Front Door Landing

Colleen is the Greatest!!!

Any of you that have been to our house in the past know that the entryway had a hole where a vent used to be. Colleen cut the carpet out of that area and put in hardwood laminate flooring in in that area. Not only did she put it in, she did an AWESOME job!

Great work Beautiful!
Semper Fi,
m

Back to Work

Tomorrow it is back to the grind. We did half days last week, and now that our President's Day '96 is over, we are back to work.

I think Colleen is ready for some normalcy and ready to have me out from under foot.

Pastor is putting me back to work as a member of the Men's Council there at church. He has commissioned me to get our Men's group mobilized and on a mission. We are picking out "Goliaths" to slay and taking them out one by one.

He also has me getting ready to tackle several other projects and I am stoked about it.

Beyond all that, there is the "Honey-Do" list I am working around here. That list is ever growing and as the seasons change, so does the list of things needing done.

The Corps has me getting ready to attend the "Advanced Academy." It is just a mid-career course that teaches us how to be upper-level enlisted leaders. In preparation for this course, we have a "Gunny-Do" list (as only Gunny's go to the course and we have to have the list completed before we can attend).

Of course after all this schooling, there is the short vacation and then it is pre-deployment work-ups all over again.

Semper Fi,
m

Warrior Transition

Sgt Garrett and I were the only two who re-deployed from PTT-3. The other fellas are still out there, doing AWESOME work.

We got home on a Thursday and got the next 3 days off. We are now completing a week of half days, getting our administrative, medical, dental and other minute issues handled.

Yesterday was Colleen's birthday and today is Caleb and Seth's birthday (and I am so BLESSED to be home for both!!!) Colleen is 29 again and the boys, well they are finally double-digit-midgets of 10 years of age!!!

Colleen got to go bowling yesterday and had fun doing her things all day long.

The boys will have their birthdays with us around the house today, will eat their dinners at Chuck-e-Cheeses and then their party is on Sunday (spoiled rotten I say, but we love them...).

After this week of half days, we are enjoying a long weekend for President's Day and then it is back to work as usual. Our courses start the first week of March and will last up until the last week of April. There are lots of things to do prior to this intense training and lots of ways to prepare.

I will write more on that later.

Semper Fi,
m

Surprise, I am HOME! 09

By now, hopefully you have put most of the pieces together.

We finished our job down there at the I-PTT in Ramadi, so we were pulled back to our unit. The unit didn't really have further work for us to do and the Marine Corps has decided to make a career course manditory for promotion. These two factors worked in concert and our unit leadership took care of Sgt Garrett and me and sent us back for the courses.

At this point, we are here until the courses are over in late April. Following that we will take a little vacation and start up the next set of pre-deployment work-ups, preparing for fall.

Until that point, I will still blog about what we are doing and what we are going through in our preparations for our next little trip.

Below are just a few shots from the homecoming... I think you know most of the dialog!

Seth, Katelyn, Caleb and Dad.

Me and Sgt Garrett standing next to the "Angelic" bus that carried us home on the last leg of our journey. (Can you hear me now?)

Semper Fi,

m