The day started early with a trip over to the beach. The resort doesn’t border the beach, but they have what they call a Beach House. It’s a small property with a smaller pool and access to the beach. We went down early for a tour of the different creatures that inhabit the beach. [...]

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At the beginning of the year we decided to buy into the Disney Vacation Club. We only bought 100 points, which will allow us a long weekend a year at one of Disney’s resorts. We wanted our first taste of the Vacation Club to be something away from Florida, but within driving distance. So, [...]

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It’s once again time to go back to school. We are now entering our third week of school and I can’t believe the summer went by so fast. Between working so much and Abby’s summer school, it felt like it just flew by. This year is quite a milestone: all the girls are finally in [...]

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Last week when Jennifer was asking me what I wanted for my birthday, I had no idea of what to tell her. I’ve been wanting my own home office for quite a while and it didn’t even dawn on me until I saw one of the Featured Workspace articles on Lifehacker. It was simple and [...]

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At the suggestion of Abby’s counselors, we entered her into a county sponsored summer reading program. It was four weeks long and ran Monday through Thursday. Abby passed to the fourth grade by the skin of her teeth and it was our hope that this would help boost her reading skills. My only problem with [...]

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It doesn’t happen that often that we can actually have one of the girls’ parties on their exact birthday, but that happened this year with Izzy. We figured since her birthday fell on this Sunday, we would have it on that day. It was a little tricky since her last day of pre-school was last [...]

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While I’ve been busy trying to finish out Madden NFL 11, Jennifer has been busy at painting the house. She has started with the entry room and is now moving on to the kitchen. We decided to move the dining room into the larger area closer to the patio. It gives us more room in [...]

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I’ve been a fan of David Letterman since I was 13 years-old. Back in 1986 David Letterman’s 4th Anniversary special aired in place of Saturday Night Live. He was flying an airplane from New York to Miami and had the show on the plane with clips from previous episodes, as those types  of anniversary specials [...]

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The week started off with a fender bender that Jennifer got into. Well, it was a fender bender for the other SUV. For ours, it was more of a smash the radiator and push in the hood. We contacted our insurance and the truck is being worked on. The wreck did around $5000 worth of [...]

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We’re now back home after our week-long trip to Texas for my sister Jill’s wedding. While it’s great visiting with friends and family, it’s always nice to return home and to be sleeping in one’s own bed again.
While we were in Houston, we visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Butterfly Center. We [...]

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This weekend we flew out of Orlando to Houston in order attend my sister’s wedding in Shreveport. We decided to fly to Houston and then drive to Shreveport in a rental car because it ended up being cheaper than flying to Shreveport. There were no direct flights to Shreveport and that extra hop would have [...]

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Saturday was an Easter Egg Hunt up at church. This was the first time we participated at the one at Oviedo First United Methodist. We had traditionally gone down to Winter Park’s Easter Egg Hunt. The “hunt” was divided up into age groups and Izzy was the first one out of the gate. She ran [...]

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This past week I spent a couple of days going to see some Spring Training Baseball. The first day was this last Sunday where my friend, Tom Carbone, and I visited the Astros’ home field down in Kissimmee to watch the Astros play against the Mets. Tom was well prepared for the rain, but I [...]

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It’s exactly three years ago this week that we bought our camper with the money we got back from taxes and now we’ve sold it. We had many great adventures in our camper, but with this last trip in January, we decided we wanted to have new adventures without it. Been there. Done that. Let’s [...]

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This week was an important week for Abby. It was the first time she had standardized testing. This week was the all important FCAT: the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. She must pass this test in order to move on to the third grade. The test was 1 – 2 hours for the past three days. [...]

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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, [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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, [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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