Searching for a Photographer

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Wow. Look at this. Two entries in Frenchville in so many days.

Today Jennifer went out to DeLand to visit a photographer, Elizabeth Carol. Ever since we left Austin, one of the things she has missed has been the photographer she really liked: Jennifer Turner. Jennifer was walking through the mall the other day and saw a photograph that reminded her of Jennifer Turner, so she did some investigation and it turns out that this photographer has a lot of the same props that Jennifer Turner did. She was really impressed and has an appointment to get Isabelle’s 3 month old pictures taken with her.

I’ve been clamoring about getting a laptop at work by making hints in several meetings. Finally today, the Executive Producer on Madden said, “If we get you a laptop, it better be attached to your hip. You will be taking notes in every meeting.” I was thinking, “mission accomplished”.

They came to install our shower door today. It was the last piece to our bathroom re-tiling. Unfortunately, there isn’t a stud behind where the shower door would go, so they couldn’t hang it up. We now have to get the tiling contractor to come back and some how shore up that wall so that the door will hang. Right now we are at a loss for what to do. We were thinking that all of our projects would finally be done today, but once again we hit another snag.

I’ve been a little behind on doing the laundry and Abby didn’t have pajama bottoms. So, she had to go to bed in a pajama top and some panties. She didn’t like that. She kept saying that someone was going to see that and laugh at her. It’s funny that lately she’s been starting to get modest. It must be something she’s picking up at school.

For the past couple of days I haven’t had time enough to shave because I’ve been busy at work. Today I decided to shave it into a goatee. When I got home from work Jennifer noticed it for the first time. Needless to say, I will be shaving tomorrow.

Back to Frenchville

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I’ve been very busy at work lately which has kept me away from Frenchville. Today I was home from work, resting up, and I thought I would stroll through the streets of Frenchville once again.

Over the past few weeks, Emily has started pre-school. She now goes two times a week. So, on Mondays and Wednesdays, Jennifer just has Isabelle at home and she’s loving every minute of it. Emily is enjoying school. Jennifer says that Emily just gives her a kiss, says “bye Mom” and goes off to playing when she drops her off. She says that’s pretty rare in her class as there’s a lot of kids that are crying when they are dropped off.

Abby and Emily have started swim lessons. They go every afternoon for 20 minutes and it’s one-on-one with an instructor. The first day Abby through a fit, but today she was doing great. Hopefully these swim lessons will stick.

Isabelle has started sleeping through the night. She goes to bed around 9:00 p.m. and has been sleeping all the way until 6:00 a.m. Jennifer has been very pleased that she hasn’t had to get up in the middle of the night anymore.

That’s about it. I will try to post more often, but we are getting into the busy time at work.

It Was Over in the Blink of an Eye

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Between sick kids, the bathroom being re-tiled, and work, it’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks. First off, Emily brought some sort of stomach flu home from Vacation Bible School a couple of weeks ago. After a few days it spread to Jennifer and a few days after that it spread to Abby. Me and Baby Belle were the only two who were spared. Unfortunately, it delayed Abby going to her first day of school this past Monday, but she was better by Wednesday and was chomping at the bit to go. She had a great time and came home telling us how she learned about bones.

Today I was called home from work early because Emily had stuck something up her nose. At first Jennifer thought it was a carpet fiber, because Emily had stuck one of those up her nose before, but looking with a flashlight I could tell it was something plastic. So, I held her down while Jennifer got some tweezers out, but Emily would have nothing of it and was squirming way too much. Finally, I coached Emily on how to blow her nose. She blew a couple of times and out flew a piece of paper and an eye ball. Not a real eye ball, but one of those plastic squiggly eyeballs that stick to paper.

Re-Tiling the Bathroom

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Another thing that started this week was the re-tiling of our bathroom. I found water underneath the tile in our shower a couple of months ago and since we were going to have to re-tile the shower, we decided to go ahead and re-tile the entire bathroom. We hired a contractor and Jennifer used her discount at Pro Source to get the tile. It’s looking good. First they spent the first couple of days this week tearing out all the old tile. Then, they spent the past two days putting the new tile in. Once it’s all in, I’ll take some pictures and post them on the site. Won’t the home improvements end?

Abby and Emily are getting pretty restless, but it’s their last week of freedom. She goes back to school on Monday and she is going to start going every day Monday through Friday. Emily is also going to start going to pre-school, but she is only going to be going on Mondays and Wednesdays. Jennifer can’t wait.

Another Frenchville Reunion

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I had a pretty uneventful birthday on Sunday, but isn’t that what’s it’s supposed to be like once you have kids? The focus moves from your birthday to the kids’ birthdays. We went to breakfast that morning and that was a treat. We thought about going out to the beach, but with Isabelle in tow, doing stuff like that has become more and more tough.

Jennifer was sick today, so I stayed home from work. The girls and I watched the space shuttle take off on TV and then ran outside to see if we could see it in the sky, but I forgot that there’s still a time delay even in live TV, so we missed it. It had already gone behind one of the clouds by the time we got outside.

I had another Frenchville reunion today. An old high school friend, Jincy Pace, stumbled upon my blog. She’s living in San Jose, California and is a local police officer there. She investigates traffic accidents and tries to reconstruct what happens. It was good to hear from her. I’m glad Frenchville has been a great tool for getting back in touch with old friends.

New Moblog

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We had quite a scare here at Frenchville over the past couple of days. First off on Thursday the site was down for some unknown reason. Then, today, the site was back up, but the database which contains all of my blog entries was gone! I was quite worried that all of my entries for the past few months were gone. Evidently it’s all fixed now. I never heard back from my web hosting company on what the problem was. Now I must find the button that backs all of this up…

The site was back up just in time for me to get my new cell phone and set up my moblog. You will now notice a series of pictures to the right under the “Jason’s Moblog” area. These are all photos that were taken with my cell phone. All you have to do is click on the picture and it will take you to a larger version of it. The first picture I took was of Isabelle sitting in her bouncer. Next, I went to pick up Abby from the last day of her Vacation Bible School and it turned out they were having a program where all of them sang. I didn’t know about it, so I didn’t bring my camera. It was pretty handy that I just reached for my new cell phone and snapped a couple of pictures. Abby did good. I could tell she was nervous singing in front of everyone, but her teacher reassured her and she did very well.

Beagle Bruises

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The girls were on the verge of busting down the back door with anticipation this morning, wanting to go out on the play gym. Once I was at work, I called back to Jennifer to see how they were doing. She said that they had been out there for a couple hours just running around and playing. The next problem is containing all of the sand which is starting to get tracked into the house. Also, the girls are complaining that Austin is playing too rough. He will run around and nip at their heals while they run away giggling. Their only escape is to climb up into the play gym. Today’s picture is from last week when Austin was playing too rough with Abby and scratched her neck. Emily is not injured, but because Abby had a band aid, Emily had to have one too.

I read today on my friend, Tom’s, blog that one of his stories was quoted in a news article. He had a rant about how CNN was blowing the hurricane coverage out of proportion and apparently the CJR Daily thought it was good enough to quote and write an article around. That’s pretty cool, but then also a little scary that all of a sudden something that you are writing in your blog is being quoted in a news article.

The Play Gym is Up!

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Cue Theme to Superman. I am proud to announce that the play gym is up! It’s been a long and hard battle. It’s an epic story with bad guys, blood and sweat building sand boxes, 11 cubic yards of sand, and trials of patience. Now two fair princesses can go into their backyard and sit atop their tower looking down unto the world and their parents will be happy because they are outside and not inside running around like little maniacs.

So three guys from Woodplay, the people we bought the set from, arrived today to move the pieces back into the sandbox and then one guy stayed behind and put the thing back together again. I must mentioned that they said the sandbox was very well constructed. Once they were finished, the girls were all over the play gym. They put their lawn chairs up the tower part and they stuck flower-shaped windmills outside the lower playhouse portion. Needless to say, Abby and Emily will be well occupied the rest of the week.

Topping It Off with Sand

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Two advances on getting the backyard in its final state happened today. First, the last of the sand arrived today. They topped off the sand box and leveled it all out. It looks much better. Now if we could only get the play gym back up… They called today and said that they could come and set up the play gym tomorrow, which is earlier than the Thursday time frame they told us last week. So, we are on the verge of having the entire backyard done tomorrow.

Today Abby started another Vacation Bible School. This one is in the evening and is at the church were she goes to pre-school. She told me she had a good time and that she ate bread and cheese. She said she also had fun in crafts where she made a dreidel. I thought we sent her to a Christian Vacation Bible School?

Finally, tonight I ordered a new cellular phone. This past weekend Jennifer smashed my phone with the Sequoia’s hatch back. So, it kind of forced the issue on getting a new phone. The good news is that it is a camera phone so I am going to setup what is called a “moblog“. Any pictures I take with the cell phone will be automagically uploaded real time to Frenchville.

Abby Couldn’t Sing

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We all piled into the car this morning heading to church to hear Abby sing. She’s been talking about it all week, so she must have been excited to sing. We were there and it was time for everyone to go up on stage to sing. So about 300 kids start walking towards the stage at the same time. They must have rehearsed it before hand, but alas, poor Abby, got lost on her way up there and came back to where we were sitting tears in her eyes. From that point on, it was meltdown city. Jennifer took her to where she was supposed to go, but the tears wouldn’t stop and finally, she just gave up. Afterwards, I asked her why she didn’t sing. I asked, “Were you scared?” I was trying to get some insight into why the meltdowns were happening, since I thought we had gotten past this. Her only statement was that “She couldn’t sing.”