Merry Christmas

Well Christmas has came and went. It was decent given that I am in Iraq. We did not do anything but it was still a good time. The night before we had a convoy come in with our mail and it came in after my guys went to bed so what I did was I put all of there package outside their Chu doors so when they came out in the morning they saw them. I did not have a tree to put them under so it worked just fine this way. The guys loved seeing this in the morning. After they opened their packages we sat around, drank coffee, and talked about family. It was a good time had by all. Then we had to go back to work. But it was a laid back day and given that we are all away from family I feel that we are all still in very good spirit.

Here is a picture that I took of all our packages outside our Chu's

This is a picture of one of our local national guards. He is a kick boxer and very short. All the Iraqis and short. He is a good guy, it is fun to talk with him.

Well I hope that all are having a good holiday season. Thanks for all those back home who have made this a more pleasant time for my wife. She misses me but the love shown to her by those at home has made this a more bearable experience for her. Thanks again.

MK48 Shooting

We got the opportunity to shoot the MK48 machine gun. This was the first time I had ever shot a machine gun standing up. The kick on this thing was pretty good. It was a good time. We have shot many other weapons but this is the first that I got a video of.

The Locals

Well I have been here a little over a week now. It has been busy but fun. I have gotten into a grove as to how things will be over the next while. We work with some locals and they wanted to do a BBQ for us. A little scary eatting new food but it was great. I love the bread.

An interesting BBQ grill they had. They would hand wrap the meat around a sword looking thing, then they put it onto a peice of wide flange. the coals are under it and they have a blower from and old car's A/C system to blow the coals. It was interesting to see this done.

And here we are enjoying.

This picture is for my Nicole, Kelly, Janis, and all you other Diet Coke drinkers. Everything here is in Arabic and I thought the can was neat.

And if it has anything bad in it and you don't read arabic then you will never know.

Pyro-Manic

For anyone that knows the Smith's we love to start fires. So when they said 50 gallons of bad gas, 5 old mattresses, and 2 thermite gernades I was all in.

Here we our t-minus 5 minutes. Tapp is happy to be ready to burn.

Here is my gernade that will start the inferno.

And let it burn.

It was getting a little hot and Tapp took a picture of me running to safety.