Laura's Pregnant!!! Whoo Hoo!!! Oh and by the way, I'm in Kuwait on my way back to FOB Iskan. Brief Recap of July: I spent most of the month on convalescent leave. Normally I would have gotten 14 day of con leave, but since I spent a good chunk or my R&R going to doctor visits, they gave me 30 days off. They wouldn't have had anything that I could do on Rear D anyway. Physical therapy took up about two hours three times a week, so I had plenty of time to spend with the family. We had a good [View Full Entry]

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Server Crash Sorry republishing this old blog, and bothering you all with another email. Travelblog's server crashed and the lost many blog entries. I had to recover the blog and republish it for it to get back on the server. BIAP and the Parable of the Vineyard Workers June opened up in tent city at BIAP (Baghdad International AirPort). Our unit had been having trouble getting guys out for leave on time. Some of the guys missed out on seeing relatives because of the delays, so our unit took the first possible chance to get us out of there. That put [View Full Entry]

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Sorry I'm a little late posting this. I'll post the blog for June in a couple days as soon as I get it written, so stay tuned. There's some big news in that one. R&R Leave Rapidly Approaching I was scheduled to go on R&R in May, but I gave up my slot to another soldier who really needed to go home in May. My new leave slot is 15 days during the the first few weeks of June. This, more than anything else, has really dominated my thoughts during this month. I haven't seen Laura or the girls in [View Full Entry]

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Bad News I know I promised you big news in this blog. Well, I won’t disappoint, but I wish I could. I had no idea how much news I would have to give in this blog and how bad it would all be. ”Medic!” I walked into the gym the day before yesterday and saw a friend of mine, a medic, on one of the cardio machines. I nodded and said hello to him, but that was all. I didn’t want to bother him while he was working out. That was the last time I’ll ever see him. Someone got [View Full Entry]

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A buddy of mine recently sent me this question. Hey Tony, I was wondering if there was any particular items you recommend getting for deployment. I thought perhaps there are some useful things i'll need that aren't necessarily general knowledge. Thanks, I started writing a response to this and it got to be so long that I got to thinking. I'm sure there are a ton of guys out there that have similar questions. I know I did. Bring a digital camera with a pelican case. Get a good camera. You'll be taking lots of pic and vids. And get [View Full Entry]

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March was an interesting month. The first significant thing that happened was that I hurt my knee doing PT (Physical Training). It didn’t seem too bad, so I finished my workout. Bad idea! I was at sick call the next morning. Doc told me to rest it and stay away from lower body PT. My squad leader sent me back to sick call a few days later, and doc put me on a 10 day “light duty” profile, but my commanding officer sent my out on a multi-day mission that day. It wasn’t a tough mission. Mostly, I just walked [View Full Entry]

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What Day is Today? Ok, I have no excuse for the huge gap between this post and my last. We have been busy, true; but not so busy that I couldn’t keep you all informed. Probably, the biggest thing that has kept me from writing is the monotonous nature of this war. Everyday is just like the last. There are no weekends here. No holidays. Everyday is the same. I have a really bad habit of missing chapel on Sunday because I don’t even realize that it IS Sunday. I’m not complaining. There’s not much to write about. I Miss the [View Full Entry]

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Hello Friends, It has been an eventful month. Promoted I was promoted to Sergeant (SGT) on Jan 1. That's a big step in the Army. That's when you go from being a soldier to a leader of soldiers. In the Army, SGT is considered a non-commissioned officer (NCO). When you become an NCO, your status changes to reflect the leadership position that you probably already fill. Typically, a SGT is responsible for four enlisted soldiers, which mya not seem like much; but with all the stuff we do both in the field and back on the FOB, keeping track of four [View Full Entry]

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Dear Friends Things have been pretty bad here. We lost two soldiers earlier this week. I knew one of them. He was a good fighter - better than me, and we practiced combatives together a few times. He was a nice guy. I pray for his family. I didn’t know the other man, but I pray God will comfort his family, too. It hit me pretty hard, and sobered me up. What if that had been one of the guys here? What if I hadn’t shared the love of Christ with them? God sent me here on a mission, and I [View Full Entry]

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Well, things don’t change much here in Iraq. All is going well with the war. We’re doing good things here. I can’t be specific, but things are going well. The work is long and hard. I just hope the Iraqi and the American public appreciate what we’re doing for these people. It’s getting pretty cold here. I really didn’t expect it to get this cold. FOB life isn’t that bad, but living in the cold in the field for days on end can get pretty miserable. I have the greatest respect for my fathers and grandfathers and uncles in WWI, WWII, [View Full Entry]

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