Long Term Goals

Everybody says you need goes in your life, so recently I have been trying to figure out what my goals are and/or should be.

Goals

1. Provide my children with an education. I want my kids to start adulthood with little to no debt. My parents did not go to college after high school. They worked very hard and were able to afford to put three sons in college. We (the sons) will all have student loan debt and I can not be more thankful to my parents for giving me the opportunity to obtain a college degree. Without them I probably would not have a degree right now. However, now I want to one-up my parents.
2. Start and build a software company. I want to run a company and run things how I think they should be run. This is currently in-progress, updates to come.
3. Do everything in my power to allow my wife and children to do what they love to do and give them opportunities to figure out exactly what that is.
   
4. Be more active in the community. This would be volunteering with an already established company, creating my own, or finding others ways to help where it is needed.
5. See more of the world, solar system, and universe with the ones I care about and share those experiences with everyone.

These goals are all over the place and in the future I will try to narrow my goals into different categories. Hope you enjoy these and realize that it is not about you, it is about the people you care about and giving them your all and everything they deserve.

Haley

We would like to welcome our newest family member Haley.

We have been trying to adopt a dog for about three weeks now. We put in applications at four shelters and talked to an addition three shelters (without submitting in applications).

We got Haley from Paws For Life in Chesapeake City, Maryland. Ginny is the lady that runs the shelter and she was very helpful and nice throughout the whole process.

Haley is a female Golden Retriever mix and medium in size (smaller than a Labrador Retriever). She has a very soft and full golden coat. It seems that she recently had a litter and was spayed.

Haley is very loving and playful. She has become attached to both of use already. I go outside to fill the bird feeder and she started whining and she did the same thing when Krista had to get something out of the car. She does not seem to like toys very much but she loves rolling around on the floor and running around.

We love her already and look forward to spending endless hours together.

Gear Heads

For Christmas Krista got me the latest installment of the Gears of War franchise. We had played and beat the first one together and this one was no different.

Krista was again scared of the monsters, always asked dumb questions over and over again, and complained about one aspect of the game or the other. However, we had a great time having fun together playing a violent video game.

The basic plot of the Gears of War games is aliens are trying to take over and you have to kill them all. So Marcus and his squad of Baird, Cole, and Dom set out to rid the world of these monsters.

We had to use teamwork and communication to vanquish our enemies. This of course lead to arguing, but was resolved once the next wave of attacks began to break upon us. We spent a lot of quality time together as newly weds and have a blast sniping Locust from afar. Krista even knew to wait till the end of the credits before turning off the game knowing that there is always a little extra.

After being together since I was 15 and her 16, I think I am finally turning her into a geek. She is now part of a sewing circle (that is more old lady then geek but I will take it), she owns a shirt from Jinx (pictures at later date), plays video games with her husband, knows to download and install OpenOffice 3 when Microsoft Office was not on the computer, and of course married a geek.

Sorry quick side track. I have to emphasis the point that Microsoft Office was NOT installed on our home machine. Instead of complaining to me to fix the dumb computer, she downloaded and installed a free and open source alternative. I was so proud of her, it brought a tear to my eye.

Back to the point. In Cesar and Casey's latest blog entry they mention that they received a Wii fit for Christmas and love it. Based on our experiences with video games and testimonies from others (Cesar and Casey and pretty much all of my friends) it seems that video games can be a great way to spend time with your family and friends.

So I encourage people to try those new "party" games and enjoy the company of the ones you care about. I look forward to sharing more video game time with Krista and my extended "family" in the future.

Sorry in advanced for all pwnage.

The Idea

Here starts the documentation of our family.

Current Family Members:
Willard Grafton Bryan IV aka Berek 23 years old
Krista Mary Bryan 24 years old

Current Quarters:
4938 Lords Creek Drive
Eden, Maryland 21822

The Idea:
We sort of stole this idea from Krista's cousin Casey and her husband Cesar. They have their own family blog called Cesar and Casey. So I would like to thank them for their idea.

Into the future:
We plan on posting at least once a week about our life including plans for the future, house projects, events, parties, fitness, trips, and everything we enjoy doing.

Our Goal:
Our goal is to allow our family and friends to keep in touch and to have a way to look back on our past experience. Someday maybe our kids can look at this blog and say:

Wow, my parents were kinda cool once!

So, off we go to enjoy life...