Weekend update

Well, another week has come and gone in this place and I'm at a crossroads of sorts. On the one hand, I couldn't be more elated to know that I'm very near the end of this deployment and I'm almost close enough to my homecoming that we've started making plans for my post-deployment vacation time, welcome home parties and just some good old fashioned chillin'. On the other, we had a memorial last Wednesday for a Marine we lost at the beginning of August. We two more memorials scheduled for later this week and it's starting to wear a little thin to say the least.

At least I'm still in relatively good health and my family seems to be doing well. My wife seems to be in a similar quandry. The more she tries to look forward to our reunion, the more the kids seem to notice that she's not paying attention to them and so they do what kids do best: make themselves the center of attention. Well when I get there I'm going to have my hands full in the chaos that I'm looking forward to of rolling around in the grass with my children and chasing each other all over the yard. Still, we have a way to go and I can't focus on that just yet. We still have a job to do here and we will continue to do it every day until we have been properly relieved by another battalion. I've been reading this blog by a reporter embedded with an Army unit up near Mosul. Although the names are different, the stories are very much the same.

As we near the end of this deployment I would ask for those of you who feel so inclined to please pray for our continued diligence and also to lift up the families of those who have been killed or injured while serving the people of America and the people of Iraq. I've been taking pictures every now and again and as soon as I figure out how to post them to my blog, I will share more of my adventures from the past six months. Have a great week and God bless you all.