Today was the first day of Alpha and it was a much better pace than the past week. I actually left around 6:00 p.m. and was able to eat dinner with my family. We are still on mandated 10 hour days, so I’m going to start going in at 8:00 a.m. in order to leave in order to have dinner with Jennifer and the kids. We have been promised this weekend off as well.
Here’s another picture from the Easter egg hunt last Saturday. Emily is too small to jump in the Bounce House, but she can have fun, jumping on the outside.
After promising to do daily entries yesterday, I have decided that my family isn’t as interesting as Tom’s. However, I will still give it a try.
Madden 2005 has finally made it to Alpha. We are in the home stretch now. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but at least we are now pretty much feature complete and we are now switching gears into a bug fixing mode.
Jennifer has started painting all the baseboards in the new house. The trim between the hardwood floor and the baseboards is a wood color which matches the floor. Jennifer thinks this would look better as white, matching the baseboard. She’s done a section of it and I agree. The only problem is that I think it’s going to take her forever because she can only paint while the girls are asleep. We’ll see how long it take her.
Today’s picture is from Saturday’s Easter Egg hunt that was put on by church. Emily is enjoying opening up all of her Easter Eggs.
I hope everyone is having a happy Easter. Inspired by Tom Carbone, a friend at work, I’m going to try and start submitting daily entries to the Family portion of my web log. No promises, since we are starting to hit our busy time at work, but all I can do is try.
No rest for the weary. It was a late night at work, but the Easter Bunny arrived early. He brought the kids books and Abby got a craft kit. They set out collecting the eggs that the Easter Bunny had left. Emily was pretty funny, clapping each time she collected an egg. She was very proud of herself.
This Sunday was our turn to serve coffee at church. It was a mad house, but fortunately, we had help. After taking a nap, Tim & Leslie Cowan, and their kids, Zach and Nate, came over for Easter dinner. The kids ran around together while we got to visit with Tim and Leslie. We ate a great dinner prepared by Jennifer and Leslie.
Madden NFL 2004 has won The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ Computer Sports Game of the Year. This is the second year that we’ve won. It’s a little sweeter this year since I was the lead programmer. There’s not too many other games in this category since PC sports games are on the decline. However, it is still an honor to win. We wouldn’t have gotten this recoginition without the help of the Madden Console team. We also wouldn’t have won without the hard work of the two other main guys working on Madden PC: Tim Cowan and Tim Spangler. Both of these guys poured their heart and soul and really believed in the PC product and bringing the console expereince to the PC.
One of the nice things about living in Central Florida is if you feel like it, you can pack up the kids in the car and head to one of many water parks in Orlando. We decided to visit Disney’s Blizzard Beach (a.k.a. “Mickey’s Water” to Abby). They had a fun time, but even though it had been in the 80’s all week long here in Florida, it was still too cold for Abby.
For October we had lots of activity. Emily has started to walk as her primary mode of transportation. She is much more interactive and greets me at the top of the stairs when I come home from work every day.
On October 9th, Jennifer and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary. We got a baby sitter and went out to eat at the Melting Pot restaurant.
On October 11th, Jennifer and I pretended we were not married to see if it would help the Texas Longhorns beat the University of Oklahoma. The Longhorns haven’t beat OU since we were married in 1999. It didn’t work. Texas lost 65-13.
On October 14th, we all went to Disney World’s Not So Scary Halloween. This is where they open up the part in the evening and all the kids get to wear the costumes and get candy. Both Abby and Emily had lots of fun riding the Dumbo and Tea Cup ride. According to Abby, she was dressed as “a princess” and Emily went as “a fairy”.
On October 18th, we went to the Electronic Arts-Tiburon Fall Festival. There was a hamburger cookout and there was games and rides for the kids. Abby had fun on the giant inflated slide and the merry-go-round. She also showed off her monkey bar skills on the playground.
October 25th, was the Winter Park First United Methodist School Fall Festival. This was a fund raiser for Abby’s school. There was clowns, pony rides, games, and other activities. Abby had lots of fun.
October 26th, George & Heather flew down in order for us to go to the Dallas Cowboys at Tampa Bay Buccaneers football game. The game wasn’t that exciting as the Cowboys were easily defeated by the Bucs 16-0.
For Halloween Abby had a Halloweek party at her school along with a costume parade. Later the girls came up to where I work and we did our trick-or-treating at Electronic Arts-Tiburon. The “princess” and “fairy” collected way too much candy wandering from cubicle to cubicle.
August was full of activity since I had extra time off from work since Madden shipped last month. Emily has started to stand up when holding on to something. She tries to walk, but usually stumbles. Abby and Emily have started playing together, but Abby usually plays too rough.
On August 2nd we joined the Central Florida YMCA in Winter Park in an attempt to get into shape and so Abby could take swim lessons. She loves going to the pool and we thought it would be a good idea to teach her to swim.
On August 8th George & Heather Galindo came to visit and we all went to Miami to see the Miami Dolphins vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers pre-season football game. Jennifer’s mother flew over to stay with Abby and Emily over night. The following Monday, George, Heather, and I went down to Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex to watch the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during their training camp.
On August 12th, Madden 2004 was released. So far sales have been doing good. I’ve heard that sales are up from last year.
On August 15th, I won tickets from work to go see the Miami Dolphins vs. Jacksonville Jaguares. Becuase we couldn’t fine anyone on such short notice, I went to the game myself.
August 19th was Abby’s first day of pre-school. She was very happy to go and has enjoyed going. She is going to pre-school at our church, First United Methodist of Winter Park. She goes two days a week for 3 hours. She really enjoys it and can’t wait to go again.
On August 25th Jennifer, Abby, and I went to Blizzard Beach, a water park at Disney. We floated down a river in a innertube, went down water slides. Abby loved every minute of it. She keeps asking to go back to “Mickey’s Water”.
This year’s Easter was very eventful for the French family. Here is some pictures from Easter weekend 2003.
The weekend started very early Saturday morning when Abby woke me up at 6:00 with a, “Come on, Dad.” She was greeted with a whole spread of gifts from the Easter Bunny. She was also surprised when she found out that the Easter Bunny had also hidden eggs around the townhouse, filled with M&M’s.
Later that morning, we went to an Easter Egg hunt sponsored by our church, First United Methodist of Winter Park. We had a picnic lunch and there was a big Easter Egg hunt with about 100 other kids. Abby collected a basket full of eggs filled with candy. Later she jumped in a Bounce House and got to ride a pony. She loved riding the pony and was smiling the whole time.
The next morning we went to church and when we got back we took some pictures outside the townhouse’s club house. The matching Easter outfits were supplied by Abby and Emily’s Nana and Poppy.
Here are various pictures of Abby and Emily from the past couple of months. Abby is two years old and Emily is now 3 months old. Abby likes cooking for Emily and Emily likes sitting around the townhouse in her swing and bouncer. The pictures of Emily in her swing are not recycled Abby pictures. They just look alike at that age. 🙂
Frenchville 
