Obama got back at me

Google's AdWords picked up on the Obama post, and there may be a slew of Obama ads coming up in the advertising section to the right, just down a little.

So, if there are some down there (not from PBS), I need you to click on those. Sounds counterintuitive to what I have posted, but his campaign has to pay for those based on the number of times they are clicked. So, click away, let's rack up a big charge for his campaign.

Cool marketing video

Being the biggest game plublisher in the world gets you a lot of haters. We get a lot of comments at work from people who are unhappy with the games they buy from us. One thing that has become popular lately is to film the bug that they find in the game and post it on YouTube so everyone can talk about how sucky EA is. Our marketing team decided to fire one back this last week to accompany the launch of Tiger Woods '09. It was pretty cool.

First soccer practice for Ella and me

We had a first soccer practice tonight. The only trouble was at the beginning, there are a lot of fields so it was kind of hard for everyone to find us given that they had no idea who I was. I was supposed to get some balloons and tie them to the soccer goal, but Sarah was running a little late from work and we didn't have time to get to the store. But, everyone figured it out.

Ella had a good time, and I really enjoyed coaching as well. I was really worried about the kids not listening and just running amok, but they were great. They listened to everything that I said, did what I told them, it was a lot of fun.

Usain Bolt - Crazy fast, but can go a lot faster

Usain Bolt was one of the cool stories of the olympics, running faster than anyone has ever run before. He set a new world record in the 100m at 9.69 seconds, and that was with him pulling up at the end because he was so far ahead of everyone.

I came across this article today that is really interesting, it predicts that humans will probably get down to 9.44 seconds in the 100m.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/08/bolt-is-freaky.html

A new photo & video

We mentioned before that Ella said she needed to put her swimsuit on to get ready for the house flooding, so she could swim in the house. We managed to get a picture. Last night, the kids decided to put on a rock show with guitars from Rock Band. It was pretty awesome, video posted below.








Sorry about Mr Opinionated

While I won't say if I agree or disagree with Chris, I will apologize for him using this forum to rant about his political opinions. I hope you still continue to visit our site to see what is going on with our family here in FL.

Obama is an idiot

I really don't like Senator Obama, I think he is way too liberal, bordering on socialist tendencies. But, I want to comment on his latest add that I just saw which ends with it saying "...middle class first". This add is built on several principles, none of which have anything to do with helping the middle class.

1) End the war in Iraq responsibly.
Not sure how this would help the middle class in any way whatsoever. All this would do is end some angst in this country and allow a very volatile area of the world to become even more volatile. Even if I liked Obama, I would not vote for him just for this principle on its own.

2) Improve schools
How are you going to do this? By raising taxes, that's how. How does that help the middle class?

3) End tax breaks for big oil companies
What? If anything is going to cause higher prices at the pump, it's this. If oil companies start paying even more in taxes (they already pay 3 times more in taxes then they make in profit, that's ridiculous), all they are going to do is pass those costs on to us.

It is not that I like McCain, because I don't love him, but Obama is just an idiot. How do any of things in his latest ad help the middle class? It is ludicrous. I really hope that the American public just doesn't buy into this dribble blindly without thinking about it. If anyone has the guts to stand up and challenge him (and Obama would also stand on the other side of the debate, which he has not been willing to do yet), he would get destroyed because he stands on no real principles. He will flip and flop all over the place to try and make people feel good.

Still raining

It is raining harder now than it has yet so far. The news was reporting that some places along the coast received as much as 26 inches of rain, which was more than all of the rain from the 3 hurricanes of '04 combined. The news reported a funny story last night saying that a woman called emergency services to report that a manatee was swimming around her front yard.

Schools are cancelled in the area and I took the day off work, so we are just going to hang around the house today.

Fay bites back

Well, Fay turned around and pounding us all day. It is still raining, I think we are going on about 32 straight hours of rain, heavy rain too.

We just got our power back, it went out at about 5, came back on at about 7:30, lasted 10 minutes and then we lost it again. We had to fill the house with candles, but it finally just came back on.

We have a little water seepage into the west side of the house into Ella and Max's rooms. It is somewhat common down here in these slab block houses, it happened in our old house too. I just hoped it would have taken a serious hurricane to make it happen here. The carpet is all wet all along that outer wall of the house, we had to move all of the furniture away from there, it is a real pain.

Sarah told the kids that the house was leaking, so Ella wanted to put on her swimsuit so that she could swim in the flood. Max simply said "me can't swim mommy", so Sarah had to explain the purpose of the retention pond just behind the house and that the house was not going to flood. I wish I had some photos of oue house that flooded when I was a kid, they would have gotten a kick out of that.

Family update


Ella started pre-K 4 on Monday and is excited to be back at school with her chums. She will be going 3 days a week. Max is a little sad that he is still too little to go to school but is having fun playing with his Star Wars action figures while waiting for Ella to get home.



I (Sarah) am going back to work full time on Monday, August 25th. The kid's will be at home in the care of our nanny Felicia who is coming back to work and bringing her baby Aubrey with her to the house. We're still working out logistics of schedules and car seat space for the pre-K running around and it's a true blessing this has all worked out for us. I received official word of the start date yesterday afternoon, so today and Friday are purely have fun with the kids days.

Since Chris has been giving you lots of information on Fay and Olympics, I will will say only that the kids and I are having a fun cozy bundled up day watching the storm outside go by while we have a movie marathon and sip hot cocoa with marshmallows. Ummmmm....yummy. Ella has been sneaking out of her room to watch gymnastics every night cheering loudly for our "crunchtry" (country) and needs these lazy days to catch up. It is rather gusty and some of the trees look bent over and ready to break so we're staying away from the windows for now.

I have to tell you our spider update - Pest folks came out 4 times or so plus I waged battle on the remaining survivors on the porch with our home sprayer. Those were the brown widows and we have killed a few more scorpions inside. The best moment of spider killing mommy time was when Chris hollered for me in the pantry and there was a large wolf spider (size of a baseball if you drew a line around its legs spread out) headed up the wall behind the food supplies. I kept throwing stuff down and whacking at the wall but he was quick! Finally, I scaled the shelves and straddled both sides of the pantry to reach the top corner of the wall and whacked him good! I felt like a Ninja Warrior! Ella and Chris just stood at the door cheering as I climbed and when I killed the spider I got a memory moment of Ella that will last through her teen years of her looking at me in awe and stating "WOW Mom! That was aaawwweeesome!"

Still raining

It has been raining for almost 24 hours straight now, and is supposed to rain for the rest of the week. That stupid storm hit the Atlantic and just stopped, now it is turning around and coming back across the state just to the North of us. There has been quite a bit of flooding out on the coast, but we're fine.

Still nothing from Fay

Tuesday night, and we sill have not had any effect from Fay. It has been getting pushed further and further west over the last day, and the rain and heavy winds seem to be centered on the northwest side of the storm. So, we have not had anything here at the house, no wind, no rain.

My office closed at 4pm, but schools are still scheduled to be open tomorrow, even though the latest forecast has the storm getting into the Atlantic and turning into a hurricane before turning back around and hitting Jacksonville. The winds have not really slowed down at all and are still at about 65mph near the center of the storm.

It supposed to be pretty much out of here sometime tomorrow morning.

This guy went for a pretty wild ride. He apparently thought that it would be a good idea to go kite surfing in the storm. The storm had the last laugh, the guy is in critical condition right now.

Fay update

Fay is still coming, but hasn't really done anything yet. It is only really cloudy, a little rain earlier but that is about it.

Schools are all closed, but my work is still planning on being open.

They have advised people in mobile homes and low lying areas to get out of dodge.

It doesn't seem that it will be that bad at all right now. It is really slowing down and is only projected to have winds of 45mph by the time it gets to us late on Tuesday.

Hurricane path changed overnight

Now it is coming right at us. The only question really is how strong will it get over the gulf as it crosses from Cuba to Florida.

Haven't taken too many precautions other than buying a few cans of food and some water. It will weaken significantly when it makes landfall sometime on Tuesday, by the time it gets to us, it will only be a Tropical Storm.

Hurricane update

The updated path has Fay moving a little bit more west, but it will most definately still effect us, remember we live west of Orlando. It should hit sometime mid day on Tuesday, we'll probably start to get some of the northern rain bands on Monday night.

Hurricane alert

Looks like Hurricane Fay is headed our way, probably making landfall a bit southwest of us as a Category 1 hurricane around Wednesday morning right now.

Weather Forecast from the local news.

The worst part of it is that it will probably knock out the satellite signal so we won't be able to watch the olympics. Other than that, it will probably just be a lot of rain and stuff, maybe a day off of work and school.

In other news, we are still rabidly attached to the Olympics, it is all we have been watching since it began. Even while I am work, I turn it on because I have a TV at my desk and we pipe cable throughout the entire building to everyone's cubes.

Ella start Pre-K next Monday, the same place that she went to last year, so she will be in class with most of the same kids.

We are getting ready to go see the new Star Wars cartoon, Ella and Max are really excited. Ella woke up like it was Christmas and was running around the house singing "it's movie day, oh yeah", over and over again.

Men's 4x100m Freestyle Olympic Race

By far and away, the most exited event of the olympic so far was last night's swimming event. It was Michael Phelps', 2nd of 8 events to win gold in, and the one that was going to be the toughest. The French team have been really good and were talking trash about the Americans saying that they were going to smash the Americans.

We were behind going into the last leg, with the anchor for the French team being the current world record holder in that distance, but the American, Jason Lezak didn't give up and swam the fastest leg of this relay ever...at 32 years old. He had to make up about a full body lead by the French halfway through his leg, and he really burned it down the stretch. It was unbelievable, they smashed the world record in the process.

In case you missed it, you can check it out here:

Link to video on NBCOlympics.com

Take that Frenchies!

I also added a nifty little video viewer from NBC over on the right.

Olympic Fever

Olympic fever has hit the Wynn household, it has been the only thing on our TV since the opening ceremonies began.

Max has really liked Boxing so far, he calls it boom fighting. Ella is enjoying gymnastics right now and has worn only her gymnastic outfit and does her version of the routines in front of the tv for us. Swimming is also popular with both of them.

Call me Coach Chris

I signed up to be Ella's soccer coach, so I am now leading the Apopka Youth Soccer Under 5 team, the Apopka Pirates. I have 7 four year olds, I need to recruit an assistant coach and a team mom. We'll get practice started on August 26th, with our first game on September 20th.

Favorite new show

Well, thanks to everyone up in Michigan, Ninja Warrior is the family's new favorite show. The kids just went to bed, but before that they were creating obstacle courses around the furniture in the family room to play on. They just can't get enough of it.

A new look

I changed the way the website is hosted to make it a little bit easier, and cheaper. Pretty much everything, this site, our email, photos, videos, is all hosted by various google services. It has been down the last several days as everything has been getting transferred around in the great nebolous internets.

I'll be changing some of the graphics on the site pretty soon to look a little more personal.