Julie Pyatt

“If guns kill people, do spoons make people fat?”  Chris Brown (NOT the Chris Brown that is associated with Rihanna… our friend Chris Brown from Camp Jackson)

As you all know, due to the downturn in the automotive industry, I got laid off from my job at Nissan Trading a little over a month ago.  Instead of going back to work in Nashville and commuting day after day, I have decided to start a bookkeeping business.  It is called Those Darn Books and we provide bookkeeping services to self-employed individuals as well as small businesses.  It is extremely affordable (starts at $49 a month) and offers the comparable experience and expertise of a CPA without the expensive cost of hiring a CPA.  Check out our website at www.thosedarnbooks.com.

I have almost 13 years of experience in the accounting field and I’m looking forward to putting that experience to good use and helping small business owners in the Rutherford county area.  As a previous small business owner (Kenny and I owned Venzia, a small business providing website design and custom software), I understand how difficult it is to juggle the priorities of a small business.  You have so many things to do… creating your service or product, managing employees, handling customers and customer complaints, marketing and advertising and then, on top of all that, you have to do your own books as well.  It’s very exhausting and frustrating!

Those Darn Books helps the small business owner by taking away the stress of doing their own books thereby freeing up their time and resources so they can concentrate on the most important thing of all… their business!

If you know anyone that could use our services, please tell me about them and I will give them a call.  Or they can call me at (615) 216-1444 or fill out the contact form on our website at www.thosedarnbooks.com.

And please be praying for me in this new venture.  I definitely need God’s wisdom and guidance!

I love being a parent.  It is one of the most enjoyable experiences of my entire life.  I wonder if other people love being a parent as much as I do?

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Romans 5:8

I’d like to spend some more time outside.  Been cooped up inside too much lately…

We went to Jonathan’s senior recital Friday night and it was AWESOME!!!  He did an amazing job and I’m so proud of him!  For all of you losers that missed it, here are some pics and a short video clip.

The beginning…

The preshow… LOL :-)  My bro J.D.

My baby girl and my hubby

My stepdad Mark and my mommy

Jonathan’s guitar teacher

The real star of the show… my bro Jonathan.  I’m SO proud of him! :-)  He rocks!

The future star of the show… he he. :-)  Great fun was had by all.

Please contact Congressman Bart Gordon and tell him you are NOT interested in passing a health care reform bill that will raise taxes for ANYONE!  No one should have to foot the bill for the government to continue to screw up.  Here’s the Fox News article about the craziness they are trying to pass in the House.  Absolutely ridiculous!  Click on this to contact Congressman Gordon.  If you need an idea of what to say, here’s what I told him:

Dear Congressman Gordon,
I am AGAINST the health care reform bill proposed by the House Democrats.  Even though Pelosi said this is a draft bill, I am AGAINST it and wanted you to know I am against any bill that will try to provide health insurance to Americans by raising taxes.  Period.  I voted for you in the last election and I expect you to represent me and the many other Tennesseans I know that feel the same way I do.  NO MORE TAXES ON ANYONE.  PERIOD.  I will continue to follow this issue and your voting record.  I appreciate your service to our country.  Thank you for your time.  Sincerely, Julie Pyatt

I’m not sure where this came from but it’s one of the most encouraging things I’ve ever come across.  Someone e-mailed it to me a while back.  I used to keep it on my desktop at work and I would read it anytime I became discouraged.  I hope it helps someone else.

Goal - noun - the result or achievement toward which effort is directed; aim; end.

Simplify - verb - to make less complex or complicated; make plainer or easier: to simplify a problem.

Plan - noun - a scheme or method of acting, doing, proceeding, making, etc., developed in advance.

Achieve - verb - to bring to a successful end; carry through; accomplish.

Sometimes I think dead men speak better than those that still live.  146 years ago President Abraham Lincoln wrote these words,

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” (1)

The thing that kills me is he wrote this Proclamation appointing a National Day of Fasting during the Civil War at the behest of the United States Senate!!!  The United States Senate!!!  They requested the President to “designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation” (2) because “[S]incerely believing that no people, however great in numbers and resources or however strong in the justice of their cause, can prosper without His favor; and at the same time deploring the national offences which have provoked His righteous judgment, yet encouraged in this day of trouble by the assurances of His word to seek Him for succor according to His appointed way through Jesus Christ, the Senate of the United States do hereby request the President of the United States, by his proclamation, to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation.” (3)

You may have known this but I did not and I consider myself to be well versed in U.S. history.  I guess I need to learn some more about our roots as a country.

It just makes me sick to my stomach to see how far the apple has fallen from the tree.  I am still praying for this country and standing strong.  Pray with me, please.  God help us!

(1) “Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day,” Abraham Lincoln Online:  Speeches and Writings (at: http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/fast.htm) (accessed on July 7, 2009).

(2) Journal of the Senate of the United States of America Being the Third Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1863), p. 379, March 2, 1863.

(3) Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the Third Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1863), pp. 378-379, March 2, 1863.