Yesterday Izzy jumped off a neighbor’s swing set and came home crying. She hurt her foot. It looked swollen, but after the initial shock of the injury, she appeared to be okay. Because it hurt to walk on, she was crawling around and insisted to be carried around. It didn’t appear to be an emergency, so Jennifer waited and took her to the Centra Care this morning. It turned out she didn’t break it. In fact the doctor said it’s very rare for kids her age to break a foot because their feet are still growing and most of their foot is cartilage and thus a lot of cushioning. Anyway, she appears to have sprained her foot. She was up and walking around today instead of crawling, so I guess it’s getting better. We’ve been lucky so far. No major injuries with any of our kids (if you don’t count when Izzy had to go in for stitches).

We got our camper back from the shop later this past week and it’s now up for sale. After taking it out last time, I think we are getting a little tired of it. We’ve had it now for three years and we’ve come to the realization that it’s a lot of work. This last time it took forever to pack up and then when we got it home, it took forever to get cleaned up. We decided to go ahead and sell the camper and then with that money buy into the Disney Vacation Club. We’ll miss the camper. We had a lot of fun with it over the past few years. Some real great memories of camping at a few state parks and down at Disney.

Jennifer has been the “cookie mom” for Emily’s troop this year. And once again, we are are overrun with Girl Scout cookies. This weekend was the last set of cookie booths. Abby and Jennifer stood outside The Townhouse Restaurant in “downtown” Oviedo on this past rainy, cold Saturday morning. They sold well, but it turns out we have several cases of extra cookies, so if you are interested, let me know and we’ll send you some. We need to get them out of here before Austin eats them all.

Last weekend Jennifer’s parents flew in to help celebrate Emily’s birthday and to get their first look at our new house in Florida. We showed them around and took them to breakfast at The Townhouse Restaurant in downtown Oviedo. In the evening we took a trip down to Medieval Times in order to celebrate Emily’s seventh birthday. Since she loves horses so much, we thought she would enjoy the show. Everyone loved it and we had fun cheering on the red and yellow knight (who didn’t end up winning).

This past weekend, Jennifer and Abby headed out with Girl Scouts on a camping trip. They left Friday night and didn’t come back until Sunday morning. Fortunately the camp was just right around the corner, only about fifteen minutes away from the house. It rained Saturday night, but apparently the tents were well made and they didn’t get wet at all. They had fun doing crafts and shoot archery. Jennifer came back with a bruise on her left arm from the archery bow. They had a fun time, but were exhausted when they returned.

This week was pretty quiet as we stayed at home and did various chores around the house. Jennifer is finishing up the drapes for our room. We went out and got Izzy’s bike fixed. A cold snap finally hit Florida and I replaced the downstairs thermostat with a programmable one. This allows me to lower the temperature at night and have it automatically increase the temperature in the morning before we get up.

One excursion we did was visit the Gaylord Palms’ ICE! Exhibit. The Gaylord Palms hotel had brought in ice sculptors to carve blocks of ice. The exhibition hall was set to nine degrees and they handed out parkas for everyone to wear. Jennifer had the forethought to buy the girls hats and mittens, so they were prepared. However, it didn’t take long before Izzy’s cute nose was turning red. Near the end of the exhibit was a giant ice slide, which the girls got to slide down.

So, overall a nice quiet week off. Next few weeks are busy: Emily’s birthday, the Texas Longhorns try to win the National Championship, the launch of Madden Ultimate Team, Jennifer’s parents are flying in, dinner at Medieval Times (for Emily’s birthday), and a camping trip down at Disney.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas this year. Because I didn’t have very much vacation time and Madden Ultimate Team was still finishing up, we decided to stay in Florida this year. This is the first time we haven’t gone back to Texas for Christmas since 2003. We’ve actually found it quite relaxing not having to be four days in the car driving.

Because everyone mailed their gifts to us, our tree was exploding with presents. We started off Christmas Eve trying to find a place for breakfast and had to settle for IHOP. Our normal breakfast place, The Townhouse Restaurant, was closed. We thought about trekking it up to Lake Mary to visit our old breakfast place, Peach Valley, but decided against it. It was already 9:00 and didn’t want to be eating breakfast so late.

In the afternoon, we attended church service and then headed home to open presents. Abby and Emily played “Santa” and handed out the gifts. It took a while, but we go through them all and are thankful for all the wonderful family we have. Thank you for all the presents. We finished off the night baking cookies for Santa.

In the morning, the girls woke me up at 5:50 a.m. in order to show me what Santa gave them. Jennifer elected to stay in bed, not having a good night sleep due to some backyard neighbors having a very merry Christmas party the night before that kept her up. I threw Empire Strikes Back into the new Blu-ray player I got for Christmas and laid on the couch while the girls played around me.

On Saturday we went over to Pappy’s Patch, a local farm near our house, to pick fresh strawberries. They were delicious. We went home and made strawberry milkshakes and chocolate covered strawberries.

I’m off from work the rest of the week, but I have to keep my eye on my e-mail. Madden Ultimate Team isn’t quite through all the testing yet, but hopefully we are close and we will be available to download next month.

This week saw a pretty big milestone. Jennifer and I are now the parents of a nine-year-old. We can’t believe that it’s happening so fast. I’ve been working late this week on Madden Ultimate Team, so I wasn’t there when she opened most of her presents. She received another gift certificate to Barnes & Noble, a charm bracelet and a lot of money (around $50). She’s already busy deciding what she wants to buy. This morning we finally gave her the present from myself and Jennifer: a Nintendo DS-Lite and several EA games (Littlest Pet Shop, Charm Girls Club, and Harry Potter). Games I really know nothing about, but thought she would like. She was very happy and we both got a big hug.

We really didn’t have a party this week because in a few weeks Abby is going to have a slumber party. She’s going to invite 9 girls over for a sleep over in a few weeks. Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, we decided to postpone it a few weeks.

Also this week we were treated to a Thanksgiving musical program at Izzy’s pre-school. They sang a few songs and then we had a giant pot luck Thanksgiving lunch. It’s been a while since we’ve had a musical program since Izzy didn’t really didn’t attend pre-school last year. She was cute as always.

The weekend before Labor Day, I was watching Ken Burns who was a guest on Late Show with David Letterman. He has a new documentary on the National Park system. I came to the realization that I’m about to get really busy at work because of the new game I’m working on and that would mean that this might be the only time that we can go camping for the rest of the year. We drug the camper from Florida to Texas and back again, not using it for the past two years. One week notice usually isn’t enough time in order to get a camping spot. We were lucky. Jennifer just kept going up the coast until she found an open slot. We ended up with Anastasia State Park in St. Augustine.

I left a few hours early from work on Friday and Jennifer had the camper all ready to go. It took us an hour an a half to get there. We were pretty lucky again. We didn’t know that the gate at the campground closed at sunset. We were there about 15 – 20 minutes before they closed. It was that point that our luck ran out. Once we got the camper set up, we found that the air conditioner was no longer working. We knew something wasn’t going to be working since it was sitting idle for two years, but we were hoping it wasn’t that. I had the girls jump into the truck leaving Jennifer to continue to set up the camp. We used the iPhone map to find the closest Wal-Mart and went to look for some small fans that we could use. We found some and it help a lot to keep the air circulating in the camper.

The first day, we wandered around St. Augustine and visited the Lighthouse. Izzy was too small to go up, so we had to take turns climbing the long staircase to the top. Emily had no fear standing at the edge and looking straight down. It was amazing how far we could see once we were at the top.

The second day we spent most of the time at the beach. It was pretty nice that the campground was under tree cover, but the beach was less than five minutes away. The girls loved jumping in the waves and playing the sand. Eventually Jennifer and myself started cooking even though we kept putting on sun screen. We even had a few people tell us that it looked like we were getting burned.

When we got back to the campground we found out that we had a visitor. A squirrel (we assume) climbed up onto the side of the camper and ate through the screen in order to get to a pack of tortillas that we had sitting there. Oh well, we had no idea that the squirrels could smell that well. At least he didn’t get into the camper.

All-in-all a great camping trip. It’s always great to get away from it all and just spend time with the family. I highly recommend the Anastasia State Park camp ground. I know we will be returning.

The biggest news this week was that I am moving back to run a game team. I enjoyed the month I worked with Brian Graham and the other members of the Project Management Office (PMO), but my passion lies with game teams. Sorry, Brian and I will continue to support the goals of the PMO while I work on my new game. On the new team, I will be the Program Manager, which means I will be responsible for the development of the game. The title has not been announced and the planning is at its very infancy. So, I cannot say the exact title I’m working on yet, but once it is announced, I will let everyone know.

All week long I was in leadership training called LeaderPoint. It was a very good course and I enjoyed it. The first three days were a business simulation where we could “do anything except sell stock”. In fact, some of the people broke away from their companies and started their own company. The whole simulation was an attempt to let you “fail in a safe environment” and teach you through doing. While I thought the simulation was interesting, I thought our instructor, Mike Laddin, and his lectures to be the most engaging. Some of it was things I already knew, but it was a different spin on some other management styles I’ve heard of. It’s also really nice to have someone come in and talk where you can ask questions about situations that have happened to you. In the end, I can’t recommend it more and if you are in charge of setting up training for your business, you should check out their courses.

Another month has gone by and it’s been quite a trek for the French family. The biggest event being the pack-up of the house and driving from Houston to Florida. On July 4th weekend, I flew from Orlando to Houston one way and then the next morning started the drive back to Florida. This time in the Sequoia and with the camper in tow. It was a boring drive, but went quick and before you knew it, we were pulling up to our new house which I had closed on the week before. We were also in luck, the driver had called and said that he was going to be able to drop off all our stuff on Sunday, July 5th. This was great, because I would be home in order to help.

The next few weekends have been one of just settling into our new house. It had no lights in any of the rooms, so we installed six ceiling fans and then Jennifer’s dad sold us some mini-blinds, which we installed. Over the past three weeks the garbage guys loved us as we left a mountain of boxes at the curb each Friday morning for them. Last weekend we had a big push to get everything done. Last Sunday we were literally going from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. that night. But it paid off, because we were able to just rest this weekend, which was my birthday weekend.

We weren’t able to rest that much on Friday went I got a panicked phone call that morning. Jennifer had taken the girls to McDonalds to play around. Izzy had hit her head on the gym equipment and cut it open. Several of the moms there helped Jennifer stop the bleeding and then she was off to the hospital. I met them at the ER where Izzy had to get three stitches. She was in a lot of pain, but got through it and she’s doing fine.

Not wanting a big birthday celebration, I just wanted to go out to eat where I went a couple of years ago. So, we headed out to Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville to have a margarita and a Cheeseburger in Paradise. We went there, but forgot to make a reservation, so we were waiting for over an hour for a table. The margarita was good, but the restaurant was burning up hot. We didn’t wait for desert. We booked it out of there and headed home where Jennifer had baked a Texas Longhorns helmet cake, which we devoured once we got home.

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.