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.

The plane didn’t actually land until 10:30 last night. The girls were tired, but everyone was in good spirits. We picked up my bags and headed back to the house.

We had two showings of the house today between 10 - noon, so we took off and played putt-putt. Isabelle was pretty funny playing. She would take her first hit and then run after the ball, pick it up and then drop it in hole. She would then put her hands up and say, “Yea!” At the front of the course there is a little pin and you can purchase food for some baby allagators. We couldn’t pass up that deal so we let the girls feed them.

I’ve been hearing a lot about Twitter. It’s basically an online social network where you post short posts of what you are doing right then at 140 characters max. I’ll start posting periodic posts there and I’ve also added it to the left sidebar on Frenchville. You can think of Twitter as mini-blog posts so you can answer the question, what is Jason up to between posts on Frenchville.

I’m heading back to Orlando this evening to spend time with Jennifer and the girls. I first went back two weeks ago for Easter and Jennifer’s mom was so kind to purchase this trip’s ticket for me after she got one of the Southwest “Ding” alerts and got a pretty good deal on the tickets. It was raining in Houston so my flight was delayed almost two hours. The flight was supposed to take off at 5:10, but we didn’t board the plane until 6:30. Then, we sat on the runway waiting to take off for another 30-45 minutes. You have to love the timeliness of airline travel. Well, now I probably won’t get into Orlando until 10:00. Jennifer probably won’t be in all that great of a mood since she will have to have been lugging the cranky/tired kids around the airport. At least I did have the forethought to call her and give her a heads up that the flight was going to be late. We’ll see when I arrive.

The biggest issue Jennifer has had with having to watch the kids all by herself culminated this evening with a stunt pulled by Abby. While taking a shower she decided it would be cool to stand on top of the soap dish. Although still a little girl, soap dishes were probably not stress tested with seven-year-olds standing on top of them. The result: the soap dish came crashing down and put a nice hole in the tub. Basically the kids are either messing up the house faster than she can clean it, or repair it in this case. Jennifer was so furious that she had to walk away to keep her cool. She ended up grounding Abby for the rest of the week: no television and she couldn’t go next door and play with her friend. She tried to explain to Abby the cost of repairing things and how no one will want to buy the house if it’s damaged. Abby went to her room and came back out with the money she had been saving up from the Tooth Fairy and Easter, around $50, and offered it to Jennifer to repair the tub. Jennifer told her to keep her money. Maybe there’s a glimmer of hope for Abby after all.

It’s been a while since I’ve written because I’ve been busy at work. I started on this new project right when they were trying to get a demo out to their publisher. So, I’ve been putting in a lot of hours in order to get that out the door. It’s been fine since the girls are all back in Orlando, but it gets tiring after a while. Well, we delivered it on Monday and today was the first time in a while that I got to go home at 6:00. (Yea!)

Last weekend Abby got her ears pierced. I guess she’s a “big girl” now. She’s very happy and has been very good about turning and cleaning the earring studs. She was really brave and they pierced both sides at once, which was a pretty good idea since she might not have wanted to do the second ear once the first ear was pierced.

One thing I’ve noticed since being away from the girls is that I’m getting more read. I just finished Stephen King’s Cell in just three weeks. This is something that would have normally taken me 2 - 3 months. It was actually a pretty good novel, which might have also been part of me reading it so fast.

This week our television was finally fixed. So, it was down and out for a whole month. As I mentioned before, this does not bode well for us buying a Mitsubishi ever again. Another company had to come out and fix the problem that the other company couldn’t diagnose. This time it worked. Jennifer is glad to finally have a television down stairs. She was having to wait until after the girls went to bed and sneak up and watch their television at night.

One thing that you miss when you go back to working for a small company is really good health insurance. The company I’m working for now is pretty small, only about 60 employees, and as such, the monthly charge on their health insurance was quite high. Because of this, I shopped around and found one that we are going to try out. It continues to be with UnitedHealthcare, which is the provider we had for EA. We had to go with them because they have doctors both in Florida and Texas. We really don’t go to the doctor that much, so this one has a low monthly cost, but you have to pay for the visits in full up to the deductible. I played around with some scenarios and this one ended up being the best for our average case. We figure if it ends up costing more than we expected, we could just switch next year. The difference between the monthly savings and deducible are within a few hundred dollars, so I figured it was a safer bet to go with this insurance. We’ll see.

Today was a day of exploration for me. First, I went to the 11:00 service at First United Methodist Sugar Land. This is the church we are thinking of joining when the whole family is here. I signed up Isabelle for their pre-school just last week. The service was okay. The minister was good, a good southern preacher who draws you in with his stories. However, this service was a contemporary service and I’m not so keen on that type of service. It appears that the 9:00 service is a traditional one and I’m going to try that out next week. One thing I thought was interesting was that they had a church podcast. I dialed it in for my Zune and I figured I would try it out.

The other thing I checked out was a Mongolian Bar-B-Q restaurant in Missouri City called Nyonya Grill. It was a family run joint, but was pretty good. It had the traditional Mongolian Bar-B-Q bar and grill with regular sauces that you mix to get the taste you like. It reminded me of the Hans Mongolian that we like over in Clear Lake.

Back in Orlando, Jennifer wrapped up the week long Hannah’s Closet consignment sale up at our church in Winter Park. Jennifer always helps out with the sale and they expressed their thanks and sorrow for seeing Jennifer moving back to Texas. It was a long hard week and I know Jennifer is exhausted. They are continuing to show the house on a regular basis, but no bites yet. We are still hopeful that they will be joining me in Texas real soon.

Nineteen days without a TV and one thing is for certain: Mitsubishi has guaranteed that we will never buy one of their televisions again. They have the most incompetent service organization working for them in Visions Electronics. They told us (without ever coming to see the TV) that it was the bulb. We waited two weeks and guess what, it wasn’t the bulb. They plugged in the bulb and drove off. Within a few minutes, the television was shutting itself off again. They then said it must be a sensor (again without really looking at the TV to diagnose the problem) and said they would be back the next day. They never showed up. When Jennifer called them today: their phone had been disconnected. Mitsubishi, whether they know it or not, has this company representing them. I consider them an extension of their brand. And if they are that incompetent, then how am I supposed to have confidence in their company? Jennifer called Mitsubishi and complained. First they called Visions Electronics because I suppose they didn’t trust Jennifer when she said that their phone had been disconnected. They then put her in touch with another company which proceeded to tell us it was a fuse again without really coming to see the television. So, we are once again in a waiting game while the fuse is ordered. As stated before, will probably never order a Mitsubishi television again just based on their level of customer service.

I made it safe to Houston and just finished my first week at TimeGate Studios. It’s a whole new game and a whole new company to get used to. A lot to take in over the last week. It funny how you don’t really know what it means to miss someone until you have to do it for a long period of time. I really miss Jennifer, Abby, Emily, and Isabelle. I will be flying back to see them in a few weeks, but the time can’t pass fast enough. I know this has been though on Jennifer. The three little terrors nipping at her heels while she has to try and keep the house cleaned up just in case that last minute house hunter wants to jump in and see. It’s hard to say “no” because you know that person who just drops right in might be the ticket that sells our house in Orlando and reunites us. Anyway, next time to see us wish us luck, because it’s only been a week and I don’t know how we are going to last very long.

With the coming of a new job at TimeGate began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. Today I hit the road back to Houston leaving behind Jennifer and the girls in Orlando. A man and his dog traveling the country side looking for a good cup of joe. Actually, me and Austin we were trying our fastest to get out of Florida and back to Texas. It was sad leaving everyone back in Orlando and I will miss them. Hopefully the house will sell soon for several reason beyond the obvious: being reunited with the family.

First, the house keeps breaking. No major breaks, just little annoyances, which keep digging me deeper in debt. We replaced the carpet and the blinds. Yesterday our kitchen faucet broke and we had to get a plumber out to install a new one. I tried to do it, but the connections were way up behind the sink and I couldn’t get the wrench to twist because of the tight quarters. At first we tried Roto Rooter, but once they got to our house and told us how much it was going to cost, Jennifer turned them away and called a local plumber. They fixed us up and it didn’t break the bank for something so simple.

Second, the neighbors are driving us crazy between our across the street neighbor, Jane, who pealed out backward from the bus stop today; and the old wind bag behind us who loves yelling at the girls telling them to be quiet. The Wind Bag decided to pay us a visit today to tell us what she thought of our kids. Now granted Emily can shriek at a pitch that can hit your spinal cord just right and make your eye twitch, but coming over to my house and complaining that the kids are too loud at 3:00 in the afternoon. What’s the home owners association going to do about that? Are they going to start advertising that our subdivision is not a family-friendly place to live? I doubt it. Wind Bag, go find a nice retirement community, there’s plenty of them. It’s Florida after all.

Yesterday my new-ish 52″ DLP HDTV stopped turning on. The horror. I’ve had it for only seven months and it decided it didn’t want to be watched anymore. So, I spent some time on the phone with a customer service agent in India who proceeded to tell me that they couldn’t help me and I would have to call back on Monday. Sigh. Today then became “No TV Sunday” here at the French household. It’s amazing how much more you can get done when you aren’t watching TV. I was behind on all of our bills and calculating our budget, so I spent most of the day working on that.

Another event which happened today was the cleaning out of my office at EA. This up coming week is my last week and since we were already down in that area for church, I figured it would be efficient to pull the big Sequoia up to the building and get the remainder of my stuff. So, the five of us went up and collected the rest of the knick knacks up in my office and hauled it home. It still hasn’t sunk in that I’m leaving yet. In about a week when I’m driving to Houston, maybe it will be real then.

Yesterday we had a pair of Realtors come over and we put the house on the market. It was lower than we thinking we could get, but we will still get out with a profit. The rest of the day was spent sprucing up the place, mainly mowing the lawn and putting some fertilizer down.

Since we bought seasonal passes to Disney World last October, we felt we needed to use them before we leave Orlando. So, we decided to head over there today and go to the Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We were just there a few months ago, but we only got through about half of the park and we decided we had best go back so we could finish out the rest. We saw a few live shows: Beauty and the Beast, Playhouse Disney, and Lights, Motors, Action Stunt Show. Isabelle loved the Playhouse Disney show because it featured the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and the stunt show was amazing with the live car stunts. The two things that the kids didn’t ride, but me and Jennifer opted for were The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and the Rock n’ Roller Coaster. Both were great rides and had a lot of unexpected features to it. The Tower of Terror I figured was just something that took you way up high and then dropped you, but it was more than that. It had some special effects that tied into the Twilight Zone and then it rose you up and let you free fall several times. The Rock n’ Roller Coaster was also great. It is an indoor roller coaster, which goes upside down. It was one of the better coasters that I’ve ridden. It was a long day, we got to the park at 9:30 and didn’t leave until 5:30. Probably the longest we’ve stayed at a Disney park before.

We headed home and got there just in time for the start of the Super Bowl. The Giants ended up winning by a field goal just as I predicted. However, I thought it was going to be a last second field goal to win. It turned out to be a last second touchdown. Now the long seven month wait for football to come back. Too bad I’m going to miss Baseball Spring Training this year. But, I guess I can now go to live Astros games. So, no complaints.

While in Houston over the Christmas break, we made a family decision to go ahead and move back to Texas since we missed it so much. Since we both like Houston so much, I looked up the only game company I knew there, TimeGate Studios. It turned out that they had a position that fit me perfectly: part manager and part software engineer. After much debating with myself and encouragement from Jennifer, I put in my resume. The following week I flew in for an interview and liked what I saw. This past Wednesday, they made me an offer and I accepted. We are going to be moving back to Houston.

This left me with the unenviable task of informing the company I’ve worked for for the past seven years, EA-Tiburon, that I would be leaving, leaving in the middle of production. I didn’t get much sleep the night before, but like a Band Aid, I just went ahead and did it quick. They are all sad to see me go and I thank everyone at Tiburon for all being so understanding.

Tonight we told the girls. The only one who really was sad was Abby. She said that she was going to miss all of her friends, especially our next door neighbor. It was tough seeing her cry. I remember my mom and dad tell us when we were moving away from Houston when I was in the seventh grade. But, I think this is for the best. We’ve really missed being close to family over the past five years and we feel it’s time. I will continue to update Frenchville letting everyone know what’s going on during the big move back. The first step is getting the house sold and that starts tomorrow with a visit from a real estate agent.

Today the company I work for, EA-Tiburon, bought everyone tickets to Universal Studios Florida. It was foggy and misty this morning, but we decided to head out anyway. I had visited Universal once before, but this was the first time for Jennifer and the girls. Overall, everyone had fun. However, it wasn’t anything that you couldn’t see at one of Disney’s parks. The one exception being the Revenge of the Mummy, which is one of the best roller coasters I’ve ridden. We ended up riding the following rides: Jimmy Neutron, Shrek 4-D, Twister, Revenge of the Mummy, Jaws, Woody Woodpecker’s Nuthouse Coaster, Fievel’s Playland, and E.T. Adventures. We had to explain to Abby how each ride was based on a movie, since she had never seen Twister, Jaws, or E.T. We told her it might be a while before she can see Jaws, but we would try and add E.T. to our Friday movie night. Isabelle was quite funny during the Jaws ride. She kept burying her face into my side each time the shark would pop out. Everyone kept saying “awww” every time she would do it. By the afternoon the fog had burned off and the sun turned the park into a sauna. After that we only spent a few more hours because we all were starting to get cranky.

One other event of note is that we’ve been potty training Isabelle over the past week, starting last Monday. So far it’s looking like success. She now tells us when she needs to go instead of us asking every hour or so. It has been two days straight of her staying dry and she even survived the trip to Universal Studios and stayed dry all day. This is quite a momentous occasion for me as a parent. This now marks the end of seven straight years of changing diapers. Yea!

We finally arrived home yesterday evening from our long two week Christmas trip to Texas & Louisiana. That last day was grueling. We started at 8:00 a.m. Central Standard Time and didn’t get home until 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Basically: sunrise to sunset. Everyone was tired and the girls are very whiny in the back seat. We were all tired from the 16 hours in the car. I’m not sure if we are going to be making that trip again by car. It’s just too tough.

The last week was spent in Houston at Jennifer’s parents house. I went to see the last Houston Texans’ game of the season thanks to my friend George. They won ending their season 8-8, their best record ever. Afterward, Jennifer picked us up and we met up with George’s wife Heather for some dinner at a restaurant.

The rest of the week was just driving around and eating or looking at places where we used to go. The highlight of the week was Jennifer’s parents taking Abby and Emily to one of the many stables near their house and setting them up with horse riding lessons. They both enjoyed it and will remember that for years to come.

Though the driving was long, we had a nice trip. Thanks everyone for the gifts and for letting us come and visit. I’m anxious to get back to work and the swing of things. I can now say that I’m working on NCAA Football 09 as the Development Director. They announced that there will be an NCAA 09 over the break as a tie in for the Bowl Championship Series. We are about half way through Production and will soon be heading into Finaling at the beginning of March.

One last thing I have to mention is that today is Emily’s 5th birthday. It was 5 years ago today at 1:11 p.m. in the afternoon that Emily was born. We are having her party on Saturday. We always have to have her party on the weekend after because no one is back from vacation on the weekend closest to her birthday. In celebration, we went to have some ice cream after dinner. I will have some more posts and pictures from the actual celebration.

Two days on the road and we made it to Nana and Poppy’s house yesterday. The drive was fairly uneventful. The first day took us through Florida where we once again stayed in Mobile, Alabama. We found a pretty nice hotel which actually had a suite: two bedrooms and a fold out couch in another. So, Abby & Emily had one room and Isabelle had her the fold out couch. Jennifer and I had our own room. This all actually helped when getting them all to bed and we could stay up and watch TV while they went to bed.

The second day we went up diagonally through Mississippi and hit I-20 in Jackson. From there it was a straight shot to Shreveport. We were able to make the second trip with only one stop for lunch in Vicksburg. When we got to Shreveport, Poppy and Jill were waiting for us. That night the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. Jennifer and I went to see I Am Legend and when we got out of the movie theater, we almost froze to death just walking to our car. It’s currently 80 degrees back in Florida and you suddenly dropped us into 32 degree weather.

Today Jennifer and I continued some Christmas shopping and stopped off to eat at one of our favorite Italian restaurants in Shreveport: Monjuni’s. Excellent bread and lasagna. While we were doing that Poppy and Jill took Abby and Emily to see Alvin and the Chipmunks. Abby and Emily both said the movie was good, but they didn’t really give specifics on what their favorite parts were.

We allowed the girls to open up one present tonight as well. Abby got upset because the other two opened up toys while she opened up clothes. We took pity on her and let her open up one more present.

A week ago Austin bit Emily on the arm when she fell on his back. Since this is obviously as sensitive area for Austin since he had back surgery, his instincts took over and he ended up leaving one puncture on the inside of Emily’s arm. We would have thought nothing of it, but the wound started to show signs of being infected. So, we decided to take her to the doctor so we could get some antibiotics. Unfortunately, when a dog bites someone, they have to report it to the county and they did and we got a visit from animal control. Since it was our dog biting someone in our family, Austin had to be “quarantined” inside our own house for a week. This was a pretty simple punishment since he spends 99.9% of his time inside our house anyway. Today the county called us back and said that the quarantine had been lifted and Austin was a “free dog”.

Also today was Emily and Isabelle’s Preschool Christmas Program. We were treated to the likes of “Jingle Bells” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”. For Isabelle, this was her first performance. She was a little shy, but she did well during “Jingle Bells”. Emily is an old pro and sang really well. After the singing, we all had milk and cookies to eat and Santa came out and visited, giving all the girls and boys presents. Both Emily and Isabelle received books about Christmas.

Over in Abby’s First Grade class, it was dress up like a fairy tale character day. Over the weekend we bought some red felt and Jennifer made a cape and hood so that she could be Little Red Riding Hood. She had a basket and put some plastic food in there to complete the outfit.

After you’ve been with EA for seven years, they give you an extra seven weeks of vacation which they call the “sabbatical”. That’s above and beyond the four weeks I normally get off and the week everyone gets at Christmas. So, there’s no way I’m going to be able to take off seven weeks all at one time, so I’m dividing it up into three parts. I took a week at Thanksgiving. I’m taking two weeks here at Christmas and then I’m going to take four weeks once the game I’m working on ships. So, I started my first week off this week and I don’t have to go back to work until January 9th.

I decided to treat myself to some lunch all on my own today. I went up to our favorite pizza place, American Pie. It was good being free from the kids just eating pizza and reading my book.

Later on in the afternoon it was time to rock. Jennifer went to a hair appointment and since she doesn’t care for Rock Band too much, it was time to get out the drum set and rock. I first looked over to see if there were any new songs to download from the music store. I picked up “My Sharona” by The Knack, one of my dad’s favorite songs. Mainly because he claims to have come up with the melody for the song. I’ve completed all the solo drum songs on “Easy” and now I’ve started going through all of them on “Medium”. Well, it appears I rocked too hard, because I think I pulled something in my ankle. I can barely move my foot around.

In another bit of news, Abby pulled her other top front tooth out tonight. So, she will be getting another visit from the tooth fairy and she will be without her two front teeth for Christmas. She was very exciting when it started bleeding coming downstairs and to inform the entire family. She then spent the next thirty minutes wiggling it until it finally broke free.

Today was the big birthday party at Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. Two of Abby’s friends met us at Downtown Disney and along with Emily they all got their hair and makeup done as if they were princesses. The place was a mad house over run with giggling little girls. You can check out my Flickr page for pictures from my cell phone. When we get back home, I’ll post some better ones from our camera.

After the makeovers were done, our next door neighbor, Sadie, joined us and we headed over to Planet Hollywood for some lunch. Abby received a free sundae for being the birthday girl.

We then headed back to Magic Kingdom, but it was busy and we only had time for two rides: It’s a Small World and Haunted Mansion. It was getting dark so we headed back to camp for dinner. After some hamburgers for dinner the girls were getting cold and cranky so we quickly roasted some marshmallows for some smores and went to bed.