Yesterday was my Dad's birthday. I thought that I would take a minute or two to wish him a Happy Birthday and let everyone know how he has affected me. It seems the older he gets the more emotions he show. (hence the title of the post) I have seen a new side of my dad emerge ever since Jackson was born. Does it have to do with him receiving the official status of being a "Grandpa?" Maybe it just him becoming a softy. Either way, I like it. I enjoy seeing him play with Jackson, and to give him hugs. It has also been wonderful for him to open up about himself and his childhood. Growing up I would only hear about my dad's childhood when he was telling it to someone else, usually my Uncle Steve or for some reason my Uncle Joe. It's wonderful to hear about his experiences. Maybe it is the fact that we ask him about it now and he knows that we are interested. I wish I would have asked him sooner. Anyways, keep up the good stories, Happy Birthday Dad, and thanks for being such a great Dad!

Just thought I would post some pictures of Jackson. He is getting so big and he is getting into everything. The other day he found a new bottle of syrup and figure out how to open it. It even had one of the seals. He decided to have some fun with it oh the hardwood. (pictured above.)

This Sunday will be me and Melissa three year anniversary and I just thought that I would take some time to tell everyone how wonderful my wife is, if you didn't already know. Melissa, from the instant we meet each other, makes me feel special. She gave me a sense of purpose in life. She brings so much joy to anyone she is around. One of the first things that attracted me to her was her smile. She lights up any room she goes into.

Melissa has shaped me into who I am today. I, like everyone knows, am a very shy person, but she has some how opened me up were I am not as shy as i use to be. I still have a lot more to open up but in time Melissa will work her magic and get me there.

Melissa is my best friend! I don't like to brag but we have had people come up and say that they can tell the we are really good friends. We interact so well together. She understands my weird jokes and she just understands who I am. I love Melissa and I am truely grateful that she found me that day when we first meet.

Sorry that it has been so long since the last post. Things have been really busy. I started school at the end of August. I am taking 14 credit hours which is a little more than full-time. At work I was luck that I was able to switch to part-time to focus more on school.


I am currently applying to BYU (which was something I told myself I would never do.) I really like their graphic design program. It seems to be fitted more on the practical use of design as oppose to the more artist part of design like the U of U. This has been causing me to be busy in two way. The first is that I am applying for BYU which seems to be more of a process than I thought. I had to have an interview with my Bishop and soon I will be having an interview with the Stake President. I also had to let them know about my seminary that I took in High School, and there is the obvious paper work about why I should be accepted by BYU. I am almost done with that and then I will have some free time to work on the second part of the BYU business. The second part is for the graphic design program I am wanting to apply to. As part of the application I need to come up with a portfolio of fine art pieces that shows my artistic ability. I have been spending most of my time at night drawing or trying to be some sort of artistic. It is finally starting to work.


As far as the family goes we are doing well. Jackson has been walking now for about a month. He is growing so fast and learning so quickly. He loves his mom and his dad and loves to so us this by coming and cuddling with us when he needs it.

Melissa is doing well. She is still waiting to go to nursing school at Salt Lake Community College. Here estimated date of when she start keeps moving soon, so that is good news. We are hoping that she will be able to start Fall of 2009.

I guess that, that is all that is going on right now. The Smith families is getting ready for another trip to Disneyland in January. We hope anyways :)

Bye for now...Justin

Last Sunday, June 22, Jackson had his first birthday. Can you believe how fast this kid is growing? We had a small party for him in our backyard. It was my family and Melissa's family, no kids kind of sad because Jackson needs someone to play with. He even had his own little birthday cake. Now you would think that after spending a year of not knowing how good cake is that he would try it. He did not. He did have fun smashing it. He got a lot of cool toys which he is proud of as you can see in the pictures.


He also recently had his one year check up. He is healthy. He is a big boy. He was in the 90% for his weight. He was 92% for his height, and a whopping 99% for the size of his head! (Must be a smart baby with that big of a head) He was 26 lbs which makes sense since he is almost too heavy to carry. When is he going to learn to walk?

With the Presidential election coming up soon and the two candidates selected we are face with a really tough decision of deciding which candidate is the best to run this country. Obama, the Messiah as he is being called, is calling for change. I really haven't seen much change from the regular liberal agenda except for his call to take our change through higher taxes. McCain is almost as liberal as Obama. You would think that running as a Republican you would try and get the republican vote. John McCain has made it his mission to get the independent and democratic vote. What ever happened to his claims of being conservative?

What define someone as a conservative? When discussing this topic people say that Ronald Regan was the father of conservatism, but what did he do? I know that he was for low taxes. He seemed to know what he wanted and didn't change his beliefs to appeal to the democratic side. Is John McCain a conservative? I would have to say no. He was against the Bush tax cuts (but is now for them.) He is for amnesty. He believes in global warning and he wants to go after big oil.

The two things that have been bugging me lately are the way we are suppose to change our lives because of global warming, and the fact that oil is so expensive and congress doesn't want to fix the problem. It seems as if they are trying to make it worse.


We all know that gas has been a real problem lately. Who is to blame. The government seems to think that it is big oil. Big oil seems to think that it is the government. Just like every problem it is the government. The oil company need to make profits. I believe in that. I be that there profit margin of 8% is a fair number compared to other industries who make great profits. The beer industry makes 10%, video games make 26%. So what can be done to help this problem. Drill, drill, drill here in the U.S.! We have some many resource here that is just being unused because environmentalist want to say mother earth. They don't want the U.S. to drill but what is so amazing to me is that China is drill 50 miles of the coast of Florida and there doing this technique called side drilling where the drill down for a little bit and then the start drill sideways. Can you guess which direction they are going, yep towards Florida. You would think that we would have safer standards of drilling than China. What I don't get is why the government is going along with it.


I guess I'm done ranting about the worlds problems. Things on the home front our good. Enjoy Jackson, who can now stand by himself for about 30 seconds. Melissa was counting to see how long he could do it and she got so excited with how long he did that when he sat down she screamed for joy. This scared Jackson causing him to cry. He is now has 8 teeth. 4 top, 4 bottom. Well I better go -Bye Justin

When me and Melissa decide to do something we do it, and we usually get a few tag-a-longs too. This last weekend Me and the Gang (which includes Melissa, Jackson, Michelle, Amy, Matt, and Michael) went to Moab for our Memorial Day weekend. It was a blast!




Saturday we went to Canyonland National Park and Sunday was spent at Arches National Park. These two parks are some amazing. I enjoyed Arches the best because it seemed to have more things to do there. We hiked at both place and I had the opportunity to carry Jackson in one of those baby backpacks. I swear we are feeding that boy too. He is heavy! There is so much to do in Moab and we keep discovering more things. Monday before heading home we decided to do some exploring. We went down this road that someone suggested to drive down. It was gorgeous scenery. We saw Indian writing and two dinosaur foot prints. All in all we had a really good time. I do have to make a plug about this wonderful resturant we went to there. It is a place called Zax. They do the best brick oven pizza that I have ever had.


One of the funny parts of the trip was that Michael and Matt had to sleep on the same air mattress. Michael during the night kept coming closer to Matt and Matt would them scoot away from Michael until he was off the mattress completely. Matt ended up having to snuggle with Michael in order to sleep. This is why digital cameras are a must. This is going to be some future black mailing I can just see it now.

Now it would be a blog unless there was a part that I talk about my little Jacky Boy. He is such a happy boy. He is going up so fast. He likes to get into everything a cause trouble. He like eating everyone else's food and not his. he is crawling and climbing everything. Below is a video of what me and Melissa like to call bucking bronco Jacky boy. He just started doing this one day. He only does this when he is very happy. He usually has his lamby too.