Merry Christmas

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The last few days have been a whirl wind. While we were in Natchitoches, Poppy took Abby to see The Incredibles. Her review was that “the baby was a monster”. I’m not sure if that means the movies was good or not.

My sister arrived in Shreveport on Thursday and we went ahead and opened packages. Abby asked Nana, “Can we open presents?” She then marched into the den and announced that we were opening the presents because Nana said so. We figured “why not” since the girls would get to play with their toys a day longer before we left Shreveport.

On Christmas Eve we just hung around the house and watched the kids as they played with their toys from the day before. We watched the now Christmas classic, Dodgeball. It was a pretty good movie. Silly, but it had some pretty funny moments.

In the morning, the girls woke up and called me into their room. Abby said that Santa didn’t come. I asked her how she knew that. She said, “I didn’t hear his jingle bells.” I thought this was pretty funny and I told her that she needed to go check. She exclaimed that she could check to see if he ate the cookies and ran off into the den with Emily hot on her tail. When they arrived in the den, they were all excited to see new toys under the Christmas tree.

After the girls played with their new toys from Santa for a while, we headed off to Lindale, Texas, where my grandparents live. We met by my Aunt Marci, Uncle Chuck, my cousin Kevin, and his wife Christie. We opened presents and visited for a while. It was nice to see everyone again. It had been two years since we had been back to Texas to see everyone.

This morning, we packed up the Sequoia and headed to Houston, Texas to Jennifer’s parents’ house. The drive was pleasant and it was finally starting to warm up from being so cold for the past few days. We are starting to plan our week now and I will keep everyone up to date here on Frenchville.

Escape from the Kids

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Yesterday, Jennifer and I headed off to Natchitoches to stay at a bed and breakfast. The laptop was left at my parents’ house, so no entry in Frenchville until now. Unfortunately, a cold front came through and it rained all day and the temperature dropped to around freezing. We checked into the B&B and then went shopping along the “main” street. There were a ton of antique and gift shops that we wandered through. Each shop we regretting leaving because that meant we had to go back outside into the rain and the cold. There seemed to be two themes that were present in every shop: The Red Hat Society and Steel Magnolias. The Red Hat Society seems to be some club for older women who wear red hats, which I have no chance of understanding. Steel Magnolias was filmed exclusively in Natchitoches, so you might say that it’s their “claim to fame”. After shopping we went and had a steak dinner at The Landing, a restaurant recommended by my dad.

We had a good time getting away from the girls. We just wish it was a little bit warmer outside so that we could have enjoyed the town a little bit more.

New Camera

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Another day spent in Shreveport with Nana and Poppy. My grandfather, PaPaw Wilmon, drove over with my Aunt Pat to have lunch and visit with us. He last saw the girls at the big Wilmon family reunion this past summer. It was good to see him again since I had to miss the reunion since we were finalling Madden.

Jennifer went ahead and let me open my Christmas present since “it had to charge if I was intending on using it on Christmas day”. She got me a new digital camera, a Kodak EasyShare DX7630. It’s a 6.1 mega-pixel camera, which is pretty nice. One thing that is nice is that the camera can take movies as well. If you click on today’s picture it will download and play a QuickTime movie of Emily throwing a fit. She is crying because she just woke up from her nap and she always ends up crying for about thirty minutes after she wakes up from her nap.

Tonight, Jennifer and I escaped to the casino once again to play some more roulette. This time I was the big winner with taking home $80 and I pretty much made up for all the money Jennifer lost. We still ended up ahead for our two day excursion to the casino. Jennifer says that she now has it “out of her system”.

Playing at the Duck Pond

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We had a big day in Shreveport with Nana and Poppy. First we all piled into the Sequoia and went to the duck pond where Abby and Emily played on the gym equipment. They had fun running around and playing with Nana and Poppy. At one point a group of ducks and geese swam by while Abby and Emily were watching.

Jennifer and I went out to eat by ourselves to one of my favorite restaurants in Shreveport, Monjunis. It’s an Italian restaurant with great lasagna. They also put bread and marinara sauce on the table like they do chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant.

After Monjunis, we went to Horseshoe Casino. Jennifer ended up winning $300 playing roulette and I ended up loosing money at the dollar slot machines. It’s a good thing Jennifer made up for my loss and then then some.

While we were out on the town, Nana and Poppy took Abby and Emily to Chick Olé and then they drove around looking at Christmas lights. They had fun and then fell right to sleep when they got home.

From Shreveport, Louisiana: Day 1

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We finally made it! Driving in the truck was wearing thin very very fast. Both the girls and Jennifer were very cranky and just wanted to get to our destination. Our trip took us from Mobile, Alabama and up through Mississippi to connect up with I-20. Then we swung over to Shreveport. We didn’t have much trouble finding my parents’ new house once we got into town. It’s very nice and much bigger than their old house.

My parents had Abby and Emily open up a huge box which contained a Barbie PowerWheels Jeep. Abby drove around the yard while Emily was in charge of the music. There’s a kid sized juke box in the passenger seat.

My parents had me and Jennifer open a present too: a stay at a Bed and Breakfast in Natchitoches. We are pretty excited to get away from the kids for a day. My parents also love getting us out of the house so that they can pamper the kids.

From Mobile, Alabama

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The first day of our Christmas trip back home has begun. We packed up the Sequoia last night and we were off at 7:30 this morning. We toured several Burger Kings, eating there for breakfast and lunch. Unfortunately neither one had a play gym for the girls to play in. The TVs in the truck worked until about five hours into the trip. Then, Abby pretty much kept asking “When are we going to get there?” over and over again.

The most interesting part of the trip was going through Pensacola, Florida, where Hurricane Ivan passed through a few months ago. The hurricane wiped out a bridge there and we were worried that we were going to have to go around, but it turns out that they already have some temporary bridge up so that you can cross. All the damage was on the East bound side so it didn’t effect us, but we will go over the temporary bridge on our trip back. The picture is from a news story on the bridge being wiped out by Ivan.

We are now in a hotel in Mobile, Alabama and we will be heading to my parents house in Shreveport, Louisiana tomorrow morning. We chose this hotel because it has an indoor pool. Right when we got here, we got our bathing suits on and went down to the pool. Right now, Abby and Emily are jumping on the bed and will hopefully start settling down soon to go to bed.

Singing Through the Tears

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Today at lunch I went up to watch Abby sing at her school’s Christmas program. We were thinking that it was probably a good thing that we weren’t with Abby before the program started because the past few times that we’ve been there when she is going to sing in front of a crowd, she has a meltdown and starts crying. We figured if we weren’t there she wouldn’t have the opportunity of start crying. We were wrong. They walked out on stage and once they started singing and Abby saw us in the audience, the tears started to flow. Jennifer and I tried to show our encouragement from the audience and after the first song it started to work. Abby’s tears cleared up and she started singing with much enthusiasm. Afterwards, she was happy to see me and we told her we were very proud.

Very big news from work today. It was announced that Electronic Arts has signed an exclusive deal with the National Football League. This means that starting with Madden 2006 and for the next five years, Electronic Arts will be the only video game which will be allowed to use the real NFL teams, players, and stadiums. This is a very big deal and we were all very excited about it at work today. I’m sure our competition, ESPN NFL Football isn’t all that pleased at this moment. The question I’m wondering now is will they even make a football game for the next five years? We will have to wait and see.

Olivia: Ultimate Survivor

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Today we went over to the Carbone’s and watched the finale of Survivor. We had a great time, but poor Olivia, their daughter, had to play host to our two heathens. I’m sure they ran circles around her and all she could do is stand back and pray that all her toys would end up in one piece. Thanks Olivia for being such a good sport. Abby said that she had a good time while I was carrying her out to the car. Of course the two were dead asleep before we left their subdivision.

This season’s Survivor was good, but the finale was pretty predicable. Going into it we pretty much said that all Chris had to do was win immunity on the last two challenges and then take Twila to the final two and he would win a million dollars. That’s exactly what happened tonight. It was good that the show was very predictable because I didn’t have to worry about missing too much while I was checking out the girls to make sure they hadn’t killed Olivia.

Runaway Jury

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We didn’t do much today. We started out with a trip to Peach Valley Cafe for breakfast and then came back to the house and did chores. It’s finally turned cooler here in Florida. High temperatures only got up into the 60’s today. All last week we were in the 80’s.

This evening Jennifer and I watched the film Runaway Jury. This movie was on my Netflix list because while developing Madden 2005 I heard that they had a reference to our game, actually The Madden Challenge, in the movie. That aside, the movie was very good. John Cusack plays a juror on a ground breaking case against a giant gun manufacturer. I turns out that he wanted to get onto this jury so that he could influence it either way to the highest bidder. Both Jennifer and I enjoyed the movie thoroughly and recommend it.

Only six more days until we leave on our big Christmas trip back to Texas.

Atomic Dinner

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Tonight I met some of my old Atomic workmates, Charles Morris and Tom Kent, who were in town for dinner and we waxed nostalgic about the “good ‘ole times”. I also talked about what it was like to work at EA. Sometimes it’s amazing that I’ve been with EA for four years while my time at Atomic was only two and a half years. Thinking back, it seems like my time at Atomic was much longer that it has been with EA. My time at EA has been a blur. Anyway, it was great to see them again and it is sometimes good to get a perspective from other people in the game industry.