Category → family
Happy Thanksgiving
This is a day that we all look forward to and it has finally arrived. We are up bright and early this morning so we can go see some relatives on this Thanksgiving Day. I wish my oldest son could go with us but he has to work today. I will take many pictures and post them on Flickr while we are there. It is a very chilly 32 degrees this morning at 6:00 AM. Yesterday my son and I worked on painting the East side of the house as well as taking down my high frequency (HF) antenna from the tower. It was sort of sad taking the antennas down but it is a price to pay to move. I cannot sell a house with 400 cables coming out of the house. Just kidding, it was really 401 
. Soon I am going to have to take the 443.3 MHz repeater down as well for the same reason. This repeater will likely be relocated to my dad’s house though the WIN System may be down for a considerable time because I will have to transmit the signal to his house. You can only have one IRLP node per external IP address and he cannot have both of them at his house though he can have both repeaters there.
My beautiful wife Sunday worked all day long cooking for today’s event. I just hope we can fit it all in the car. I gained 100 pounds just smelling the food cooking yesterday. This morning we are trying to clean up the house, shower, and get the food to the car without dropping any of it. This should be a challenge but I think we can do it.
I will post updates to Twitter/Facebook from my phone while I am with the family. These updates also show up to the right side of this page. It looks like it is going to be a great weather day at 60 degrees and tomorrow is going to be 70. We could not ask for better weather.
You may remember my rant about Google Wave a few day ago. My complaint was that after a month, I had no one to try it on because I could not invite my own family and friends. Well this week, they sent me eight invites, and then by the time, I got down to two, it went back up to 10. I have now sent them out to people that I thought would actually sign up and use it. Hopefully over time, they will send out more but for now I am satisfied and I take back all the horrible things I said earlier. It does work pretty good but there is one glitch that I have notice. Keep in mind that it is a beta release but my friend Kevin Davis, has been added to my contacts at least 10 times and every time I come back, he is gone. It is only him that is doing it. Maybe I should talk to him and ask if he is deleting me . Just kidding. He and used Google Wave for over an hour a couple days ago.
Remember to be thankful to God for all the blessings you have on this day. I can honestly say that we have been very blessed. It looks like I am holding up the family’s progress this morning so I better get this posted.
Happy Birthday Dad!
Today is my dad’s birthday and I just wanted to wish him a wonderful 72nd birthday. He is really a great father and I would not trade him We are all going to go out to the Golden Corral in Midwest City this afternoon to celebrate with him. We are grateful for his good health and being there for us during hard times. I just wanted to wish my dad Happy Birthday!
Family Could Use Prayers
This has been a very eventful week for my family and extended family in a “not so good” way. I cannot divulge these issues on here because some of it is still going on and I would not want to embarrass any of them. These family members could really use your prayers if you could give them. I believe God knows the situation and knows what needs to be done. There is another situation with another family member that is going on that also needs prayers. These two people are very important to me and they are under a lot of stress. Please pray for them if you can.
Our Vacation Comes to an End
This week we spent with our family in New Mexico for the first time in 21 years. My mom’s side of the family lives in New Mexico and we hardly ever get to see them. Since I lost my mom in 2005 it has been a long time coming regaining our contact with her side of the family. It is so expensive to go on any vacation yet it is so worth it. My wife and kids have never met them and they are such a special group of people. Tomorrow morning we are leaving before daylight to go back home. We have had so much fun and I have taken more than 700 pictures. I will likely only upload a few but everyone of them are priceless to me. I would like to thank my cousins Phyllis Ann, Fern, John, Mabel, Aron, Amanda, Bambi, and the countless children that filled the house for making us feel so at home. You have made my family from Oklahoma feel like they belong even though this is the first time you have ever met. I am truly blessed to have such a family that I do. I only wish my oldest son Kevin could have been with us but he had to work. He was not able to come with us though his staying at home was a blessing in disguise that I cannot discuss online.
I also had a great opportunity to see my brother in-law at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas today. He was gracious and we enjoyed seeing him. As with the rest of the family the worst part was not having enough time to have a quality visit. Ernie, we truly enjoyed seeing you today and we love you for taking such good care of my sister. I could go on and on but since my son Jordan wants to get on the computer, I will conclude with a big thank you to God for giving me such a wonderful family. To think that I almost let a terrible poison ivy outbreak convince me not to go on this vacation. Thanks to my wonderful wife for snapping me back to reality and going anyway.
Again, thank you family for the warm welcome,
Paul
Christmas at the Brite’s
This morning we rose early to go to Checotah, Oklahoma to visit my father in law. We had a pretty good time there except that I was a little under the weather. Early this morning our warm weather came to an end as a cold front came crashing through. At 4:00 AM a line of severe thunderstorms came through bringing hail and high winds. We lost power three or four times. Shortly after that, the cold front came through and dropped the temperature more than 20 degrees but the sun was shining. We left at 8:00 AM to go to Checotah and eventually caught up with the storms. By the time we arrived, it was raining. Around 2:00 PM, the clouds cleared away and it was not too bad. We all enjoyed ourselves though I have had a sore throat, stopped up head, and now my ribs are hurting. I hope this clears up before I have to go back to work on Monday. In the above picture, we have Sunday and I standing in front of the house on the lower level kitchen.
We opened our Christmas presents and visited together for a while. We had a wonderful meal to eat. I was asked to help set up a home wifi system and was actually looking forward to it. My wife, looking out for me told them that I did not feel good and could not do it. Later I asked if they were ready to work on it and she told me no and we could do it another time since I was not feeling well. I did not know that my wife had spoken to her until after we started home. She is always looking out for me and helping me out. I sat in the car sending Twitter messages on my phone all the way home while Sunday drove home. As always it was a good time. We enjoyed seeing family and visiting. Unlike the portrayal in the movie Four Christmases, we actually look forward to seeing the family. Sunday has a great dad and step mom.
Last night our dog had two siezures and it really scared us. She is 15 years old and was out of control for a few minutes. That was pretty scary though she is back to normal now. Now we are home and the house is very cold since we had the heat turned off the whole time we were gone. I thought I would share how our day went and hope yours went just as well as ours did.
Christmas At My Dad’s
I just arrived home from visiting my dad’s house and we had a pretty good time. We laughed so hard that I worried for him bursting a blood vessel . In the above photo, my dad and Retha managed to pull it together enough to answer the cell phone. My dad was talking to his mom in Wynnewood. The call did not last very long because he could not stop laughing. I would love to tell you what we were laughing about but it may not be appropriate to post online. I will just tell you it was about a stunt that he did when he was a teenager. This Christmas weekend has been very good and more than a blessing.
Even Larry got into the laughing. We have always been told that laughter is good for your health and after tonight, we are all healthy enough to be marathon runners. Tomorrow we are going to go to Sunday’s dad’s house and I will make a point to post online. If tomorrow is going to be like the rest of the weekend, it will be a great time. Today was such a good day all the way around as the temperatures approached 80. The last time I checked it was 76 degrees on the day after Christmas. The house was so hot that we opened the windows and let the 30 MPH wind blow through. Our puppy dog Sandy needs some prayers though. She is nearly 15 years old and she had two siezures this afternoon. My wife was distraught over that for good reason. Since we will not be near the computer all day tomorrow, I will enable Twitter notifications on my cell phone. I will be back sometime tomorrow night though. Again, thanks for all the well wishes for our family.
Happy Thanksgiving
This weekend we went to my father in law’s house in Checotah, Oklahoma for Thanksgiving. With the exception of two people engaging in a small political argument it was a pretty good time. There were many family relatives that showed and for the most part, everyone enjoyed themselves. This morning my wife and I defied logic and went to buy a few items for Christmas. This was the first time in our 19 year marriage that we have done this. Now that I have done this, I can tell you that it is a mistake as I found out that we were sold the wrong item. We were rushed through and I did not get a good feeling from the beginning. I was half way home before I noticed this. I am hoping that they will make things good without too much trouble. Honestly I hate going to a store and having a sales representative hovering over me. If I need help, then I will seek them out. Then we went out to breakfast as a family and had a good time.
I am so tired of school work and I am ready for this to be over. I just turned on the television and heard about an attack in Mumbai, India. Apparently this has been going on for a couple of days. Let’s hope and pray those people are doing okay. I usually do not watch the national news because it is design to incite anger among their viewers. If you think I am just making this up, just watch them. The theme is usually black against white, rich against poor, old against young, big business against the workers, Republican against Democrat, and a whole host of political correctness that I will not mention. For that reason, I choose not to partake in their games.
It has been a bad week at work so I have not felt like posting for a few days. Jack, I did receive your message and I agree with you. Thanks for the input.
Blessed Family
Sunday loves cooking and I must say that my huge belly is a reflection of that. She has this large dinner planned this evening and the eggs above were just the first thing she prepared. She is such a blessing as she does so much for our family. Yesterday my sister inlaw and her daughter came over for a nice visit. I took a few pictures and below is a picture of my niece Kaylie. She is so cute and fun to be around.
Also last night I watched the University of Oklahoma (OU) Sooners play the number two rated Texas Tech University. Although OU has a long standing winning streak when playing in their stadium, I do not think anyone expected the decisive win the Sooners performed with a 65 to 21 final score. I was amazed myself with the margin of victory. I decided to take this weekend off from doing school work so I could relieve some stress.
The night before last, we watched our Oklahoma City Thunder lose to the New Orleans Hornets with a score of 125 – 80. It was announced yesterday that coach P.J. Carlesimo had been released after our team had lost 10 straight games and 12 out of 13 games. I wish him well and hate to see someone lose their job over the performance of the players but I realize that is how the game works.
This past week at work, I spent nearly three full days watching some of our maintenance people and a contractor do a new maintenance task on one of our airplanes. The upcoming week we have a three day work week and then going to see my father in-law for Thanksgiving. This should be an enjoyable time though I sure wish both of my sons could be with us. This upcoming week should be a nice break. Sorry for not posting very often lately but life has been so busy. I will try to keep this up to date more in the future. Thanks for stopping by.
Fit For Life
As some of you may know the Air Force has this Fit for Life, Fit to Fight campaign. This past Saturday we went out to the base and participated in a 5K run/walk. Sunday was the only one that was actively signed up but Kevin and I went with her. We often fail to get enough exercise in our daily life, especially with both of us working in an office environment. Sunday’s office actively recruited people for this event while my organization never even heard of it though we are just down the hall. Anyway, Sunday as usual is an inspiration to anyone she comes in contact with and she inspired Kevin and I to participate as well. I was very glad I did once it was over. Saturday morning was very chilly in the mid 40’s but that made it perfect as we were sweating pretty heavily by the time we were done. Special thanks to Sunday for inspiring our family to get off our backsides and do something .
Out to the Zoo
My wife took off Friday so we could have a full four day weekend. We took the opportunity to go to the Oklahoma City Zoo for the first time in years. I must say we had a very good time and we really needed it. the weather was perfect and Sunday and I had some good quality time together. In the above photo we were fortunate enough to catch two grizzly bears playing in the water. There was quite a crowd watching them and I thought this was a golden opportunity to use my new camera.
In the photo above we were enjoying the aquatic center. We could not have asked for a better morning in mid October. The crowds were not too bad and it was not too hot or cold. This was one of the most relaxing times we have had in many years with just the two of us.
Are there any Firefox fans out there? This red panda is often called Firefox so I had to get this photo as I am posting this using the Firefox browser. I sure hope to have more opportunities to spend with my wife doing things like this. Soon I will be going to San Antonio again for my work and my wife is going with me. It is so nice that she is able to go with me and take off work. She has so much use or lose leave that she is able to come on the trip as well. It looks as though hurricane Norbert is about to move in and give us some rain over the next few days. We could use some rain as we have not had any rain since the last hurricane. This week is going to be a short one but I have a lot to do with finishing up my school work and getting ready to go to San Antonio. I hope to get some photos when I am down there next week. Just click on the above photos and you can see the entire collection.