Brent’s Thoughts

I guess I will attribute the lack of posting here to that.  Things have pretty much just been static around here.  Julie is getting bigger, smarter, more active, but there haven’t been any crazy changes.  She says a few single words every now and then, but she isn’t really talking a bunch yet.

P is getting close to finishing her thesis for her Masters.  I think she is planning on trying to defend it here in a month or so.  I don’t know if I had mentioned it on here yet, but she went back to working everyday right around Julie’s birthday.  Julie has been in daycare with a lady that lives just a bit down the road, and she seems to really like it.

i have just been working around the house a little.  It has been cool the last few days, so I took that chance to trim all the bushes around the house back down to a more normal size.  Some of them are getting big and we are going to have to move a couple of them because there just isn’t any room in the bed anymore.

P and I put down a edging around some of the beds that made them look a little better and should make it a lot easier to keep the grass out of the mulch.

I guess things are just moving along really.

Julie had her first birthday last Friday and her first birthday party on Sunday.  Things went really well after a minor error on when everyone was supposed to be at the house.  I think Julie had a good time with the people being there and with the things that she got.  It was obvious that she enjoyed the cake, but then who doesn’t.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the two days:

Well this year was my first Father’s Day ever.  “Julie” got me a great card and some great gifts.  It is funny, but it does really feel cool to have a day “earmarked” for you.  I guess it kind of felt like a Birthday, except anymore birthdays aren’t really that big of a deal.

Not a whole lot to say about it.  It has been a great time for the last two years and the years before.  I never had a doubt we would make it this far.

A couple of weeks ago Pauline and I headed down to Nashville for Laura and Ethan’s wedding.  Ethan had ask me to be a groomsman so we got there for the rehersal and dinner afterwards.

It was great to be there and see people from college that I hadn’t seen in a while.  It was also great to meet other people that were involved in Ethan and Laura’s life that I had never met before.  Everyone got along great and had a wonderful time at the dinner, and I think I can say that we even had a pretty good time at the rehersal too.
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I uploaded some new pictures of Julie from this spring.

Julie’s First Spring

Some of my favorites:

There are also some new quick ways to get to the pictures.  On the right there are some new blocks.  The first one is just a random image from the gallery.  The next one down shows the three most recent pictures added to the gallery and the last new edition is the gallery tree on all the way at the bottom.  It allows anyone quick access to whatever part of the gallery they are wanting.

Have fun.

This is probably old news to a lot, but I just wanted to say that I thought this was a great speech, that does a really great job of showing a lot of sides of the issue. It also attempts to get people to realize that this crap is just a smoke and mirrors show to keep the people from looking at how messed up other things are in the country.

This first video should have the “cute dogs close to the camera” music in the background, but I thought it was kind of funny.

 

 Julie just goofing around: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Julie Playing with some of her toys: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Julie just messing around: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I recently spoke with a friend of mine that I ran into at TJ Max. She said that she was intending on voting republican in the next election and that she supported the war because she believed if they weren’t fighting over there, then they would be attacking us in the US. I don’t really believe that. I think that if they wanted to bomb us over here, then that is exactly what they would do. Just our presence over in Iraq isn’t going to stop the terrorists from crashing a plane into a U.S. building if that is what they want to do. I guess that the strategy is supposed to be: we bring stability to the region and then the terrorists won’t have any power to attack us. I guess I don’t really know… Anyways, I thought I would post another comment that I got in a email from a soldier I know over in Iraq right now. I hope everyone finds his viewpoint as interesting as I do.

We are fighting in the wrong places to stop the war on terrorism.
Iraq was not a major threat to us. We took 2 major divisions of the
Army and stomped its ass into the dirt, don’t get me wrong it was two
of the more elite divisions the army has but still, we used minimal
force to destroy our enemies. To me that does not yell out major
threat to the United States. Afganistan was needed, I will admit
that, Iraq was not in the least bit needed.

I have been really lax in uploading various pictures that I have from different events. I finally got around to getting them uploaded thanks to the connection at work. It takes about 3 minutes a picture at home, but about 10 seconds at work.

There are some from the 2007 Bankson family reunion.

I uploaded some more of Julie from various points.

I also put some more up of Jim and Sabra’s daughter Amber.

So enjoy. I haven’t captioned any of them, so if you feel there are some that need it, just let me know and I will put them at the front of the list.