It is now the end of the first week of me being in Florida while the family is back in Houston. I finally got to see the new house with my own eyes and I’m really excited about it. Can’t wait until we move in and start settling in. There’s three big things that we are going to have to buy right away: fans, fence, and blinds.

None of the rooms have ceiling fans, which is a big oversight for a house in the South. Not too big a deal, though. I’ve installed them before and they are not that hard. Unfortunately, I think there’s about seven we’re going to have to install.

We need a fence for Austin. He likes to roam around outside some times (especially when he has to do his business) and we are going to have to fence in the backyard for that. Jennifer already has a couple of fence companies giving us quotes. The Homeowners’ Association is requiring us to get a white vinyl fence. I didn’t even know they made fences like that. It’s quite a difference between here and Texas, where every house already has a big wood fence when you move in. I think Texans live under the adage, good fences make good neighbors.

Finally, the house has no window coverings at all. So, we are going to have to get mini-blinds for most of the house. Fortunately, Jennifer’s dad sells blinds, so we know where to go for that.

So, while we are busy making plans for the house in Florida, Jennifer and the girls are having to struggle through the hot summer in the rent house back in Houston. The house has such poor construction the upstairs half of the house stays at least 10 – 15 degrees hotter than the lower portion. Now that the summer is at it’s hottest, it has become intolerable. It’s gotten so bad, that the girls are now camping out in the downstairs bedroom with Jennifer. We’ve complained to the owners, but no response. Fortunately, Jennifer and the girls only have about another week in the house before the movers come and pick-up all of our stuff.

Two months since I’ve updated Frenchville. A lot has gone on since then. The biggest news being that we are moving back to Orlando and I’m resuming my job with EA – Tiburon. I just spent the weekend driving from Houston to Orlando and in a couple of weeks I’m going to fly back and do it again, but this time with the family. I’ve learned over the past year that it isn’t really where you live, but your job that matters. You have to enjoy what you are doing for a living. I always enjoyed my job with EA Sports, playing their games and it was extremely hard playing NCAA 09 last year knowing that I started working on that game and didn’t finish it.

We have a contract out on a house in Oviedo, a suburb east of Orlando. It should be about the same drive as I had when we lived up in Lake Mary. We close on the house on June 30th. It’s in short sale, so we are getting a good deal on it, but the movement has been fairly slow because everything has to go through the bank. It recently appraised for lower than we offered. Our realtor went back to the bank and made sure our offer was lowered to the price it appraised for. That’s going to end up saving us quite a bit of money when we close on the house in a few weeks.

Last week was also Izzy’s 4th birthday. Nana, Poppy, and Aunt Marci came down to help us celebrate. Their cousin, Kinley, also came over. Of course, Izzy requested to have a Mickey Mouse cake and Jennifer made it once again. After lunch and cake, we headed over to the Sienna Plantation pool for some swimming.

Last Sunday was also Abby’s dance recital. Five months of dance lessons leading up to this final recital. It was a two hour show with about 15 groups of kids doing two numbers each. Abby’s first dance was to the Austin Power’s theme. If I would have known that, I would have shown her the opening number to the movie before she went on so that she could have seen some of the proper dance moves. Abby did very well. I thought she was one of the best dancers out there, but I might be a little biased.

So, currently, I’m in Orlando, the family is back in Houston and in a couple of weeks we will be reunited. Now that we are going to be in Florida once again, I guess I’m going to have start writing more often in Frenchville. That was the original reason I set up this blog so long ago.

I awoke early this morning to the sound of the girls rifling through the baskets that the Easter Bunny had left for them. He was pretty generous this year, for the first Easter away from our house in Orlando. The biggest gift being new ceramic piggy banks for each of them. Once they were loaded up with some candy, we had some breakfast and headed to church.

The church service today was supposed to be at the Sienna Plantation amphitheatre, but had to be moved to the Middle School because of weather. Instead of an open field, a school gymnasium had to serve as the field of (egg) battle. The combatants were split into two age groups, Izzy being on the top edge of her’s and having an advantage. When “go” was shouted, chaos ensued as with blinding speed kids ran to every corner of the gym. I fortunately had taken cover in a spot where there were no eggs. They were all limited to ten eggs and had no problem accomplishing that goal. During church service, they were able to go through their spoils and find out exactly what goodies they would be playing with, or if they were lucky, eating.

Last week we decided to spend the first part of Spring Break in Austin. Jennifer needed to have a meet and greet with some of the distributors of the product she’s selling, so me and the girls decided to tag along and make it a mini-vacation.

First though, was the Jonathan Coulton concert on Friday night before our vacation. For those of you who don’t know who JoCo is, it’s kind of hard to describe his type of music. It’s kind of folk music with a humorous geeky twist. It’s best to just go to his web site and listen to a few of his songs. The concert was great, very funny and entertaining. Can’t wait for him to swing back this way. The new House of Blues was a great venue. My only complaint was that it cost $7 for a small 12 oz. can of Shiner Bock.

Sunday, we packed up and headed to Austin. We used Priceline in order to get $65 / night hotel rooms at the Hilton near the Airport. It was a very nice place, even though it was near the airport, and kind of far away from most of our destinations. We visited with a few of my old co-workers and ate at some of restaurants that I missed (Rudy’s & Chuy’s).  Monday, while Jennifer was meeting with one of her distributors, me and the girls were dropped off at the State Capitol building. We wandered around and then headed up to the University of Texas campus to take  a few sites in. We stopped by Dobie Mall to get something to drink. I was amazed that it hadn’t changed in the thirteen years since I’ve been there. On Tuesday, we drove down to Natural Bridge Caverns. Abby has really been into geology lately, so we wanted to take her there so that she could see all the different rock formations. All the girls enjoyed it even though it was quite a hike. Afterwards, we were all tired and piled back into the Sequoia and headed back home.

This was a momentous week because it marked Jennifer’s return to the workforce. We signed the girls up for day care and so it was a little nerve wracking making sure Abby and Emily knew they had to ride the bus from school to the day care. Abby said it best when she said she was both nervous and excited. I told her there’s a word for that: anxious. Everything went fine they made it to day care and Izzy’s getting used to new friends to play with during the day.

Saturday also marked Emily’s first soccer game. When you are in Kindergarten, it’s three-on-three with no goalie. So, it’s was pretty simple. Emily could really run, but she always hesitated getting into the middle of the fray. She got a few good kicks in and they ended up winning 9 – 5. At the end of the day Emily asked me why today was different than the other days she went to soccer. She didn’t really get the concept that that was a game and that they were playing another team. It was pretty cute.

I have some good news. This past week, Jennifer got a job with Coverings, Etc. as a sales person. They specialize in engineered stone surfaces, specifically recycled or as they put it "eco-friendly". She’s pretty excited about it and will be going to sales training in Miami next weekend, leaving me with the girls for three days. It’s a commission job, but we think it’s a pretty good opportunity.

This week we moved our cell phone numbers to ones in Houston, so we no longer have our Florida phones. With this change, I upgraded to an iPhone. I’m still getting used to the interface and I don’t really enjoy using iTunes. It’s just too hard to use. I suppose it takes "Mac thinking", which I don’t have.

This Christmas I had most of my family give me gift certificates to Amazon so that I could buy their digital book reader, the Kindle. However, I was going to hold off until the new "Kindle 2" came out so that I could get the latest design. Well, I got impatient at the end of January and decided to go ahead and order it. I was disappointed when it turned out that it was on backorder for over a month. This week I got the good news. The reason it was on backorder was because they were waiting for the "Kindle 2" to come out. I got an e-mail from Amazon saying that I would be getting the latest version of the Kindle in a couple of weeks.

After a few requests from friends, I bowed to the peer pressure and went ahead and bit the bullet. I created a Facebook account. I always figured, why would I need a Facebook account with my own family blog, but I now see the advantage. Just like I use Twitter, it’s a way to connect with old friends. In a week I now have 41 "friends" from people I know from EA, family, UT, and high school. It was cool seeing pictures from some people who I hadn’t seen in almost twenty years.

For Valentines Day, we decided to take advantage of living in the same city as Jennifer’s parents. For the first time, we sent the girls over their the grandparents while Jennifer and I went out to eat. We went to our favorite place, The Melting Pot, which we discovered while in Florida. It’s a fondue restaurant, where you cook your own meal right in front of you in a boiling pot. It’s really good and very filling. When we got home, the house seemed pretty desolate. It was almost too quiet with the girls and the dog gone. I guess we’ve just gotten used to them in our lives. It seems weird when they aren’t there.

I can’t believe a month has gone by without me updating Frenchville. It seems like it was just Christmas and now we are rolling into February. Of course we celebrated Emily’s birthday. We decided to keep the celebration small and asked her what she wanted to do. She decided that she wanted to go to the Houston Zoo, so we asked her cousin Kinley if she wanted to go and we headed into town even though Poppy had warned us about the monkeys who fling their poo. It was a little on the cold side and by the end we were really tired from walking around so much, but Emily enjoyed seeing all the animals. We got there right as they were training the elephants so we got a special show as they explained how they train them.

Another momentous occasion during the month of January was that Izzy got her first haircut. She’s three and a half and she was finally getting her haircut. It was getting a little wild on the side. Now that it’s cut, it still does cute curls, but they are a little more under control.

The past few weeks Emily has been working on getting Girl Scout Cookies sold. She went door-to-door in our neighborhood, got on the phone and asked relatives, and even made me take it up to work. I usually don’t like doing that sort of thing, and I did catch some flack from some of the guys, but in the end that put her over the sixty boxes she needed to sell in order to get her cookie sell patch.

A question I get often is how the guitar lessons are going. I actually stopped lessons back in October right after the hurricane. I used the money I got for my birthday to fund the lessons and, at the time, our house still wasn’t sold in Orlando. It was hard to justify spending $100 a month on that. At the beginning of the year, I found a good site, justinguitar.com, which has free online lessons. I decided in the end, all you really want to do it learn how to play songs you know. That’s the real motivator. So, he suggests for beginners just spending 15 minutes each day learning cords, transitions between cords, and then working on a song. I figured I can spare 15 minutes a day, and I’ve been pretty good about it so far. I’ve been working on the following cords: C, D, A-minor, G, and E-minor. And then working on "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd. The calluses on my fingers are starting to return and I’ve gotten almost through the intro. Like I said, working on music you like and the fact that you can spare 15 minutes a day has really helped.

Finally, we have been attending a new church here in Sienna Plantation called The Harvest United Methodist Church. It’s a small church without a building, they are meeting in the middle school which is here in the neighborhood. They have land right across from the middle school and are planning on building eventually once they have enough money. We never thought we would like a small church, but we’ve really been enjoying the fact that we are meeting other people here in the community. Today was a pot luck breakfast, so we brought up some breakfast tacos and enjoyed some of the other treats brought by some of the other families.

That’s pretty much January in review. I’ll try not to make it so long between updates.

We had a nice Christmas this year. The first time in a long time we haven’t had to drive 1500 miles from Florida to Texas, which was nice. We spent Christmas Eve cleaning the house so that Jennifer’s parents and sister could come over and have dinner and open presents.

Then, in the morning we got up early, checked to see what Santa brought the girls and then crammed everyone into the Sequoia in order to drive to Lindale to see my side of the family. The trip is about four and a half hours and it’s funny how the girls can only last around three hours before they become restless. The "stop touching me" or similar statements start coming from the back seats.

Once there, we got to see how big my cousin’s little girl Addison has gotten. She’s now walking around quite good now and is very cute. We had another round of opening presents there and just sat around and visited the rest of the day.

In the morning, we went and visited my Mom’s father in Grand Saline. It was nice to see him again and I know he enjoys seeing the girls. After that, we headed back to Houston and spent the next day cleaning up the house from the party on Christmas Eve.

It was a whirlwind trip, but we enjoyed the company and thank everyone for the presents. I know the girls enjoyed it and I hope everyone had a safe and great Christmas.

Just a few minutes ago Jennifer’s sister, Christina, and her husband, Mike, welcomed the latest addition to their family into the world. They are still debating the name, but he was 7 lbs. 9 oz. and 19" long. Everyone is resting and doing well. Here’s hoping that their new bundle of joy doesn’t keep them up too much in the up coming days. Congratulations!

The weekend went pretty quick here at the French household. On Saturday, we broke into two groups. Jennifer, Abby, and Isabelle went with Jennifer’s mom to pick out carpet and paint for the construction that’s going on at their house. The house is being repaired after roof damage from Hurricane Ike. The roof is being completely re-done and a lot of the sheet rock and carpet are being replaced inside the house.

While they were off doing that, Emily and myself went to a pool party for her "boyfriend", Zachary. I was a little confused about having a pool party in December, until I found out it was at an indoor pool. Emily still being timid around water, I took my swimsuit with me just in case she chickened out, which she did. She and I kept to the shallow end, but she had a good time.

Sunday we went back to our new favorite breakfast spot, the Avalon Diner. We discovered this place when my parents were down. The only problem being that it’s all the way into Sugar Land, which means about a 20 minute drive.

I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I last updated. Since then a lot has happened. We had Halloween where Abby went as an Egyptian princess, Emily went as a cowgirl, and Izzy went as bumble bee. One of the neighborhood mothers had arranged a Halloween block party so we went to that for a while before making it about half way around the block doing some old fashioned door-to-door trick-or-treating. We both went out with the girls this time and just left a bowl of candy at the door.

Emily has started Girl Scouts and was officially added to a new Daisy troop. She received her sash and one of the following weekends went and helped put together food boxes for needy families for Thanksgiving.

Also in that past month, we now have an 8 year-old in Abby. Since we don’t know too many people yet, we just made it a family affair. Mom and Dad drove down from Shreveport, Jennifer’s parents and sister joined us at the Incredible Pizza Company for pizza and games. Can’t believe that Abby is already 8 years-old. One of Abby’s gifts was tickets to the Nutcracker here in Houston. The Sunday after Thanksgiving, Abby, Jennifer, and Jennifer’s mom headed downtown and watched the ballet. Abby was looking quite the young lady in her new dress.

The following weekend was Thanksgiving and we had all of Jennifer’s family over for Turkey. Jennifer started the bird cooking in the morning and was ready by dinner time. Our dining room set is so stuffed into our rent house that we had to turn it length wise so that it was sticking out into the hall in order to get everyone around it. It was nice having everyone over. It’s one of the reasons we moved back to Texas so that we could get together with family more often.

A lot has happened in the two weeks since I last wrote. Last weekend we snuck up to Shreveport to surprise my mom for her birthday. She was quite surprised that we would make the five hour drive, but it was worth it seeing everyone again. It’s the reason we moved back to Texas. We went to the park for a picnic lunch and then Poppy, myself, Abby, and Emily went to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

The biggest news of the week is that we received an offer on our house in Orlando. We are happy, but are cautious. It’s not over until it’s over. We went back and forth a few times, but finally accepting the offer. The closing date has been set for December, 15th.

In the saddest news of the week, both Isabelle and myself had to go to the doctor on Friday because we had an ear infection. I’ve had a cold for about two weeks and it finally caused an infection. Right now all I hear out of my right ear is a ringing sound. It’s very annoying. Of coarse, Izzy didn’t start complaining about her ear until 6:00, so we had to take her to an after hours clinic.

Finally, today, we headed to the Texas Renaissance Festival. My company, TimeGate Studios, paid for the tickets so we met up with some others from the company and strolled around medieval times. We ate turkey legs, the girls got their faces painted and rode an elephant. It was fun, but the place is now huge and we were very pooped at the end of the day. We got home and collapsed on the couch watching the Texas Longhorns narrowly defeat the Oklahoma State Cowboys.

Another week back into the grind. Nothing major happened. I started out the week with a slight cold and since my company does make a distinction between vacation days and sick days, I decided to go ahead and stay home. That didn’t really help my situation at work, just making me more and more behind for the week. Looking like I’m going to have to put in a few extra hours in order to catch up.

On Thursday was mine and Jennifer’s 9th wedding anniversary. Can’t believe it’s been 9 years. It’s gone by fast. We didn’t do much for the anniversary. I stopped by Target and picked up a bouquet of roses and we stayed at home watching Survivor with the kids. We had purchased our anniversary gifts the weekend before. The Xbox 360 Wireless Network adapter for me and a cutting machine for scrap booking called the Cricut for Jennifer. Here’s to hoping that our house sells in Orlando before our 10th anniversary so we can do something just a little bit more exciting.

We were awaken at 5 a.m. By yelling from upstairs. Emily had thrown up. We think she either ate too much junk food at the block party or was too cold up in her room. Fortunately it was contained t her bed. So, we sent Emily to the shower and rolled up her sheets and threw them in te laundry room.

At lunch time we headed out again. We ate at a local Taco Cabana and then waited for around 30 minues for gas. Afterwards we headed to HEB, but they didn’t have anything parishable. We got a few things and headed home.

At around 4 p.m. One of our neighbors mentioned that the subdivision wanted us to start conseving water. They were afraid that the sewer system was going to start backing up. We also got word that the kids’ school was now canceled until Monday. We took this as the last proverbial straw and started packing thr car. Five hours later and we were at my grandparents’ in Lindale. It nice to be in civilization again.

A cold front came through last night and removed the humidity and cooled down the house. For lunch we were craving civilization so we went to Incredible Pizza Company for the first time. Hot pizza and cold Coke hit the spot.

One good thing about the power being out is that I’ve gotten a lot of work around the house done. Today I got the garage all unpacked and organized. After that I got my office all cleaned up. This week I was supposed to have off from work because of our crunch to “Second Playable”. I was hoping to have a nice relaxing week at home playing video games while the kids went off to school. Looks like Ike really ruined my week of relaxation. At least I did get the garage and my office cleaned up. That was on my todo list for the week. Didn’t know I would be doing it in the first day.

Later in the evening, one of our neighbors called us over for an impromptu block party. He called it “cook it before it spoils” party. They got the grills going and we sat around and visited while the kid ran around playing. Found out that school has been canceled until at least Thursday. Did I mention that this was supposed to be my week off?

It was a rough night sleeping. Ironically with the hurricane now 24 hours past us there wasn’t a breeze in the air at all. The air in our house was warm and thick making it tough to breathe. Around 2 a.m. Emily woke me up saying she was hot, so she made herself a little bed on the floor and went back to sleep.

In the morning we headed out in search of ice. We’ve become pretty used to eating out of an ice chest from our camping trips, but the key thing you have to have is ice. Fortunately Jennifer’s parents had stock piled some in their freezer which was kept cold using their generator. On our radio we kept hearing the City of Houston officials and FEMA pointing fingers at one another why certain necessities hadn’t yet been distributed. One excuse on why the ice hadn’t been distributed was because they had no where to store it. How about this or an idea: drive it in a refrigerated truck and hand it out. No need to store it.

In the evening we got word that parts of Sugar Land now had power so we headed out in search of cold drinks and some candy. After some driving around we finally found a place. They had cold drinks, but no ice. A cold Coke tastes great when you haven’t had one in a few days.

We made it through Hurricane Ike safe and sound. We finally did loose power at midnight, which is about the time the rain started to fall. It was a long night pacing the floor listening for sounds. They say a tornado sounds like a train, but I wasn’t sure what type: modern or choo-choo. I finally fell asleep, but would wake up every hour or so to another strange sound.

At dawn the wind was still whipping, but it was no where near the pace it was earlier in the night. Soon it was over and it was time to survey the damage. Our rent house had lost several rows of shingles and the satellite dish was all bent up. That was the extent of our damage. Driving around Sienna was saw several downed trees, a few blocking the road. We came over the train bridge and noticed several cars pulled over. It wasn’t until a second time through that we noticed everyone had cell phones to their heads. It turned out you could get enough bars to get a call out at the very top of the hill. We stopped and called our parents to tell them we were okay.

Jennifer’s parents lost pretty much every shingle on their roof. Water was now getting into their house. We didn’t want to venture very far from home, so we didn’t head over there to see the damage first hand.

In the evening all the neighbors and their children came out. We talked while the kids ran around. It’s too bad it takes something like this to get neighbors out talking.

Finally, still no phone and no power, we had the girls take a shower to clean up from all the running around.  We then drove around in the car with the air conditioning on full blast. It wasn’t too long before Emily and Izzy were fast asleep. It’s probably going to be another miserable night. Hopefully the power will come back on soon.

The winds are whipping outside, but the rain hasn’t started to fall. We are all sleeping on the ground floor tonight. The girls are sleeping in our room while Jennifer and I are sleeping on the sofa bed so we can watch the TV. It’s looking like Ike is going to go straight up the bay, so we will be on the weaker side.

At least we have power. Yesterday at noon the power company turned off our power with a hurricane 48 hours away. Our energy provider, Green Mountain Enegy, made a mistake when we set up power for our rent house. We live on Carribou Cove they put in a request for power for our house number, but on Carribou COURT. Without warning they cut off the power. We made several calls of despiration, they told us there was nothing they could do. It was a hot night, but they came and turned back on the power this morning. We still have power for now, but the hurricane is just now starting to coming on shore.

I’ll report again tomorrow to report on how we faired.

It’s been a busy past two weeks. A week ago last Wednesday, we were awoken at 7:30 a.m. by the driver of our moving truck saying, “We’re here.” It turns out they were here with our stuff and were here a day early. So, Jennifer and I, threw on some clothes and headed over to our new rent house to let the movers in. The past week and a half has been pretty hectic as we slowly get all the boxes unpacked. We still have a garage scattered with boxes, but the house is mostly unpacked. This house is slightly smaller square footage wise, but you can tell it doesn’t have as much storage as our last house. The biggest hit area is the kitchen, which is much smaller. What happens is those kitchen gadgets, like the ice cream maker that you’ve only used a handful of times…they have no home. So either, they get tossed or they find their way to a box as a future garage sale item.

With all of the moving, the first day of school arrived quickly. Today Abby, and for the first time, Emily, got up early and got ready for school. We met their teachers and got to go up and visit their classrooms last week, but today was the day all parents look forward to. They both found their classes fine and had a good day at school. Emily was amazed that you didn’t have to bring your lunch if you didn’t want to. That you could get lunch at school. This was a foreign concept for her. They both made their way home on the bus safe and sound. Izzy had a quiet day playing by herself upstairs and watching many episodes of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

The end of this week was really busy as we left the girls with Jennifer’s parents and Jennifer and I flew back to Orlando in order to get the house packed up. We arrived on Wednesday night at 1:00 a.m. to find out that the air conditioner was out. I reset the system and we waited until 2:00 a.m. to see if it would cool down, but it didn’t, so we just turned our fan on high and toughed it out. First thing in the morning we called the air conditioning people just to find out that we needed a new compressor. Great. Just something else that I had to fix on the house I no longer live in.

On Thursday afternoon, some people from the movers arrived in order to pack our house. We helped, but it didn’t take long before our house was full of boxes. Then on Friday morning, the big orange truck pulled up to the house. It took about five hours, but everything was put on the truck and we were left with an empty house. We cleaned as much as we could and painted a few walls that got nicked by the movers and then we were off to a hotel to clean ourselves up and collapse after a long and stressful day.

This weekend we took the chance to see if Sienna Plantation would allow us to go ahead and give us passes to the pool. Our lease doesn’t start until August 14th, so right now is the calm before the storm.  Without much to do since the next two weekends will be busy with moving plans, we decided it was time to give the pool a whirl. So, they didn’t care that it was still two weeks away until we take possession of the house and they went ahead and let us in. The pool has a huge kids area with slides and a giant bucket which fills with water and then dumps down onto the kids below. Emily loved this area and spent most of the time diving under the water and holding her breath. We kept getting worried that the water from the giant bucket was going to drown Izzy, and we always looked up every time she got close to where the water sprays down. They also had other water slides just the right size for Abby. Looks like we are going to have some fun weekends down at the pool once we move in.

Last weekend we traveled to Shreveport to see my parents’ new house. They recently moved into a smaller patio home and this was our first opportunity to see it. We met my grandparents and Aunt Marci in Lindale on Friday night and then headed over to Shreveport on Saturday morning. Since we were all together, we celebrated my birthday a few days early. Jennifer amazingly smuggled my gift, an acoustic guitar, all the way from Houston. I didn’t even know she had hidden it in the truck while we were driving. We had a good time spending time with my family, it was one of the reasons we decided to move back to Texas so that we could visit more often.

Since I had received a guitar and I haven’t played an instrument since sixth grade, I signed up for lessons. Starting on Tuesday, I’m going to have weekly lessons at Smack Guitars in Missouri City.

On Friday, Jennifer took the girls to Geopalooza at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Abby has shown an interest in geology recently and so, we thought this would be something she would want to go see. They looked at all different kinds of rocks and got their very own geodes at the end. They also explored the  Butterfly Center and had a great time.

This weekend we went and looked at a couple of rent houses over in Sienna Plantation, the area we would eventually like to buy a house. We figured this way if we did buy a house in the area, the girls wouldn’t have to switch schools. The houses were smaller than we were wanting to buy in Houston, but about the same size as the one in Orlando. We decided on one that had three bedrooms upstairs for the girls and a small play room. We figured that upstairs would be the “girls’ domain”. Downstairs was pretty compact, but enough room for us. We figured it was good enough as temporary space for the next year, so we went ahead and put in an application for it. We are now waiting to hear back if we are approved. It’s going to be tough paying rent and a mortgage for the house back in Florida, but we figured it’s time that we move into our own place before school starts.

On Tuesday, I headed overseas on a business trip to Frankfurt, Germany. I can’t tell the details of the reason for the trip, but we were heading over there for a potential new project and we had to meet with another video game developer. The trip was 12 hours of flying: 4 hours to New Jersey and then 8 hours to Frankfurt. This was the first time I had gone to Europe. The biggest thing I took away was that next time I’m going to do a little work learning a little bit of the language. Even though most people spoke a little English, it would have helped to know "Yes", "No", "Hello", "Goodbye", and number 1 – 10. The time difference between Houston and Frankfurt was seven hours. On the 4th of July, we woke up at 8:00 a.m. Frankfurt time, which is 1:00 a.m. Houston time and headed to the airport for the flight back. I saw sun light for 20 hours. It was a long flight and needless to say, I pretty much collapsed when I got home.

For the 4th of July Abby and Emily went with Jennifer’s mom over to Pearland High School where they had a carnival and fireworks show. They got temporary tattoos and sat on the football field and watched fireworks. They didn’t get home until 11:00 p.m. and needless to say I was already sleeping so I didn’t see them until the morning.

The second part of the big move back to Texas is underway. The first part was me going ahead and moving to Houston to start a new job at TimeGate Studios. That was back in February. Now, four months later, we are driving once again from Florida to Houston. This time as a whole family. Tonight we are in Mobile, Alabama. Now that school is over, we’ve decided to get back together as a family. We are going to be living with Jennifer’s parents until the house sells in Orlando.

Jennifer spent most of the week packing up. On Wednesday, she went and got our camper out of storage and took it by the mechanics to get it checked out and see if it was in good enough condition to get dragged all the way to Houston. They serviced the wheels and it all checked out. Thursday was spent packing up clothes and putting them into the camper.

I flew in last night and Jennifer and the girls picked me up at the airport. This morning, we finished cleaning up the house and packing the rest of the stuff we figured we needed. We pulled out of the driveway at 11:00 this morning and headed out. We said “bye” to the house. It would be the last time the girls saw the house.

We arrived at our hotel in Mobile, Alabama around 6:30. It was an uneventful, long drive. We had to fill up the truck three times at $75 each. This was the first time we made the trip since Isabelle was potty trained. Every hour or so, we would hear a “I need to tinkle” from the back seat and we would either search out the nearest gas station or rest stop. We felt we would never make it. Izzy didn’t make it to the potty on our last stop at gas. I went to get her out of the car so she could run in and tinkle and it turned out she had already done it in her pants. She said, “I sorry, Daddy.”

On Thursday we gave in to the request from our Realtor to drop the price of our house. Another house around the corner from us, which is just like ours, but with a pool, was now just $25,000 more than us. They felt we should drop our price by another $25,000 in order to stay comparable with the other house prices in the neighborhood. We agreed to drop our price by $20,000. Every price drop means less house we can buy in Houston, so we are trying to keep hold of every penny. We hoped this would peak more interest in the house this weekend, but I guess it was too soon to expect a flood of people. We didn’t have any showings this weekend.

On Friday, Jennifer was very brave and took all three girls out to our favorite date restaurant: The Melting Pot. I can’t believe she went there with the three of them all on her own, but she said it was a success. They went early so to avoid a big crowd. They had a full four course meal and Jennifer reported that they all behaved themselves very well. Emily enjoyed it so much, she told Jennifer that she would “love her forever” and she gave her a big hug.

It’s been a while since I posted anything. Probably because I’ve been upset since the deal to purchase our house in Orlando fell through. That had a cascading effect of us having to let the house we put an offer on here in Houston pass. The house in Orlando is back up on the market and we’ve had a few showings, but no more bites.

In order to get out of the house, Jennifer and the girls used our Disney World season passes and once again went to Magic Kingdom. This time they tagged along with our neighbors John and Laura and their two kids Sadie and Nathan. Sadie is in Kindergarten while Nathan is three-years-old. They had a great time walking back and forth from ride to ride. The one ride they were looking forward to riding because it was so hot outside, Splash Mountain, kept breaking down, so they didn’t get to go on it.

Abby lost another tooth and this time wrote a thank you note to the Tooth Fairy thanking her for all the money she has been giving her. Abby has saved up all her money and is now bidding on eBay for a talking parrot that she’s been wanting for some time. She’s a little young for eBay, so Jennifer had to help her out. For some reason Santa Claus wouldn’t bring her the parrot, so she’s resorted to spending her own means at getting the toy. Santa mentioned to me that he thought the parrot talked too much and would bother her parents. That was the reason he didn’t get it for her for Christmas.

A few weeks ago I was up in Tomball giving a talk about the game industry at Tomball College. Since I was in the neighborhood, I stopped by my old house in Tomball. Today’s picture is from my drive by the house.

This week our house was inspected from the people who are going to buy. This is usually a very stressful part because you don’t know what they are going to find. In fact, we still haven’t heard the exact list of things they want us to fix. The only thing we heard from our Realtor was that “nothing major” was found. So, hopefully, when we finally do get the list it won’t be too painful.

In three weeks we will close on our house and we currently have no place to go. I franticly looked at houses nearly every evening all week. We decided to go with a house that had almost everything we wanted. It has four bedrooms, so that all the girls will have their own room and Emily and Isabelle won’t have to share anymore. It has a three car garage so that we can actually park the cars in the garage and have enough room for all of our extra stuff. It’s on a loop, so that only the people who live in that section should be traveling down there. It’s also only a couple of blocks from the elementary school that Abby and Emily will be attending in the Fall. We put in our initial offer today and hopefully will come to an agreement on it by the end of the weekend. Wish us luck.

If you were following my Twitter posts, you would have seen that I sent something about waiting to hear back on our counter offer. Well, to catch everyone else up. We did receive an offer on our house on Saturday. It was pretty low and we counter offered, but still haven’t heard anything back. They were waiting to say anything until after Jennifer could find out if she could get more of the hardwood floor, which she can. She informed the Realtors this today, but we still haven’t heard anything. Hopefully, tomorrow.

On Sunday I went to see the Astros play baseball on their first Sunday home game. They were playing the Florida Marlins and they won 5-1. The picture to the right is what my view was of the game. As you can see it was pretty good expect for the giant floppy hat right over the pitcher and batter, which is where most of the action is. I usually had to look around the lady because she wouldn’t sit back in her chair. In the latter innings, she started getting tired (probably neck strain from that giant floppy hat on her head) and sat back so I had a better view. I still had a great time except for getting sunburned on the left side of my body.

Today I got an e-mail back from Jonathan Coulton, a “musician, a singer-songwriter and an Internet superstar”. I e-mailed him a month ago and told him how much I enjoyed his music never expecting to hear anything back. Well, he e-mailed me back saying “thank you for all the kind words.” Which was pretty cool that he had the time to respond to all of his e-mail. Being the “Internet Superstar” that he is, he can also be found on Twitter. He also wrote the song that’s at the end of the game Portal, “Still Alive”, which is now available to download on Rock Band. If you are curious, you can listen to (and purchase) all his music on his web site. I recommend, “The Future Soon”, “Skullcrusher Mountain”, “Code Monkey”, “RE: Your Brains”, and “Tom Cruise Crazy”.

Today TimeGate paid for the entire team I’m working on to go to Sweet Mesquite grill and then go see the movie The Bank Job. Sweet Mesquite is a typical Texas grill where you can get a variety of grilled food from hamburgers to BBQ-sandwiches. I had the bacon cheeseburger and fries. I had never eaten there, but it was really good. Afterwards, we went to see The Bank Job. An Brittish film about a couple of regular people who come together to rob a bank. I had never heard of the movie, but it ended up being pretty good. It started out slow, but picked up once the robbery took place. I recommend it.

Well, I made it back to Houston all in one piece. The day started at 4:45 in the morning (which is 3:45 in Houston) with scraping the family out of bed and getting them to take me to the airport. I gave Jennifer and the girls kisses, took my bags out of the truck and headed out on my trip. The only problem I had was at the security. I was wearing some cargo shorts and I didn’t realize the belt had a metal buckle. Of course it took me three trips through the metal detector and the TSA guy saying, “are you wearing a belt” for me to remember. So, I had to remove my belt. Oh well. After that, the flight went fine. I picked up a Bacon Egg and Cheese Biscuit from McDonald’s and practically walked straight on the plane which was boarding as I walked up to the gate.

We had someone come and look at the house today. Our Realtors forgot to call us, so they caught Jennifer while the house wasn’t in “showing condition”, but not all that bad. The man looking at the house were from Tampa and they liked the house. The guy is going to bring his wife by to look at the house when they get a chance. We have another showing tomorrow. So, that’s four showings in four days, which isn’t too bad after not showing it at all for two weeks.