Memorial Day Part One...

Memorial Day in the past for me has always come and gone with no particular celebration. It has always been a holiday we celebrated when I was a child. My father fought in Vietnam and both of my grandfather's fought in WWII. I appreciated it, I thought. Maybe I feel differently this year because I am now a mom. Maybe its because we traveled to a communist country last year to bring our daughter home where she can experience freedom. Maybe it's because the war in Iraq has become personal. Maybe it's all the above combined. Whatever it is, I know it has to do somewhat with my cousin Jim. He reported for duty last January after marrying his high school sweetheart, Toni. We miss him dearly and pray daily for his safety. Grace says "Gim" instead of Jim. It's so sweet. Especially when we are praying for him. Today was Jim's birthday. Growing up, his sister Amy and I always tortured him when we were playing. I won't go into details in case Jim is reading this, but I will say it involved dresses and hair bows! We made him a cake and sang happy birthday to him and Grace loved blowing out his candles. We wish he was here in our country to celebrate with his wife and all his other family, but we will certainly celebrate when his tour is over!!! Enjoy the pictures!

Grace was literally putting all the sprinkles on Jim's cake one at a time!!!

She was concentrating so hard on where each and every little sprinkle went! If she didn't like where it landed she would move it!

Some of the sprinkles never made it to the cake at all! They went straight to the mouth!!

The finished product!!! I can't tell if she's happy that she's done or if she wants to keep going!

Thank you for serving your country!! Happy Birthday!!!

Update from Iraq...

Many of you read my blog about my cousin Jim who is serving Iraq. He has started sending updates to our family. Several of you have asked about him so I will start posting them as I get them on the blog. I'll post pictures also as I get them. I don't know why part of this is underlined. Here's Jim... This is the first update or journal of what will hopefully become a regular deal until I get back home. These will be just general info that I'll send out to anyone who might be interested. Email will be the easiest method of staying in touch while I'm deployed so if anyone has anything to say you can write me at . I don't have a mailing address yet. I've bought a cell phone that works here so If I'm up when people back home are awake I can call home (there is a nine hour difference from central time). To catch everyone up- On Jan 14 I reported to Ft Benning, Ga and did paperwork/medical screening/classes for two weeks. Next I went with 12 other guys and 1 girl to Ft Leonard Wood, Mo. I was there for three weeks, during which we did about 15 minutes of training, ate a good bit of Mexican food, and generally tried not to die from boredom or hypothermia. I also improved my poker and ping-pong skills quite a bit. After that the army sent 10 of us to Ft Bliss, TX (or Ft Blistex as Toni calls it) and did the whole paperwork/medical screening/classes thing over again. During the Benning and Bliss stops I received no less than eight shots. I got on the plane to head for Kuwait on Friday the 23rd at 9pm. We stopped in Gander, Canada and in Budapest, Hungary before arriving in Kuwait City around 3am on Sunday. We spent a total of 21 hours on the plane. Now I am here at Camp Buehring, Kuwait for a few days. After that we will go to Ali Al Salem to do more in-processing before going north to Tallil near An Nasiriyah, Iraq. Being in southern Iraq it gets fewer mortar/rocket attacks which is good. The group of 10 guys I am with (all IRR) is getting attached to 731st TC of the Kansas National Guard which is attached to the 34th Bde combat team. I think they are from Minnesota or somewhere up there. Our job will be doing convoy security. They said we will end up seeing most of Iraq by the time we are done. It sounds like a less than desirable job but it should make the time pass by quickly. This part of Kuwait is just one big, flat desert. There aren't any sand dunes or anything, it is all flat dirt and sand with no vegetation except for random weeds spaced about two miles apart. For some reason there are birds here but I can't figure out where they could be coming from. It seems like everything that could fly, walk, or crawl would get out of here as soon as possible. Other than birds and ants, the only wildlife I have seen is camels. At the firing range on Tuesday they had to cease firing twice to chase the camels off the range. They are a lot like sheep or cows. You will see a herd of them in the desert with one or two people walking with them to herd them. The weather here is nice. So far it has been mid 80's during the day and 50's at night which feels cold. I haven't seen any clouds yet. I'm glad I got here early in the year so I can slowly get exposed to the summertime heat. Sunday night some country singer came and gave a performance here. I didn't go but it was supposed to have been ok. There is a PX and some other small stores here on post. They have a Burger King, Taco Bell, and a KFC. I haven't gone to any of those; the chow hall is pretty good. There is also a coffee shop called the Green Bean that we have gone to a couple times. It's probably the only coffee shop where everyone is carrying a M16 or 9mm. The guys I am with right now are a fairly good group. Everyone gets along well and no one has caused any problems. There is the usual amount of complaining that is always present in the army but so far so good. Most of us are from 23-25 years old and there are eight E4s and two E5s. Well that is all I can think of that anyone might want to know but I am sure some people will have questions. Feel free to email me or Toni if anyone needs anything. Thank you to everyone that has helped us these past few months. Jim