Hurricane Charlie Aproaches

Today Jennifer went on a great shoe hunt all across the mall for Emily without any luck. Emily has grown out of all her shoes and the one pair we just got her have Velcro on them and she can get out of them too easily. We put her in the car and two seconds later, she’s ripped both of her shoes off.

Hurricane Charlie continues to head our way. It doesn’t look like it is going to go directly over us. It will go just to the west of us, but we will still be in it’s path. Abby’s pre-school has been canceled and I’m going to stay home from work to help prepare. The storm should hit around 3:00 tomorrow afternoon. I’ll have an update tomorrow evening.

I’m out of current pictures, so I’m having to reach into the archives. Today’s picture is from when Abby was a baby and is in honor of football starting soon. Since she was born during the football season, Abby got dressed up for the Texas-Texas A&M game on the day after Thanksgiving 2000.

Here Come the Storms

Today started off with a trip to the dentist for Jennifer. She found out that the sealants on her teeth have failed and she’s starting to get cavities on her teeth. The dentist said that she has six cavities that are starting to form. We’ve decided to do nothing for now. Jennifer said her teeth aren’t bothering her and the cavities are just now starting to form.

After her appointment, we met at the frame shop because it’s time to get my latest game framed. Every year I get the game I’ve worked on framed. The cover and the DVD are mounted with a suede mat and black metal frame. This year will be the first time I have four different covers and DVD’s all in one frame.

We found out today that two tropical storms are heading towards Florida. Bonnie is going to hit the pan handle and shouldn’t affect us much. Charlie, which will become a hurricane before it hits landfall, is looking like it is going to go right over the top of us. Jennifer went to Target today and stocked up on some water and batteries for our flashlights. I will, of course, have daily updates on what happens to us during the tropical storms. Hopefully Frenchville won’t blow away.

It was actually nice outside after dinner and we went on a walk around the neighborhood. It’s amazing how it could be unbearably humid one day and then pleasant the next day. I guess that’s Florida for you. It’s probably the calm before the storms.

Madden In Stores

Madden NFL 2005 starts appearing in stores today. EA has declaired this “National Madden Vacation Day“. However, I guess that didn’t include people who actually worked on the game. I’m still working on updating my Madden 2005 page. I will get around to getting the screen shots soon. We got our complementary copies today and I will be getting them framed tomorrow so that it can join the collection of all my games that I have framed.

New Frenchville

As you may have noticed, I changed up some things around Frenchville. It’s been raining all day and I figured it was time to mix up the look a bit. I never really liked the old Frenchville logo, so I went with something simple. I’ve added “Jason’s Bookshelf” which I will update with the books I’m currently reading or have just completed. I will also be adding “Jason’s Game Shelf” soon. Look for new stuff in the future.

As I mentioned, it has been raining here all day. Abby and Emily are getting stir crazy and are really needing to get out of the house. Today’s picture is of Emily hiding under the counter. The girls are having to get creative in order to find things to do.

Rainy Saturday

Well, not much has happened over the past few days. Abby went to her second day of pre-school yesterday. Today’s picture is of Abby in her classroom when we took her on the first day. They are learning the alphabet and she made a picture of an ant yesterday. She will tell you that, “‘A’ is for ant; ‘A’ is for apple; and ‘A’ is for Abby”.

We went out to breakfast this morning at the Peach Valley Cafe, which is a rarity because the girls can’t sit still for more than a couple of minutes. However, they did very well this morning and we tried our best to entertain them while they cooked our food. The food was good and it was even better since the girls behaved themselves.

The rest of the day was pretty boring since it rained all day. Jennifer ventured out still in search of a contractor to fix our warped floor. There’s much debate on whether or not the floor can be sanded and stained to match the old floor. We are still getting a couple of quotes together in order to submit them to State Farm.

I played my gave vs. Texas in mine and George’s Strange Brew College Football League on NCAA Football 2005. In order to have a challenge, I’m not playing Texas, but I’m playing Baylor, which is turning out to be very difficult. I’m currently 2-2 for the season and I was crushed by Texas 34-0, but I felt I held my own because it was only 3-0 with 1:00 left in the half. At half time it was 10-0. I panicked and abandoned my fairly good running game for my non-existing passing game because I felt I was falling behind. I should have held my ground and kept running the ball. Oh well. The first year of our franchise is always a “rebuilding year” for Baylor.

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school for Abby. She is attending a new pre-school closer to the house and is now going Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 9:00 to 2:00 p.m. Which means she’s at school nine more hours per week than last year. It was mass chaos dropping her off this morning as there was no meeting with her teacher ahead of time and none of the parents knew were to go or what to do, including ourselves.

Afterwards, she said that she had a fun time at school. She said that they read a book named “Mickey’s Water” (we don’t know the actual title). Apparently it was a story about Mickey and Goofy going on a boat trip. There was an incident where a boy in class had Cheetos as his snack and Abby cried because she wanted Cheetos too. The teacher had to explain to her how everyone had different snacks. She also told us that she shared her Jell-O, which was the desert in her lunch.

Naked

Not much happened today. Just getting ready for Abby’s first day of school tomorrow.

There was only one thing that happened today with the kids. While Jennifer was napping on the couch, she awoke to Emily yelling, “naked”. When she opened her eyes Emily had taken off all of her clothes and her diaper and was standing there buck naked. Funny that Emily can say a half dozen words and one of them is “naked”. Today’s picture is of Emily, who on her own, climbed up into her rocking chair with a blanket and started reading a book.

The Price of a Dollar

The day started off with Jennifer going to the dentist. She chipped her lower tooth while eating the other day. She chipped the same tooth a could of years ago and she had it bonded. The dentist filed it down this morning, but Jennifer says that it’s still too sensitive. The only other option is to replace the tooth with a crown.

Jennifer called some contractors to take a look at our floor so we can get it all cleaned up. Both contractors are pretty much telling us that it’s not possible to match the old floor and the new floor. We just now have to get a quote from the contractors to turn over to State Farm so that they will give us more money.

My parents have gotten moved into their new house over the past weekend. The new house has a car port instead of a garage and their lawn mower got stolen over night. I guess it’s a house warming gift in reverse.

Today we saw a report on the news about how kids were collecting money to buy phone cards for soldiers over in Iraq. There was a shot of a jar full of dollar bills. When Abby saw it she started to explain to me how Mom uses dollars to get cookies and to let Abby ride on the horses at the mall. It’s interesting how she’s starting to understand how money works. I tried to explain that Dad has to go to work and that they give me dollars which I then turn over to her mother so that she can buy the cookies among other things.

Today’s picture is the twin to the picture of Emily at the airport watching the fountain. It is Abby sitting at the same fountain watching the water. She wasn’t as mesmerized as Emily. Abby starts back to school on Wednesday.

New Tires

Got new tires from Discount Tire Company for my truck today. Instead of waiting at the place, Jennifer picked me up and I went and test drove the Toyota Sequoia. Much nicer than the Honda Pilot that I test drove the other day. The Sequoia drove much more like my Blazer, but with a little better acceleration, more like our Camry. I liked it and hopefully we can get one before the end of the year for our trip to Texas.

Tonight, Jennifer went out to eat to The Cheesecake Factory with a bunch of the wives from work. She had a pretty good time visiting and getting away from the kids for a while.

Today’s picture is from when we picked up Marci from the airport the other day. There is a fountain inside the airport and Emily was mesmerized by the water.

Jak II Completed

This morning Jennifer went to a meeting at church about Sunday coffee and whether or not we are ever going to get help serving or not. Afterwards, she went and test drove a Toyota Sequoia.

Once the girls got up from their nap, we headed to Wal-Mart to get new tires for my truck. Since we are going to be trading in my truck soon, we decided to get some cheap tires since the ones that are on there now are nearly completely bald. However, Wal-Mart was out of tires that fit my truck. Oh well. I’m going to try Discount Tire Company tomorrow. After Wal-Mart we went shopping at the mall.

During the girls’ nap I finished playing Jak II. It was a fairly good game. I just get the feeling that it suffered from an identity crisis. While it’s predecessor was a pure platformer. Jak II tried to be more that it really was. There were so many different types of games that it got a little frustrating. There was a racing mini-game, you would ferry people around in floating cars, you had weapons to shoot enemies, and even a whack-a-mole type mini-game. Only about 50% of the game was an actual platformer. Another frustrating part of the game was that you would have to move around the city in order to get from one mission to another. This seemed a little excessive. It sounds like I didn’t like the game, but I did. The story was good and I can’t wait for Jak 3 to come out and to continue the story.

For my next game I decided to get away from the platform and console games and go with a first-person shooter (FPS) on the PC. I haven’t played an FPS since Return to Castle Wolfenstein and I haven’t been able to play one at home for a long time because I haven’t had a computer powerful enough to play. Now that I have my new laptop, it was time to get a game to take it for a test drive. Looking at Game Informer magazine I decided to go with Unreal Tournament 2004. So far it’s pretty fun. I got online and took on some people in a capture the flag game. I figured I would suck, but I was able to hold my own.

Today’s picture is from the trip to the beach. Abby is flying the kite all on her own.