Month: June 2006

My cousin Tim and his fiance of a very long time (I think they’ve been seeing each other since Marilea’s wedding) finally got married. The ceremony was small and really nice. The food was excellent. In attendance was Uncle Charlie and two of his five, Charlie and Melissa, Gene and Ann, along with their son Matthew, my former college roommate, along with Tim’s parents, Fred and Wendy along with their other four children, Nick, Marc, Greg and Katie.

Julie, walking down with her dad.

My Mom and Miranda.

Julie and Tim.

Dad and Charlie.

This is a statue outside the memorial, there is a granite inscription at Jesus’ feet which reads “And Jesus Wept.”

Each chair represents one of those who died.

The west end of the memorial.

The inscription of names of those who died. The granite was originally in the Murrah Building.

The reflection pool.

My parents and my wife and I went to Oklahoma City for the weekend for my cousin Tim’s wedding. More on the wedding later, but I knew that if we were going to go to Oklahoma City that we should really try and visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which is where the following took place:

On the morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh parked a rented Ryder truck with explosives in front of the complex and, at 9:02am, a massive explosion occurred which sheared the entire north side of the building, killing 168 people.

I hate taking credit for wanting to go see a memorial, but it was really special, and I think that everyone could really appreciate what this meant.

To be quite honest, it was a moving experience and I’m really glad that we all went.


This is looking down from the north east steps at the reflection pool.

I put a blue filter on my camera to give the scene a different effect. This is the west side of the memorial where the top reads 9:03.

Once again, this is the west side of the memorial.

This is the Survivor Tree, the one tree that survived the blast.

This is the front of the Memorial, the time behind this reads 9:01. It’s strange, this picture was not altered, and I can’t explain why there’s so much white light behind the beginning of the memorial. Quite honestly, I think it looks amazing.

We celebrated Ashley T.’s birthday Kaufman-style with a fish fry and intended swimming. I say intended swimming because we all intended to swim, but the weather really didn’t cooperate. It was cloudy for most of the day. Never the less, we celebrated. There were the ingredients for a good time: beer, hot-tub and bikinis. All of which I did not participate in because I’m no fun.

My beautiful wife.

Stephen, Ryan, Matt (sitting) and Jim.

Dan, Tony, J.D., Wendy, (Leslie) and Miranda.

What could be better, Brandon, with fried zuchinni, deviled egg, and A bean. Classic.

The Birthday Girl.

By the way, I’m feeling more and more pressure to keep this thing up. I seem to find people truly disappointed if I’m not updating regularly or if there aren’t enough pictures. I also hate being “that guy” who makes people pose. It’s studid (EDIT: it’s stupid to spell stupid “studid”), but I hate interrupting people’s lives. When I’m old and gray, in my jumpsuit and still blogging, I will hopefully look back and reflect on the on these times.

After gorging ourselves on fish, we watched the Mavs win game 3 and it was delicious. Every game makes me incredibly nervous and it’s very difficult to watch. I can’t fall asleep until I’ve seen what Barkley has had to say and the post game interviews on ESPNews. Never has a sport determined my mood for the next day.