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.