coming home

Wow.. I am still amazed at the title. Coming home. We actually are and I can't believe it. This place has gotten so routine that to be leaving is surprising. Yesterday I realized that in 2 weeks I will be a student again. Since we have moved to Basra things have already started changing. There are no more missions, we officially turned over the reins to the 354th mp company a couple days ago and received our end of the deployment awards. I have spent the last 3 or 4 days playing xbox or watching movies with my friends while we wait for our flight. We're starting to prepare to leave though, got to clean weapons and repack to get out of here. Mom knows the majority of my dates for planning if you need to know talk to her (we developed our own little code ha. take that OPSEC)
We spent 6 months down at Camp Bucca before returning to Basra last week. It is crazy to be back with all of these people that I hadn't seen in so long. I catch myself seeing people I have already forgotten about. Makes me realize that 6 months from now I will.. finally be a sophomore, have just completed my first semester since fall of 2007, hopefully be contracted as a rotc cadet and not thinking about another deployment, and have forgotten about a lot of this place and these people. Obviously I won't be forgetting about the people who have made an impact or the people I have worked with/ enjoyed being with. I'll remember hooka nights, and late night movies and halo. I'll remember softball, basketball,and some missions. But I know I will have forgotten the weight of the gear, the feeling of driving a 68,000 lb vehicle, and the dumb things we put up with while we were here. Talking to Lee, it was easy to hate basic while you were there, but there is always that part that misses it after a while. I guess this is the same, I hated a lot of being here, never felt like I did anything worth giving up a year of my life, but I know I will miss some of it too.
Hopefully I can fit back into school and move on. I'll be 21 in a couple of months and my whole life is ahead of me. This was just a year, Jan 2009- Jan 2010, but a year that changed a lot.

So I felt like I was def. required to update my blog tonight with everything going on. I have decided to return to Auburn in the spring. It was a very quick decision over the last like.. 2 days or so. I feel that I do not stand even a decent chance of getting accepted to Texas A&M, even though I am interested in the school, due to just not enough hours for a strong transfer application. Transfer applications are due in March so I could still try to go next fall but I don't see how I could. I will be giving up some of my plans that I had for the next 6 months by returning to Auburn, but I am just ready to settle down. Hopefully I can come home during the summer and get some hours at the Lakeshore Foundation at that time. The biggest thing I am giving up is just time off. I am not allowed to say when I will be home but I will be missing some school unless things change. I am emailing my college and advisor to let them know that in advance but I am willing to fall behind a little bit instead of missing an entire semester. Hopefully things will work out and I won't miss much. As Mom and Dad know, because I have already started annoying them, my online searches now revolve around my new truck and some kind of housing for the spring. Kristi may have a roommate subleasing her room which would make me and Kristi roomies again! That would be convenient, if that doesn't happen then I will just get creative and come up with something. As for my truck, I found one in Atlanta that I really like and Carrie and Dad are both going to help me check that out. Hopefully things are falling in to place. Trying not to get too far ahead of myself because things can always change, especially when it comes to the Army and timing. They could decide tomorrow to send our replacements to Afghanistan and leave us here longer. There is just no way to know until I actually get back to the states and have my release from active duty in my hand. Just wanted to give a quick update for anyone seeing stuff on facebook or such and not knowing what was going on. Love you all

Thanksgiving

I am a bit late with the Thanksgiving post. Sorry! We had a brief the other day and our 1SG showed us this quote an just thought I'd share with the group. This was written by a soldier in 2005 I think..
As America wakes up this morning they will turn on the TV to see why we are fighting in these wars. Today is supposed to be a special day for our country, to celebrate why we are thankful and to gather family. For guys like myself, I will break bread with the men that I serve with here. We’ll play it off and pretend that we don’t care but deep down inside we all do. We all know what it’s like to be home and be with out families. That is not the case this year.
I am here now and I am thankful for being able to serve our great nation. The ability to serve is something that I wish all American’s could experience. What are you thankful for this year?
Although I am half a world away from my loved ones I have not forgotten what home means to me. Between the hustle and bustle of normal life I can see where people can forget what they are thankful for.
So when you break bread this afternoon, say your grace and appreciate the opportunity to be there with your family and loved ones. Don’t allow the bullshit that others are trying to do to spoil your day. Turn the news off and know that those who serve will take care of this mess.
Happy Thanksgiving.

Just thought it was kinda cool. My Thanksgiving was definitely one I will always remember. They went all out with the meals, I think they included anything they had ever heard Americans like. Let's just say if I told you what all they served you would think I am not actually in Iraq ha. It made me remember that not everybody deployed right now was in a position to have the kind of meal we had, or even to get the day off. I am sure most people in Afghanistan had a very different experience than we did here. So I am thankful to be where I am.
I was also thankful that we are experiencing these holidays at the end of the deployment. I can honestly call many of the people here family now. I cannot imagine how difficult the holidays would be at say the first month or two of a deployment. Things sure have changed here during the last couple of months. We have started realizing that our time together is coming to an end and most of us are not even from the same state. It will be difficult to see each other once this deployment ends. I have enjoyed the extra time we have spent hanging out recently, whether at the softball field or in front of the Xbox, ha.
After lunch we went and played some Xbox of course. What would you rather do on Thanksgiving than play Halo? We followed that up with another big dinner (same food from lunch ha), and then just hung out outside the rooms all night. Turned on some music, had a bunch of near-beer, and just hung out.
This may have been the most random Thanksgiving ever, but will def. be one I don't forget. It will also always be a memory for the Thanksgivings to come to remind me to appreciate the family time I get when I can get it. I missed being with the family, but I know this will come to an end soon. It is funny to think about because we are nearing the end of deployment and they are starting to talk to us about going home. I feel like I never thought these days would come. The whole deployment process I worried about what it would be like to get here. Talking about what to look forward to on the way home is just crazy. I hope everyone has a great day and that y'all can pull Auburn through today. I know we will have a large group of family at the game so I am looking to you to get the win. Do not fear though, I bought chips and dip, and some mountain dew and we will have our own Iron Bowl party here in Iraq. I love you all!

Sooo I am really hyper and decided I should update my blog. My roomies think I am hyper because I was eating M&Ms. My theory is that it is because I was able to talk to Mom and Dad both for like 20 minutes... And I could actually hear them! Ya'll don't even understand how nice good sound quality is until you lose it! I have also decided what I am getting everyone for Christmas which is fun. Even though it is a way off, and my Christmas is even farther off than that (sorry guys, not getting presents from me until I am home to give them!). But it is nice to know Christmas is right around the corner because it means going home is right around the corner! Wooh wooh.
We have a really light work week next week which is exciting as well. Even though it means the week will go by slower. We will get Thanksgiving off, Friday is maintenance day but we took our truck today so we won't really do anything that day, and Saturday is another off day! It's almost like a real weekend! Sounds like loootttsss of Halo 3 on the Xbox for us. (I'm actually getting pretty good, I can beat some of the guys and they do noootttt like losing to a chick on video games ha). It's cool though because all the xboxes here are connected so we end up playing teams with like 12-15 players total. Lots of army/ air force rivalry there ha.
Softball may be wrapping up soon. We have 3 more regular season games. We have to win 2 of the 3 to make it to the playoffs. Our star player hurt his back yesterday so he will be playing hurt tonight. Should make the game interesting.
Have I mentioned how super proud of my family I am recently? It's fun watching everyone grow up. You got the adults, like Carrie working off in the real world, doing some really cool things with her kids. Ashlyn is right behind her with her awesome internship at Southern Living (some very nice blogs that I have gotten to read). Kristi with Miss Auburn and starting to look at the real world now as a big bad junior. Kristen repping the Kappa Delts with lots of good times in college to come! (just do me a favor Kristen, don't be a 20 year old freshman like me ha.) I'm sad that I won't be around during Christmas to hear what everyone has been up to recently, I am sure there is a lot more cool stuff going on that I just don't know of. Thomas doing well with his tennis, wish I could have seen him play while I was on leave but I was very glad I got tosee him for a bit before the match! And of course Wesley with all of his big ideas about army men. I am just really proud of everyone and glad to be a part of this family!
Today is a good day. The weather here has finally decided to become fall (we're only a couple of months behind). Tonight at my softball game I will be wearing sweat pants and underarmor... I guess Hell has frozen over, atleast Iraq! Highs around the 70s with lows in the 50s. The days feel amazing though, just stinks when they start at 0600. You feel pretty dumb wearing a jacket in Iraq ha.
I love you all and hope everyone's day is as good as mine has been!

this picture ^^^ is horrible. But oh well, kinda shows you whats up.

I have been wanting to make thispost for a while ( I actually just typed the stupid thing but it got deleted halfway through so now I am stuck redoing it!). On Thursday, while we were on mission, Craig through a water bottle at my truck and i almost caught it... with my nose. He was up above me so I could not see it until it landed. It wasn't too major, I ended with a busted nose and a couple of black eyes. He def. did not do it on purpose, and he felt really bad so I didn't want to get him in trouble (We had a couple of important people with us on mission that day). It will be awsome today though because our new Brigade is coming to talk with us and I will get to explain to a couple of Colonels why I have 2 black eyes ( I of course volunteered to miss the meeting so it would not come up, that got shut down really quickly).

Another exciting mission today, I got an IP thrown in jail. He was I guess, in a normalwork evironment it would be considered sexual harrassment. It wasn't anything major but I told my NCOs and they went to talk to the station commander. They consider it a major offense so he will be in jail for a couple of days, docked pay, and transferred to another station. They made like a formal apology to me and everything, including telling me I had the right to press charges with them and take him to Iraqi court. I just said they knew better what the punishment should be under their laws and that I trusted them to handle it. It was kinda crazy.

Softball has won our last 2 games so it looks like we're on a roll now. I am still workin on making the adjustment to a slowpitch swing, not working all that well for me!ha havea good day

I need to apologize for not doing a better job of keeping in touch with home since I have been back. Days are flying by right now. It has been great. We have 2 slowpitch softball teams playing in a league right now. So basically every night is either practice, one of my games, or the other team has a game. We are def. spending most nights out at the field. It has been a lot of fun, last night the other team played. We took a grill and some nearbeer (nonalcoholic beer) and tailgated for their game haha. So that is where I normally am during the hours that I would be able to call yall. That plus the fact that I have been having problems with my computer and headsets has made communication not easy. I will try and do better, I am going to buy a new headset today and hopefully that will fix the problem.
We are also running 4 missions a week. We are nearing the end of R&R for the whole company, there are probably only 4 or 5 more people in our platoon who are either currently gone or are leaving in the next week or two. That makes our "down day", which is really squad support, pretty much useless. The point of squad support is to help fill in for people who are on leave, right now there are only 2 people to fill in for. So it is easier to send us out on more missions. That also makes the days go faster, even if it more tiring haha.
I am no longer sick, thank goodness. I am also getting back to getting normal sleep. Last night I slept really well, I had to make myself get out of bed this morning ( and by morning I mean like.... 11) so I didn't sleep all day and keep myself from getting any sleep tonight. It is sad how much I look forward to sleep these days. I found a book series that I am really enjoying. I got it from another guy in the company who is passing me the books as he finishes them. I'm on book 5 (plus a prequel) of 11. That is not helping me sleep either ha. I may have a bit of trouble putting it down. He is on book 6 though so I may have to wait a bit to get the next one from him.
It is really starting to feel like we're almost done here. They have started taking some of our equipment and are talking about us sending gear back and stuff. Kinda crazy, but if things continue moving as quickly as they have for the 2 weeks I have been back, we will be out of here in no time.
I thought I was enrolled in some online classes starting yesterday, but some stupid things got in the way. I am pretty frustrated, especially since I now have the textbooks for the classes that I am not a part of. That's pretty much whats going on in my life these days, I will try and do better with the phone. I love yall!

Kuwait

I'm "stuck" in kuwait for the next couple days it seems. I use "stuck" because I am living here with the only obligation of meeting at 1000 to see if I leave that day. Which means lots of movies and sleep. Not too bad, I will miss our offday in Bucca now so when I get there we will be going full speed. I will probably get to miss one more mission too though so I am not complaining. I guess this makes me a horrible person/ teammate but ya know.. I am getting paid the same and although that bed isn't the most comfy I am not complaining about being here! I don't have my normal internet though so you prob won't hear from me until I get to Iraq. Love you
Katie

oh atlanta...

So I am sitting in ATL airport now. Thinking about the last 2 weeks. I had a lot of fun, it was better than expected. Thanks to all the family who was able to make it to Uncle Rush and Aunt Shan's house. That was a great night and I really appreciated getting to see everyone. It's funny, when I got home I felt awkward in civilian clothes, now I feel weird being back in my uniform. I am absolutely dreeeaaaaddding this flight back. Hopefully the weather will be better than on the way here and the trips will be the shorter side of the estimated travel time. I prepared this time though, I am wearing my glasses instead of contacts so sleeping will be easier and comfier! I also picked up the new Vince Flynn book so that should be nice.
I know everyone is looking for info.... I really enjoyed Texas A&M. The campus is crazy, 5200 sq ft, 49,000 students. That's more than double Auburn's enrollment. I think I could get lost on campus even as a senior. It is a pretty campus, although the architecture is pretty lame. A lot of the buildings are very out of date.
I liked what I saw of the Corps. Saturday we got up early to make sure we beat traffic and got a good parking spot... Well... that was the biggest difference between Auburn and A&M. There was like zero tailgating unless you were right around the stadium. Granted, we parked pretty far away from the stadium. Walking through the campus was almost creepy because it was so still for the most part. Once we got to the Quad (Corps residence area) it was a very different story. The entire Corps was outside in different levels of formations. The upper classmen were walking around basically quizzing the freshman and making a show for all the parents and alum around. That is until I saw D Co (the veterans company I want to join). They were just hanging out. Seems that they don't really buy into the Sophomore, Junior power trip the way the rest of the companies do. Which is understandable, they consider each other much more as equals than everyone else since everyone is a Vet. I liked the attitude they had from what I was able to see. I had tried to meet up with the company commander but I accidently gave him my old phone number so I never got in touch with him.
School wise A&M seems great. The majority of their students graduate in 4 years, which even impressed Kristi ( which was extremely hard to do. I believe by the end of the trip A&M had 5 points while Auburn had 1,000,000. She was not able to define those points but apparently they were all there!). I found out to get accepted my best chance would be to apply as a psychology major (and join the rest of the Megahee clan) and then later try to transfer to kinesiology. The academic requirements for the college of liberal arts are a little easier than for the college of health and education. But, worst case scenerio I could graduate with a BS in psych and just make sure I took the PT school pre-requirements and still get in. PT school just looks at the sciences that you need, they don't have a specific degree you have to have. So that's the route I'm going to go. I am trying to get in a good bit more school before I have to apply (by Mar 15). I enrolled in 6 hours starting on the 26th, and then will try and get another 6 in Dec or Jan.
Can't decide what I will miss the most about the states.. here are some though
sunkist.. duh
hamburgers that did not get shipped as a frozen patty
gym shorts
trees
bushes
grass.. anything green essentially
driving a car
my cell phone
saying no ha
family time, obviously
showers without flipflops
I guess those are some of the major ones, there will be more that I will remember during the next week I am sure!
Should be out of Iraq in less than 90 days... (today is 7 months since I left New Jersey fyi). Can't wait to see everyone again soon!

Soo since Carrie updated, I figured I needed to as well. I LEAVE HERE IN ONE WEEK!! It's crazy. The first time I was suposed to leave, I made it to 11 days on my countdown before it got changed. Obviously I was excited one it became less than 2 weeks and was really enjoying planning everything out. Well when it became 35 days I was just a bit depressed haha. I told Mom I didn't want to do anything with the planning anymore because it was just a bummer. I can't believe how fast those 35 days (well, 28) have gone. I really feel like this last month has flown by. And maybe it was a good thing to have my leave delayed. That next week after it got changed was really rough obviously but now I look back and see that almost a whole month has gone by since then. Since our countdown for this deployment revolves around months, one month is a big deal. The day I should get home will be 6 months since we've been in Iraq, the 13th was 6 months since we arrived in Kuwait. That's crazy. I seriously remember talking to somebody the first month we were here. He said he had been here for 4 months and I was soo jealous. I knew once we got to 4 months we would be close to the halfway point. Now I can't even remember when I realized we had passed the halfway point. If I had left on the 1st I would be coming back this week instead of leaving. While obviously part of me will always regret giving up Mom and Carrie's birthdays, I am glad that this week I am looking forward to leaving instead of preparing to come back. Now when I come back it will be less than 3 months left in country!! Wooh Wooh!
Moving past that super long paragraph.. haha I am very proud of our Auburn Tigers. They seem to be looking good, hopefully this WV game will solidify us as a good team and move us into the top 25. For all concerned, my Texas A&M Aggies are doing well also! They had a bye last week but did very well in their opener. Can't wait to see them play although I am a bit depressed that I do not know the next time I will get to watch Auburn play on the Plains.
I will be in Montgomery the first weekend of October, I believe its like the 5th? Regrettably, I will be a short trip but I will be there Saturday morning and for lunch with Deedah before I head back to Birmingham. I obviously do not know all of the plans, for more information please see my Mother, but anyone who is in the area and has a chance I would love to see everyone I can. If you have other commitments or plans I will not be depressed, I understand I am only there for a short time but I would love to see anyone who is available!
Well, I just bought a footlocker to start packing some of my stuff and sending it home ( we try and have everything packed when we go on leave just in case something changes and we have to move. If you have moved as many times as us you get really gunshy and don't want to leave your roommates to pack everything for you!). One week and counting. Love you all

So. Today is the day I should have been headed home. Obviously as everyone knows, I am not. As Nell said in her email to me, it is in fact bittersweet. Obviously I am very much looking forward to getting home. I miss all of you more than you know. I am also very ready to leave Iraq for atleast a little while. It is hard to spend everyday with the same people for 9 months and not end up wanting to strangle atleast a couple of them (sorry Mom will be mad at me for saying that ha). But, as many of you have guessed, when they asked for a volunteer, all I could think about was if I was in his situation. Coming home and not having Mom or Dad be there would just not be the same. If I wouldn't want to be in that situation then I should help him out. I do feel that in a lot of ways God will repay kindness with kindness (not that that was my motivation in anyway) but hopefully He'll help me out sometime later.
Well, I don't remember if I have made any updates about the promotion thing and I am too lazy to go back and read to check. If I repeat myself I apologize. When I completed my packet I needed the admin NCO to check it before it could be turned in. Well he didn't put forth the effort I needed and I missed the September board. I finished making the corrections last week and gave it back to my platoon sergeant to try and turn in again. The packet needs the signature of my team leader, the admin NCO, the Commander, and the First Sergeant. Well... I almost got all of those approvals. The First Sergeant doesn't believe in allowing packets to be submitted to the board if they need Time in Service and Time in Grade waived. I need both waived. Therefore, he will not allow my packet to be submitted. I need 3 more months Time in Grade before that doesn't need a waiver. Which means I can not submit my packet until the December board even though I have the points.
Obviously a little frustrating. But as Mom pointed out first and then my Chain of Command also said; it is better that time is the reason I cannot get promoted than if it was because they didn't believe in me. My Platoon Sergeant told me yesterday that he believes I should be an NCO and that I would be a good one, and I know my Squad believes in me because of the leadership positions they have put me in. I, along with two other Specialists now, am spending time being in charge of some of the leadership aspects of the missions. From being in charge at the trucks, or being in charge of the guard towers, to helping out giving the briefs before the mission. I would rather have their respect and confidence than stripes on my chest, I just wish I could have both!
Been a long start to a long week. I have missions everyday this week and then will be working on our offday Saturday. Small consolation, they are giving us Monday off for labor day. I guess I will try and catch up on sleep then!
My best friend will be back from leave around Sunday or Monday so that should help me out to have him to talk to again. I also want to apologize to everyone for all the emails my Mom sent out the other day! Haha, Guess I shouldn't have forwarded her the article.
I apologize for the length and if this post seems depressed. I am alright, missing home but I will def. be good soon enough. I will make sure that my next post is super happy, it is just easier to post the not so fun information once instead of telling everyone over the phone multiple times. Hope everyone is doing really well. Get prepared to cheer Auburn to some victories for me this year. I have waaaayyyy to many Tusca-losers around here that will be all over me if we lose too many games, haha. I love everyone and still look forward to seeing yall soon.

soooo lemme start this off by saying that i love all of you and i am sorry... I am no longer coming home on the 1st. my new date to leave bucca is the 26th. one of the guys in my platoon needed to go home earlier. his son is currently in baghdad and goes home on leave in early september. if he left on the 26th he would not get to see him while he was home. they asked us today if anyone would volunteer to switch with him and i thought it was the right thing to do. im a bit depressed obviously, my countdown changed from 11 days to 35 ha. and i am sorry to the family, i know everyone was expecting me soon and had already made plans but things change ya know? ill be giving an explanation to mom and the girls later so anyone with questions can ask me here or ask one of them. love you all
katie

I leave camp Bucca on September 1st for leave! ha, that is all!

Hey Family! Sorry it has been a while, I have actually been pretty busy/stressed here recently. Last Friday I took a pt test. Lemme tell you, running 2 miles in Iraq is not fun, especially in August. We started the test at 0430 so it would be as cool as possible but it was still prob around 100 degrees. I passed, just barely though ha. I needed the pt test so that I could put together my promotion packet. I am hoping to get promoted to SGT here soon. Here is how that process works. To get promoted to SGT or above you have to put in a packet. In the packet is like, everything about you in the military, a pt test, weapons qualification, any schools you have been to, military or civilian, what awards you have, letters of recommendation, everything. Once you complete that packet you take it to your commander. He has up to 150 points that he can give you based on if he believes you should be promoted or not. If he approves of you and you have enough points (for SGT it is 350) you then send your packet to a promotion board. The board collects all the submissions and evaluates them. They also award points based on how well the packet is put together, general appearance, and those kinds of things. They tally up all the points. Each board is told how many people can be promoted that month. So if it is 15 they take the top 15 scores and those 15 are eligible for promotion. If you are not in the top 15 then you try and get more points and try again.
I put my packet together but due to the fact our platoon is separated from our company it is making the process more difficult. There are some documents that a admin specialist has to generate. Our admin specialist is currently in Basra. So it has been a bit stressful trying to figure out exactly how to get him all of my paperwork and get the stuff from him that I need to sign when we are so far apart. The Commander came to Bucca yesterday and took my packet back to Basra with him. Word on the street (someone who happened to be in the office and overheard ha) is that I did get an approval from him. As stated above, if I got the approval then I am on the final step, actually sending it to the board and trying to get approved.
Some people say it is really easy to get promoted while you are deployed, that if you have the points you will pretty much get promoted. I guess maybe that is true because I believe that everyone we have submitted for promotion has actually been promoted, but I don't know how much truth there is to that. I also just heard a rumor that the board has been pushed back. It was suposed to be Sept 6-7, now I don't know what the deal is. It might be a good thing for it to be delayed to make sure I can for sure get all the paperwork in on time, but I also don't like the idea of it being pushed back too much. A couple of other people from our platoon have now decided to try and get their packets in by this board. so we will see how the time affects things.
I had kinda hoped it would be the 6-7 so maybe I could find out before leave. oh well, things will happen in their own time. I have completed everything that I can, now its just the fun of waiting to try and find out what will happen.
That was long and probably boring for most of you but it has def. taken up like my whole last week trying to get it complete and turned in on time. I hope everyone is doing well. There is a lot to look forward to for me these days, football season is right around the corner, September is almost here!! ( I still don't know when I will be home. Our 1SG will be down here on Monday and hopefully he will let us know then), and of course getting even closer to the actual day of coming home.
Congratulations to Kristen for pledging KD! I haven't gotten to talk to Kristi yet but I know she is super happy to get to share that with you.
I love yall!

So why is it that the one day that I try to be responsible and finally update my blog the internet wants to be bad? Oh well I will type it all out and then hopefully be able to post shortly. I am super sorry it has taken me so long to write something. I wish I even had a good excuse. It’s kinda nice though because you can look through the dates on the blog and see that when I was making the most posts was when I was extremely bored. Atleast I’m not bored anymore! Here’s what is going on.
We are staying busy but we also have a good amount of downtime. I go on missions between 4 and 5 times a week. Saturday is a guaranteed off day for everyone, Friday is maintenance day to work on our trucks (it is the holy day here so we leave them alone). Other than those two days any day can be a mission. Each squad has 3 or 4 missions a week. But on the days your squad does not have a mission you are still working somehow. People have to work in the TOC (headquarters basically, I don’t really know what it stands for?) and people have to help fill in other squads. I am very happy that we get leave, I can’t wait to go home on mine and see all of you wonderful people, but I can’t wait until leave is over. Filling in with other squads really isn’t that much fun. It’s nice to see new areas and see different things ( I got to see a herd of camels today when I went out with 3rd squad. They were the first camels I had seen since we left Kuwait back in March), but we all prefer to go with our own squads. The other part that makes it difficult is having people fill in for my squad. Right now we have 5 people on leave out of 12. We have 1 guy who can’t go out on mission because he cut his hand and had to get stitches. So every day that we go on mission only half of the people are actually from our squad. The other half are fill-ins. And they do a good job, not complaining about that but it will be easier to do the mission once we get back to the routine of knowing who is where and who is responsible for what and all that kind of stuff.
Our missions normally last around half a day depending on when we start it. So we do have a couple of hours of downtime in the afternoon before we all get busy again. This is normally movie or naptime.. ok its normally nap time ha. We have a meeting at 1700, after that its normally chow followed by the gym. They have a nice MWR here so we spend some nights in there watching movies or playing video games.
I really can’t complain much about time. The rest of our company is still not doing anything. Our Battalion Commander actually sent our Commander an email telling him that we are doing a great job as the only platoon in the entire Task Force conducting ptt. That’s pretty big, the Task Force has probably 6 or 7 ( that’s completely a guess, could be more) companies, each company has 3 platoons, and we are the only ones still working with the Iraqi Police.
I miss everyone back home a lot. I’m happy to be here because time is moving by much faster. We have been at Bucca for almost 3 weeks now and it has been a lot better than the time we spent at Basrah. It is almost August which means almost a month until September. That’s really exciting, I should be home in less than a month and a half (hopefully I got early September. I should know a date in about 2 weeks). I love you all lots

Hey guys, sorry I haven't been around for a bit. I'm having computer troubles, gotta get a new charger and I'm too lazy to go do it right now. I'm using a computer in a lab right now. just makes it a lil more difficult to get in touch with everyone. were staying very busy right now, working 6 days a week. Just wanted to give a quick update, dont have too much time. i love you all, i will be able to get my computer fixed and such by friday or sat so should be able to get in contact with more of you then. love you
katie

Hey family! The main point of this post is to inform you of the mail situation here. We are going to continue to get mail at the last address I gave in Camp Basra (mom has this). Once a week someone from our company will bring mail down to us and once a week someone from here will go to Camp Basra to pick up the mail. Obviously expect delays due to this process but it will make it to me eventually!
We're pretty much setup and ready to go here. We got our trucks worked on some more today, tomorrow will be an off day which is pretty exciting and then we will start missions again after that. I plan to head over to the Education Center tomorrow to see what kind of resources I have down here for college classes. I finished the two I started in May. I had to do a lot of the work early because of how much we were moved around but it is 6 more hours! I am now almost a sophomore. Ha... to think I should be a junior and I don't even have the credit to be a sophomore. Oh well, the way to make God laugh is to tell him our plans right?
Ha, I think some good will come from this deployment. It isn't quite what I was looking for when I found out I was coming. I had planned on being able to adamantly say the Iraqi's need our help and it's a good thing we 're here. While I believe that once was the case I don't think it still is. However the recent increase in violence in the cities may be a sign they still need our help and just don't want to admit it. I guess only time will tell. Either way, this is the place God wanted me at this time, right? I just have to learn what I need to learn from being here and come back home soon. Hope everything is well back home, much love.
Katie

I wanted to let everyone know we made it to Camp Bucca safely. We are very excited to be here, living conditions are better than they were at Basra. We are still in tents but they are insulated and huge. We start working tomorrow which is exciting, we have all been very tired of being bored. Should start going on missions soon hopefully. I'll update more as things change. The most exciting part of being here..... I have wireless internet again wooh wooh!

sooo for my sisters and parents i hope everyone remembers where we were this time one year ago. the glorious ft. leonard wood. its funny how much things can change in just one year. last year i woke up all bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to graduate and get on back home. today july 3rd marks the 6 month mark from the day i left home. i woke up nooottt so bright eyed and bushy tailed for another day in this lovely place.
i went back to the gym tonight for the first night in a while. its always funny to me, if i haven't been going to the gym then i dread going but once i go im dying to keep going. i have a lot of work to do between preparing for a pt test and trying to lose some weight so i def. need to keep up going. it just seems so much easier to eat better and be healthier when im working out too. good ole endorphines ha
i love everyone, have a very happy 4th. enjoy some ribs for me

Hey guys, been busy, which has been kinda nice. But also really hot. We've been doing a lot of work on our trucks. Worked on a Humvee for a couple of days only for them to change my truck to a caiman so now we had to start all over again. i guess it's good, caimans are safer and have much better air conditioning. I would rather drive a humvee because they are smaller and easier to move around. Since we will be in a new place I have no clue what to expect from the roads which is not much fun. Some roads can make a caiman very difficult to maneuver! Umm things are changing around here and Ill let yall know more as I do. Sorry I don't have too much info. Love you all

Happy Daddy's Day everyone!!! Hope all the Dads have a good one. We packed up the connex today with our extra stuff. Should be moving sometime soon. Looking forward to the move. We're just biding time here, played volleyball last night for about 2 and a half hours, lots of fun. thats our entertainment around here, that and the gym. Um nothing really exciting going on, wish I could give ya'll more excitement but I just don't have any. Love everyonnneeee lots and lots