Recovering from the Party

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We intentionally didn’t do much today. The party yesterday was so energy draining, all we could do is sit around the house all day. Abby received a croquet set for her birthday so we went outside at one point and I showed her how to play. It was pretty cute. She would pick up the ball and take it to each gate and hit it through with the mallet and exclaim, “I win! I win!”

Because we were hanging around the house, I had time to work on Frenchville. You will notice that the web site is pretty much starting to look like it’s old self: the Book and Game Shelf have returned; links to personal web sites for the games I have worked on; and archives of all my old entries are now up and going. There’s a few more old archives I want to get back online, specifically, the original “Abigail Rose French” site.

One incident, which I forgot to mention yesterday. While pulling the new Sequoia into the garage, Jennifer scratched the side rear quarter panel. It’s scratched pretty bad, down through the paint. We are going to see if it will buff out, but I have a feeling it’s more than a superficial wound.

Here’s another picture from yesterday’s party. All the kids are around the table getting ready for Abby to blow out the candles. You can tell they are all pretty sweaty from jumping on the bounce house.

The Party

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Today was Abby’s party. Everything went well except for the bounce house we ordered didn’t get delivered until 12:30 and the party started at 11:00. We had the kids running around in the backyard for an hour and a half. We were really pissed at the delivery driver, who didn’t even apologize for being late. His only reaction was, “Do you want me to set it up or not?” I really felt like telling him no, but Abby was really expecting the bounce house so we reluctantly told him to go ahead. So, I will tell everyone who reads this that our experience with Rent a Jumper was horrible and for you to use them at your own risk.

Once the bounce house arrived, the kids had a ton of fun jumping around and sliding down the slide. When it came time to eat cake and open presents they were all dripping with sweat. Abby said that she loved her party and that’s really all that matters.

Happy Birthday Abby!

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Happy Birthday Abby! This morning four years ago Abigail Rose French was born. We can’t believe we are the parents of a four year old kid. She amazes us everyday. I was cleaning up her playroom tonight in preparation of the party tomorrow and we have a bunch of Abby’s artwork hanging on the wall. I was pruning all the old pictures when I came across a very good painting of a face. I was amazed. Jennifer said that she signed her name in a card at church the other day. It was an A, a backward B and a Y. Close enough. Today’s picture is from Abby’s third birthday party.

Preparing for a Party

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Today Jennifer did more preparations for Abby’s party, which is on Saturday. Calls were made to Albertson’s for sandwiches and a party shop for balloons. Finally, Abby and Jennifer made cupcakes for her class tomorrow. Abby has been calling cupcakes, “pupcakes”. Jennifer says back to her, “Do you see any puppies on the kitchen counter? They are called cup-cakes.”

Today’s picture is of Abby opening presents at her second birthday party.

Squirrel in the Attic

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I was awaken this morning, not by the pitter patter of little feet, but to the scritch scratching of little claws. The squirrel which took refuge in our attic during the hurricanes is back. This time it sounds like he is exploring more as you can hear him on one side of the house and then scratch, scratch, scratch, he’s on the other side. Jennifer checked into getting someone to come out and “take care” of the squirrel, but needless to say, I can find about 250 reasons why we are going to handle it ourselves. I just hope it is a squirrel. I don’t want to get up in the attic and suddenly I’m face to face with a pack of wild raccoons. I’m going to wait until this weekend so I can see where he’s coming in and plug up the hole.

Today we once again lost in softball 17-10. The bats were just not there, especially mine. I when 0-3 with three fly outs. I also think we aren’t aggressive enough in our base running. We had to call in one of the guys that was hurt recently because we were low on men. He wasn’t used to our wimpy base running style and he ended up stealing home. We should probably sit him down and tell him to not be so aggressive in his base running like the rest of the team. My fielding went fine, there wasn’t many hit my direction, but I did help turn a 5-4-3 double play.

Today’s picture is of Abby and me at her 1st birthday party. This is in honor of Abby’s 4th birthday which is on Friday.

Fly Away Balloon

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Today Jennifer and Emily went to the store in order to get supplies for Abby’s birthday party this weekend. There, Emily got a balloon from one of the workers. When they got home they were outside and Emily let the balloon go. Emily started to cry and Jennifer tried to explain to her how the balloon flew away. They went inside to put the groceries away and came back outside thirty minutes later. Emily start pointing to the sky and saying, “Fly away balloon”. Jennifer thought it was pretty cute.

Typical Sunday

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Today was a typical Sunday. We started out by going to church where it was our turn to serve coffee. Abby also helped serve punch. She held the cups while I poured the punch. Everyone was impressed that she was helping and her only response was, “I am four.” I had to keep correcting her that she wasn’t four until Friday.

When Emily got up from her nap, we found that she had stripped all of her clothes off and she also had taken all of her and Abby’s clothes out of the dresser and had them all dumped on the floor. Fortunately there were no “accidents” while she was sleeping naked.

We decided today that Emily is going to be a dentist. She will sit on your lap and make you open your mouth wide and inspect your teeth. She’s also gotten so that she can identify all areas of the face: eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and tongue.

Today’s picture is of Emily sliding down the giant inflated slide. Many people were amazed that Emily would go up and down the slide all by herself.

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.

New Frenchville

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I’m messing around with some new blogging software for Frenchville. The goal is to get it back to what it looked like before, but it will have some new features which I will talk about when the transition is complete. For now, just excuse the mess while I get it up and running.

First Florida Snake

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Today was my first snake encounter since moving to Florida. Since Florida is essentially one big swamp I expected my first snake to happen sooner and not 21 months since moving here. Anyway, I was walking into our garage to put the garbage into one of our trash cans in there when I noticed a very tiny baby snake sitting there in my way. I picked up a broom and swept it out of the garage. It started heading for the front door and since I really didn’t want it heading toward the house, I picked up a shovel and encouraged it to get onto the shovel. I then carried it into the front lawn and let it go. Since it was a baby snake now I’m worried that his brother and sisters are all hanging out in my garage. Hopefully he was just lost and needed to be shown the way out.

Today’s picture is another one from Halloween. Abby and Emily look over their pile of candy that they received over the night.