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.

Movement to my new home in Iraq

Well I am now where I will call home for the next while. We got here a couple of days ago and it was quite the trip. It is nice however to be getting settled into what I will be doing over the rest of my tour. Unfortunately there is not much that I can say about what that is but I will say that I am very safe where I am and I will not be short of things to do. I was able to capture so good pictures of our helicoter trip.


Here is a small part of my team that I am in charge of prior to heading out.

Here is our helicotper coming into the landing zone. These things put off a lot of prop wind.

Our lead chopper flying over Iraq.

I believe that this is the Tigras River. This is one the main rivers flowing through Iraq.

I love this picture, a prop in the setting sun. I took this will one hand because I had to hold on, it was a bumpy ride. It was a good ride and it is good to be here. I would rather be home but that is just not an option now. I will post more when I can.

Kuwait is a Shit Hole

Well here I am in Kuwait. This place sucks. I am still racking my brain trying firgure out way anyone would live here. It is all sand here and the sand it so light that it relects the suns and makes it incredibly bright. But there is nothing out here. I call it the land of random because there is so much nothing out here and then in the middle of nowhere there is a random pile of junk. It is kind of funny.



You know how in Wyoming there are snow fences? Well here they have sand walls. These are to prevent the sand from blowing and drifting into the road. And as you can see behind the wall is a whole lot of nothing.

And like range cattle back home they have range camels. My only question is, "what do they eat?"

I have seen a lot of Mercedes with pieces of shit in them but never one that was acctually designed around carrying shit. All the "work" trucks around here are Mercedes built vehicles.

Tyson Doney from Preston, Idaho, he and I decided to run to the top of one of the sand walls. About half way up we sank into the sand pretty deep but we made it.

And guess who won? Not me but I made it look like it in the this picture. Ha.

Well Kuwait is no fun but it is all good because I leave "very soon" to go up North. Oh boy here I come.

Moving to Kuwait

Had to post this for my wife. Proof she is married to a super hero.

Well I have now moved to Kuwait. Let's just say it is not a place I would like to move to. It is flat, sandy, and hot. But the move started after I took leave for 4 days with my wife Nicole. We went to Nashville for those days. I would have posted pictures from that trip but I accedentally deleted them all. Oops. It was fun but it was not very much fun to say goodbye again. I miss Nicole like crazy.

This is a picture of us in Mississippi loading the trucks with all our gear to go to the airport. It is crazy how much stuff we have to take. Almost rediculous!

Here we are walking the flight line out to the plane. This plane was huge it has the second story and everything.

Here we all are in the back of the plane sleeping. It only took us 14 hours to get there with a stop in Germany to fill up.

And then we landed with the setting sun. When we were all done with get everything situated and I called Nicole it was about 4:00 am Kuwait time. I fell asleep and slept for a good 14 hours. It was awesome. And now I am all good living on Kuwait Time. We are 10 hours ahead right now so almost half way around the world. Well more to follow later.