywhere. I had to give her a bath twice because she didn’t quite make it to the bathroom.
Austin returned from his surgery in pretty good shape. He still has trouble getting around sometimes. When he tries to run he ends up sliding around on the hardwood floors because he can’t get any traction with his back feet. It’s sad and funny at the same time.
Jennifer and I have been watching the series Heroes on HD-DVD through Netflix. It’s been a great series. We have been watching at least an episode a night trying to finish it out before the new television series starts up.
Anyway, that’s a quick blog entry. Hopefully I will get back into this so you all out there can read up on what the French family is up to.
This morning was Open House at Abby’s school so that you could meet the teacher or teachers in Abby’s case. So, I took the morning off from work and we headed up there. Abby is in a larger class (around 30 kids), but there’s two teachers. We met both of them and they seemed really nice. The little girl next door who is starting kindergarten is actually right next door to Abby’s class, so Abby can help direct her to the right classroom on the first day.
We received word that Austin is still recovering. He has feeling back in both legs, but one is weaker than the other. They are going to keep him through to Monday so that he can recover some more.
Today’s picture is the beach that we visited on our trip to Fort Clinch.
When we got up this morning, Austin had gotten worse. He now couldn’t move his hind legs at all. For all practical purposes, he was paralyzed. After calling the Vet, Jennifer took him back in. It turns out it was a slipped disc in his back. He needed immediate surgery in order to fix it or it would get progressively worse until he couldn’t use his hind legs at all. Jennifer took him to another vet office that specialized in canine neurosurgery. Talking to the doctor, she said that the surgery has a 90% success rate. They took a CAT scan of the area and took him immediately into surgery. Afterward, she called us at home and told us that the surgery went well and that the problem was exactly what they thought it was. They are going to keep him tomorrow and he might be able to come home on Saturday. Otherwise, he would have to wait and come home on Monday. We all wish Austin a speedy recovery.
Today’s picture is from Isabelle’s first day of school.
Today was Isabelle’s first day of school. She started 2 year-old pre-school and she will be going Mondays and Wednesdays. I’m not sure why they started her a week before Abby and Emily start school, so Jennifer said it was kind of weird around the house having the two older girls, but the younger one was off to school. Her teacher said that she did good and that they learned the song “Wheels on the Bus”. If you sing it to her she gets this big smile on her face and rotates her arms around in a circle. It’s pretty amusing. In today’s picture she’s carrying her lunch kit getting ready to leave for school.
On sadder note, Austin injured himself yesterday going down our stairs. He was in pain all last night and Jennifer took him to the Vet today. They are not sure what it is, but he seems to have pulled something in his leg. They were thinking it was a slipped disc in his back, but the x-rays they took didn’t show anything. So, we are giving him pain pills and we are going to see if it gets any better. He looks pretty pathetic because he really can’t walk anywhere. He sits in his bed with this sad look on his face.
Frenchville 