Four Years Later

Hopefully the world won't end with this post.  I don't know if the world can handle two of my blogs in the same week...

For those that don't actively follow my Facebook status, I commissioned as an officer in the United States Army four years ago Monday.  Yes, somehow it has already been four years.  I know I haven't been around much since then, but I want to take this opportunity to thank everybody for their outstanding support.  Whether I is was in OBC, Iraq, actually at Ft. Campbell, or Afghanistan, I've gotten nothing but love, support, and amazing care packages.  All of this even though I've missed countless birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, two Christmases (is that how you pluralize Christmas?), and pretty much every other major event in the lives of my families and friends.

So, in lieu of a video montage of the last four years, here are some pictures of my commissioning and two promotions.  Here's to at least two more promotions after this!  (That would make me a Lieutenant Colonel and a pretty big deal...)

Aug 15, 2007 - Commissioning day.  Yeah you better buff those finger prints off of my brand new gold 2LT bars!!!

April 2, 2009 - Promotion to 1LT.  CPT Param, the guy I replace as platoon leader is pinning my new rank on my patrol cap even though I had already sewn on my rank.  Oh by the way, if you jam a patrol cap with pin rank down on somebody's head, it hurts pretty bad.

April 3, 2011 - LTC Rickleff, my battlaion commander, promoting me from 1LT to CPT.  I got promoted later than I should have because of where my 1LT date of rank fell in the promotion cycle but, as always, better late than never

That's all I got.  We have a pretty awesome mission coming up in the next week.  Hopefully combat camera will go along and release some picture for me to steal and put on the blog.

Later.

Some More Pictures

What's up everybody.  I hope the weather back home is finally starting to cool down and stay cool.  It's still pretty warm here but I think for a couple days it was warmer in Iowa and Kansas than it was here.  August and September are supposed to be the hottest months but so far, August has been relatively mild (knocking on wood).  It will probably be a shock to my system when I get home in mid-October and its about 50 or 60 degrees.  As long as it's not raining, I should be good to go.

Anyway, I was looking through the pictures on my computer and thought I'd throw a few more on the blog.  All of them are from really early in the deployment.  Either October or November.  I have no idea why the first picture is all the way to the right.  The internet is too slow to delete it and try to reload it though.

Enjoy!

This was taken in late November during the first mission I went on.  Early morning on day two of the seven day mission.  Zero roads, just open desert to drive through.  Probably should've had my weapon on me but I was surrounded by security.  This was shortly before we started moving.  Think we only moved 5 or so kilometers that day.  The next day was long though.  Like 20 hours of straight driving long.

October 22, 2010.  Just got off the plane after flying Manas to Bastion (the airfield is on the British side but almost all the American troops are on Leatherneck).  Minus the nap on the plane, think I'd been up for about a day.

Afghan night through night vision.  Since we were in the middle of nowhere you could see what seemed like every star in the universe.  Remember when I said we drove for 20 hours, this was on about hour 15.

62 days to go...

Later!