New Pet

We found this critter living under the floorboards of our tent today.

Tomfoolery on Halloween!

Jenny & Destiny stayed in Milton so Destiny could go Halloweening with her cousins, Jeffrey, Jessa, & Jack. We began the evening by meeting Zack & Natalie at CiCi's Pizza. Ha! We were tricked, cause we were told if we showed up in costume we ate for free. Aw... but we paid, and enjoyed being together. Natalie didn't wear a costume but she made an pretty cool turtle outfit for Zack! Some how we made it out of there without getting a picture of him, but he made a pretty awesome turtle (especially with his skinny kegs and all.) Jack had his costume messed up before we left there with Pizza, soda and all, but then sharks are probably not known for their tidy eating habits!

We decided to go over to base housing to trick or treat. Cute as can be... Destiny was a pink unicorn, Jessa was a princess, Jack was a shark, and Jeffy was a pirate. This was Destiny's 2nd Halloween, but it all was new to her. She seemed fascinated by the costumes and the decorations. She would stop and stare and just watch people walking by. At one house, Jeffy was a bit freaked out because they had several adults dressed up, one looking like a dummy was sitting in a chair then suddenly hops up when Jeffy was trying to figure out if he was real! He totally startled Jeffrey, but Destiny just stood there watching... like "what a silly cousin!" Jessa found out where a couple of her friends lived along the way too. The lighted pumpkins and decorations were fascinating to Jack and Destiny. At one house the porch light was on, but no one answered the door. The 3 older kids scampered on to the next house, but Destiny found a Bob the Builder chair sitting on the porch and went and sat down like it was the perfect place for a little break! Lol! Yes, they all collected plenty of candy and Grandma collected her share of bounty for taking them! Yummy!

Wielding an AK-47

This week I had the chance to fire an AK-47 for the first time. It was great fun. I fired about 600 rounds and my shoulder is black and blue today. It is a really impressive weapon. There are only 4 pieces to the whole thing, making it one of the simplest inventions in the history of warfare. By comparison the M-16 has 16 pieces. That simplicity makes it very forgiving. It rarely jams, even on full automatic, and tolerates the sand and dust very well. There was a sandstorm going on while we shot and mine did not fail at all. That's more than I can say for the M-16, which simply won't fire if it gets sand in it. It is amazing to think that Mikhail Kalishnikov's design is 62 years old and hasn't been changed at all. It is also the most widely proliferated weapon in the world with over 200 million having been produced. By comparison, 16 million M-16s have been produced. It is easy to see why it is the preferred firearm for dictators and terrorists around the world: it requires virtually no maintenance, can put a lot of rounds downrange quickly, and costs very little ($25-$130 apiece in 3rd world countries.) It was fairly accurate at the 25 meter distance we fired from.

Virginia Visit

I had a very enjoyable visit up to Virginia to visit with Josh, Deborah, and family. The kids and Deborah were all super excited about Joshua arriving home from Kuwait. Deborah was packed and ready to head off on their private anniversary vacation up to New York.

Jonas, Maddie and Eliza & Wyatt and I had our own special time (including a day of skipping school). Jonas decided we "needed to have a little extra time to sleep" and reset the alarm clock for 10:30 am or something! By the time we woke up we were late and it was an early release day.....so..., oh well!! We had a fun day instead.

The kids each had grown so much! Especially Wyatt, since I had seen them in February. Maddie had developed a special talent of climbing the door frame with her toes and fingers! What a little monkey!! She could climb up in no time flat. I should have recorded it!!

Eliza is in preschool and really loves it! The pumpkin picture is of their pumpkin patch. Jonas is an expert at video games! Watch out, all of you uncles!

Cousins At The Beach!

Cousins At The Beach!

During Jenny and Destiny's visit during September & October 2009 , they were able to make a few visits to the beach together. Here are a few of the pictures. Jack & Destiny were so cute together, and Jeffy made a fun big cousin toting Destiny around on his shoulders. Jessa as always takes very good care of Destiny and Jack. Enjoy these pix!

Z Gets caught by Paparazzi

Hey, so one day when Z runs for public office some guy will drag this photo from obscurity to talk about Zack's political leanings. hehehe. But, mind you, this political statement is late, after the fact and decisions have been made. But yeah for Z for standing up and demanding accountability! :)

(He is in Photos 3 & 4 of 9)

http://www.pnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=DP&Dato=20091022&Kategori=NEWS01&Lopenr=910220804&Ref=PH_blank

Christmas Exchange!

Christmas Exchange List

(The random drawing was conducted by mom and Jenny a couple weeks ago. But since they are slackers I thought I would go ahead and post the list.)
First Name buys for---->
Josh-----------> Jenna
Deborah------->Jon
Jenna---------> Jacob
Jonny---------> Deborah
Jenny---------> Will (Joey)
Will -----------> Josh
Jacob----------> Zack
Sam-----------> Natalie
Zack----------> Sam
Natalie--------> Jenny

Kiddos Exchange
Jeffrey<---------> Jonas
Jessalyn <------->Maddie
Destiny<--------->Eliza
Jack<------------>Wyatt

Uncle John has passed away.

My Uncle John Hensley passed away last Wednesday. He was almost 86 years old. He was a WWII veteran, having served in Europe during the war.

I credit him in part with teaching me to work on cars, (a skill that I've passed on to my sons).

For those too far away to attend the funeral, you can post a note to the family at elmridge.mem.com. You can also read the obituary there.

Of special note to Jonas is that Uncle John's middle name was also Sherman, same as yours.

This picture of him is a reminder of what my Grandpa Chester Hensley looked like when I was a boy, except he had less hair than this picture of Uncle John. Just in case you ever wondered what Great Grandpa Hensley looked like. We Hensleys have a special look.

My Job... I have a job! Woot!

So, we are all lame and are so busy chatting in the fantasy league we don't post on here during Football Season. But I thought I would share some details with those of you that are curious about my new position. So here is the 411.

I am still with Lakeview. But I will be working as a counselor doing group therapy at the Crisis Stabilization Unit. (CSU) My main responsibility is doing group sessions. I have done 4 patients one on one therapy sessions (basically I take them through the whole process when they are given to me as "my" patient. I sit in on the H&P (History and Physical) with the Dr. I call family for collateral info (meaning I call and ask if the story they are pedalling is true. People lie about the toughest stuff, they will kill off their mom or dad, or say they have been through horrible stuff and then you call and find out they made up the whole thing!)
I decide on what referrals to give for aftercare, and of course have counseling sessions regarding what brought them to the CSU. (Most cases it is a suicide attempt or suicidal/ homicidal thoughts. The other thing we see alot are individuals that just lost it when they got drunk or high on some kind of drugs. See, another strong case on why NOT to do drugs, you might end up in a mental facility!)
The group therapy sessions are on Stages of Recovery, WRAP (Wellness Recovery Action Plan) Client Satisfaction, discharge planning, Art therapy, relaxation techniques, Dual Diagnosis (Mental Health & Substance Abuse), Mental Health Education, Etc.
I am excited but it is challenging. :) I am working days. But will also try to work in a few Saturday sessions every other week while the kids are with Jeff. Those will likely be more 1 on 1 sessions since the doctors does not typically do Full H&P's on the weekends. So, I hope that answers some questions for you guys! Thank you all for your words of encouragement while I was looking, and looking, and applying, and applying. It was funny because this one just kinda fell in my lap after I had been looking so long!

Doh... Another Sandtrap!

Our work tent backs up against a couple of square miles of open desert originally used as massive parking lots for thousands of tanks, Humvee's etc. in the lead up to the Iraq invasion. Now it is all empty, so we decided to put it to good use as a driving range. I'm thinking I should be pretty good out of the bunkers by the time I get home.

Nothing very exciting to report here- the desert is still hot, the Arabs still hate us, and the the the Army still regularly finds new ways to amuse me with stupidity. As that is really all I can complain about, life is clearly treating me very well. Hope everyone there is having a great summer!

Treacherous Voyages -- Physical and Mental

In case you're wondering, I'm the busty gal in the black dress in the middle.

It's been a pretty long summer. I made it through the first semester of my Masters degree with a 4.0 gpa. As it turns out, that is pretty much all I have to say about May through July. I was worked to death both for my classes and doing research for professors. But the last two weeks have actually been pretty nice.

Last weekend I went on a bike trip with a group of folks to Dauphin Island. We left on Friday morning, rode about sixty miles to Fort Morgan, hopped on a fairy to Dauphin Island and made camp at about six in the evening. Of course, along the way there were stops at the Flora-Bama (yeah, it's pretty much as lame as it sounds) and some Mexican restaurant for lunch (yeah, it was an even worse idea than it sounds like). Then, for no apparent reason, we woke up early on Saturday and headed back to Pensacola. All told, I rode about 120 miles in two days. From this I learned a few things.

1. I need a more comfortable seat on my bike.
2. Waiters in family style Mexican restaurants are not polite to people who smell like dirty socks.
3. There is a nerve in your palm that, if pressed against a solid surface such as a handlebar for extended periods of time, can prevent you from having any feeling in your pinky or ring finger. Seriously, I am only now starting to be able to feel my pinky finger.
4. Bike tires will fail in rapid succession during torrential downpours in the last 10 miles of a long journey.

Yep, it was a pretty good time.

In other news, I am so awesome that the Department of Government awarded me a position in the "Teaching Academy." Essentially, this a new program (paid for by stimulus money) that will pay me to (under the mentorship of a professor) develop and teach a class to undergraduates. So a year from now, I will actually be teaching Intro to American Politics at UWF. Meanwhile, they are still paying about half of my tuition. Even better, I don't have to work in the office anymore. Exciting eh?


p.s. You might as well go ahead and order my nameplate for the Fantasy bobble-head this year. With Brett Favre in Minnesota, teams will have to think twice before stacking 8 in the box to stop the run. Adrian Peterson is about to go crazy.

Grandpa's 55 Chevy New Again!

Grandpa has finished painting his 55 Chevy. It looks great in these pictures. I wanted to give Granpa credit for his hard work.

Groundhog Day

I like reading all about your adventures. Makes me wish I had some of my own to share. Things in Kuwait are very much routine. When Sailors arrive from the states I give them welcome to theater briefings, providing useful tips such as don't set fire to Korans on the front steps of the Mosques. We get about 400 Sailors per month through Camp Virginia; taking care of their pay and administrative issues keeps me fairly busy. Still, the monotony is setting in, and even after only four moths there isn't much new to add variety to the days. I have started taking some professional military education classes. The Navy has been pushing them for the last couple years but I didn't want to do it on my own time. I have to write my first essay in 8 years this week. Hopefully I didn't forget how.

Looking forward to the start of the fantasy football season! The turbo turtles have had a very grueling training camp here in Kuwait. No doubt their newfound ferocity will strike fear into the hearts of all!



I can't take credit for this piece of photography. It was taken by someone else at Ali Al Salem AB, about 5 miles from here. I think I've had about enough sandstorms to last me the rest of my days!

Popular Mechanics August 2009 Article

Popular Mechanics published an article in this month's magazine with a story about my Task Force. The writer came here a few months ago and followed us all around a little bit. I think I actually flew the crew around one day. But I have flown probably a dozen media crews around and I can't remember for sure if I flew this one. But I digress. They followed a mission that was going on at the time. None of our Blackhawks participated in the published story, but it gives a pretty good idea what we do. Its a pretty good article with pictures of my commander and a couple friends of mine. I only take issue with two minor thing in the article: The article reports that we (the Blackhawks) didn't participate in that mission because we didn't have enough power in our Hawks to operate in this environment. That is rubbish. We have been doing in for months. The truth is we didn't participate in that particular mission because they had to move like 100 people. We can carry like 10 people and the Chinooks can carry like 30. The article reports that they used 4 Chinooks, meaning simply that they needed more space for passengers. But of course, you can't blame the reporter. I'm sure he got that ludacris idea from an uninformed Chinook pilot, probably one with a butt for a head. The other thing that I disagree with is the depiction of Captain Buono as a "stormy" tyrant. She is actually a pretty nice girl, but like most women she is prone to occasional mood swings, that's a woman's prerogative I think...I suspect they just caught her on a bad day. But anyway... Its a good article and it might give you some ideas about what goes on over here in Salerno on a daily basis. The article can be found in the August 2009 Popular Mechanics if you are interested.

LEGOS, LIONS, MINIS, AND MOVING, AND ALL OF MANNER OF ADVENTURES

Destiny Checking out some Bob the Builder in 4D

Boring!

Canoeing on the Lego River

Relax Mom! I got this!

Cruisin in the Lego Jeep

Be Polite, Be Professional, and Always Have a Plan to Kill Everyone You Meet:

That pretty much sums up my philosophy for working with the Afghans, but recently I have found that my philosophy should be extended to the Air Force as well. (sorry dad, but those guys brought this on themselves.)

I just got back from my emergency leave in Germany. Everything is fine. Jenny and Destiny are doing fine. Currently they are staying at my friend Jeremia's house near Ramstein Germany waiting for a flight back to the states.

But let me tell you about my travel adventures. Now I have long suspected that I probably hated the Air Force, but now I know for sure. I hate them. Or at least the morons that work in the Air Mobility division. My story starts with my arrival in Bagram, because I flew on a Blackwater airplane from here to Bagram, I didn't have to deal much with the Air Force except to have them weigh my bags and put me on the manifest.

But when I arrived in Bagram around 1030am I began making inquiries into direct flights to Ramstein Germany. Policy is that only travelers on Emergency Leave can travel direct to Ramstein. Everyone else has to pass through Kuwait, Manas, or Qatar. I had Emergency Leave orders in hand, so I shouldn't have any trouble getting on a direct flight. Wrong! I forgot to consider the probability that someone behind a desk was stupid. I was told that there would be a medevac flight direct to Germany that night and I needed to show up at 9:00 PM. So I hung out almost all day in the terminal and at exactly 9:00 I reported at the check-in counter. I was told to come back at 10:00. So I returned to my seat in the terminal and sat down an waited. At 10:00 I was again told that the flight was delayed, and the new show time was at 11:30. So I politely returned to my seat and sat around for another hour and a half. At 11:30 I reported back to the counter and this time I was told that, "Oh Sir, you missed that flight, show time was at 9:00. You should have been here at 9." At first I tried to maintain my professionalism and explain that I was here at 9:00 and at 10:00 as instructed and there is no way I missed the flight. The idiot then proceeded to tell me, "Well Sir, I am sorry, but if you are late for show times, we cannot be responsible for you. Three other passengers reported at 9:00 and they are loading onto the flight at this time." I argued with her about the fact that I was there and I had spoken to the moron sitting right next to her. She then proceeded to reiterate that I was at fault for missing the show time, and refused to take any responsibility for her airman's mistake. At that moment I realized that stupid girl was lucky that I had already turned my gun into the Arms room. I probably would have had to shoot her. Justifiable Homicide.

The next flight to Germany's show time wasn't until 10:00 AM the next morning. I arrived at the Check-in counter two hours early to minimize the propensity for stupidity. At first the same guy who screwed me the night before asked if he could help me. I told him "No, you cannot. I have already seen the depth of your ignorance, I will wait my turn and speak to your boss." When I finally got my chance to speak to the NCO to sign in, she told me that I was two hours early for the show time and I would have to come back at 10:00. I refused. I reiterated my experience from the night before and demanded that she manifest me at that moment. After seeing that I was not going to politely return to my seat, she did end up adding me to the manifest.

At around noon we went out to the aircraft. The plane was a huge Air Force Cargo Jet, a C-17. Myself and about a dozen other passengers passed through customs and were walked out to the Aircraft, which happened to be parked only about 100 yards from the terminal. When we were about 50 feet from the aircraft some Air Force NCO pulled some ridiculous regulation out of his butt and told us that we were not authorized to walk out to his aircraft on the flight line and that we had to be on a bus. With that, the guy leading us told us to wait where we were. He walked back to the terminal, jumped into a bus and drove back out to the plane to pick us up. We got loaded onto the bus, the bus immediately performed a U-Turn and stopped. We got off the bus in exactly the same spot where we climbed onto the bus and then we were allowed to load the plane. Another pointless exercise in stupidity compliments of the United States Air Force Air Mobility Command. This time I just had to shake my head and play along.

I arrived in Germany exactly 9 hours after takeoff and met Jenny in the lobby of the Ramstein Hotel. We enjoyed a nice (expensive) dinner at a restaurant in the hotel and spent the night on the 8th floor of Ramstein's brand new high rise hotel and mall complex overlooking the airfield. The next day we had an even more expensive (but much less delicious) lunch at the Macaroni Grill and then we went to a rental car place and got a meat wagon. (That is German for Rental Car. Well the spelling is a little different, but it sounds like Meat Wagon, and I like saying meat wagon.) At the Meat Wagon place I talked the lady into a free upgrade to a Mini Cooper.

Now it is true that a Mini Cooper is kind of a girly car, and it kind of screams "British Homo", but I have to admit that for a girl car, it is kind of fun to drive. Surprisingly the Mini Cooper has a lot of power. Good acceleration, comfortable driving at high speeds and amazing handling. I had the car for a week so I put it though its paces. On the Autobahn I found that the car is governed at exactly 200 KPH (125 MPH). But it accelerates to 200 KPH fairly quickly from a dead stop and it gives you the feeling that despite the electronic governor, she would like to go faster. At top speed she is very smooth and comfortable. The responsive steering is amazing and a nod to the reputation of German engineering. The short wheel base and low center of gravity help and it glides through even tight turns at very high speed. Very fun on country back roads in Germany, since the Germans are not fond of speed limits, and they have no idea how to build a straight road. Of course, Mini Coopers are built by BMW, and as you would expect from any BMW product, it has a lot of ridiculous, over-the-top, really cool options. My favorite option was the Auto-Shut-Off feature. When you come to a stop with the car in neutral and remove your foot from the clutch like at a traffic light, the car automatically kills the engine to save fuel. When you put your foot back down on the clutch it immediately starts back up and you are free to go. Its a really cool feature, but I'm sure it would suck if you just had to jump-start the car. Jenny's least favorite pointless option was the Variable Ambient Lighting. Little LED lights all over the interior create ambiance ambient light in the car that can be adjusted to almost any color of the spectrum by a little switch above the rear-view mirror. Since we never figured out how to actually shut off the ambient light system, Jenny hated it, because I liked to play with it while she drove. If you hold the switch down the car's interior continually changes color. Jenny wasn't as amused by it as I was. The owners manual was in German. Maybe if Jenny would have read the manual, she could have figured out how to disable the Variable Ambient Lighting System, and then I would have had to stop playing with it. The car had a lot of other buttons (all of which I tried, and some of which I never did figure out what they actually did.) I am sorry to report that I actually really liked the Mini Cooper. Most of my road testing had to be performed while Jenny was not in the car, so some of my test results were not sanctioned by a real live German. Jenny seemed to be less interested in the performance aspects of the car. Destiny didn't seem to mind them, but don't tell Jenny that I let Destiny sanction a few of the time trials. She probably wouldn't be impressed by that either.

Anyway, as I reported, Jenny's surgery went well. For the first couple days after the DNC the only real problem was bruise on her left hand from where the nurse apparently missed the vein when she hooked up the IV. I guess her body finally figured out that she wasn't pregnant, because a couple of recovery days after Jenny took a turn for the worse right there in the Farm Animals section of the Stuttgart Zoo. She suddenly began having cramps and severe discomfort which included some excessive woman problems. The whole thing kind of put a damper on our fun day at the Zoo. After that, Destiny fell asleep and Jenny complained the rest of the day. We hurried through the rest of the place to just get out of there. I'm just glad we made it through the petting zoo before everything went to crap. Destiny likes goats.

Jenny's problems pretty much continued off and on throughout the rest of my time there. She is still having some occasional discomfort and woman problems, but not as bad as at first. She should be totally fine in a week or so.

We also managed a nice trip to Legoland Deutchland. It is really a theme park for young children. It didn't offer a whole lot of great stuff for our family. Destiny liked riding the train around the park and she really enjoyed looking at the lego cities. She liked all of the moving parts and pieces and she always wanted to push the buttons to make the lego men do their tricks. Jenny had to fight with the park management, but we eventually got the head boss in charge of rides to give her a paper that allowed Destiny to ride all of the rides designated for children at least 80cm tall. I am personally not convinced that Destiny is actually 80cm tall, and the measuring sticks around the park didn't seem to be in any form of agreement with each other, but the paper authorized Destiny to ride the rides, so the conductors reluctantly let her ride. We finished the day by watching Bob the Builder in 4D. Of course, it was in German, so I wasn't all that sure what Bob was talking about, but I got the gist of it anyway. Bob and his friends built a bird house and a roller coaster out of Legos, proving once again that "Yes, he can!"

One evening Jenny's brother Dani and I got out and did a ropes course. It was a lot of fun and a good challenge too. Jenny's sister took a bunch of pictures, but I haven't seen any of them, and Destiny really liked watching. She was very impressed with her father's cat like prowess in the trees. I amazed her with my bravery, courage, and athleticism. She also laughed when I got yelled at by some pimply faced teenager for unhooking my harness on one of the platforms. What was I supposed to do? I zigged when I should have zagged and ended up all tangled in my safety ropes. Who needs safety ropes anyway?

Jenny managed to sell off almost all of the random crap that she and Destiny had acquired. Jenny did ship a few boxes of stuff home. Now she is just waiting for her own ride home, which leads me back to the beginning when I told you how much I hate the Air Force Air Mobility Command. Everyday for the past week they have posted a flight direct from Ramstein to Fort Campbell, and everyday they cancel the flight, so Jenny has to wait for tomorrow. When I pressed them to tell me why they keep canceling flights, they told me that the Aircraft was having maintenance problems. My friend, Col. Jim Thomas told me that once that at the end of the month the Air Force always has a lot of "maintenance" problems overseas, because if you are on TDY overseas on the 1st of the month you get a tax break on the paycheck. Sweet!

My return to the Air Force Mobility Command further reinforced my opinions of them. After like three days of talking to the service guys and waiting for a direct flight back to Bagram from Ramstein I was finally informed that they were not going to let me take a direct flight to Bagram, because even though I have emergency leave orders, they didn't consider them valid anymore since I am returning to a combat zone. Once again, I understand why the Army makes us turn in our guns before we go to an Air Force customer service desk. It just happened thought that even though I missed the flight that I wanted to get on, there was another flight heading to Bagram taking off an hour later that had a fuel stop in Qatar. I could get on that one, because stopping for fuel in Qatar somehow fills their requirements. If I would have thought about it at the moment I would have told him to forget it and I could have got on a flight a couple hours later to Kuwait where Josh is. At least then I could have hung out with my brother. But whatever, I have never been to Qatar before, so lets check it out. As expected, Qatar sucks.

At Qatar Air Force Mobility once again demonstrated their ineptitude. We had to get off the plane while they refueled it, so they locked us in a gated holding area for an hour and a half. When they finally unlocked the gates some junior enlisted AF dude read off the flight manifest 19 Americans had gotten on the plane originally and we were all manifested through to Bagram. We even had boarding passes showing our finally destination and many of the people had checked their baggage which was palletized and loaded on the back of the C-17. Nevertheless, somehow the manifest suddenly only had about 6 or 7 names on it. The rest of us, myself included, were told that we couldn't fly on this plane and we had to wait for a flight tomorrow night to get manifested out of Qatar to Bagram. This didn't go over well. Many people argued to no avail. Then some people demanded that if we had to spend 24 hours in Qatar, at least they had to unload the baggage pallets from the airplane, again the Air Force refused. After about a half hour of arguing some senior NCO showed up wandering why the airplane hadn't been loaded yet. At first he reiterated that only those few people who's names appeared on the manifest could fly out of there, but then another passenger, an Air Force Special Forces Combat Controller, pulled out a copy of the original flight manifest from Ramstein and exclaimed that he had sensitive items on board. He showed documentation that he had a pallet loaded with classified equipment, so if they did not let him on the plane, then they would absolutely have to unload the plane for him to get his gear. To that, the NCO decided that it was less work to let us on the plane than it was to unload a C-17, so he allowed us on the plane. Two minutes later we climbed back into the C-17 and flew to Bagram.

At Bagram I didn't even bother going through the Air Force to get a ride back to Salerno. I walked straight over to the helicopter company on the other side of the air field and started talking to some Blackhawk pilots. I found a crew that was flying direct to Salerno in a few hours and they said they would give me a lift. I got on that flight which should have taken about an hour. During the flight, I was surprised at how long it was taking, and the fact that I didn't recognize any of the land we were flying over. Two hours after takeoff we landed back at Bagram. Apparently the weather was bad over the mountains and visibility had dropped so they mountains were impassible. They flew way out of the way to find a safe passage around the mountains, but they had to turn back to Bagram. That evening the weather cleared up and I caught a different Blackhawk back to Salerno. I took a shower and went right to bed.

There, now you pretty much got the skinny on my latest trip to Germany. It was full of adventures, and frustrations; Legos and lions. Back here in the Stan I found that the war is still going on. I suppose I had kind of hoped that my brothers over here would go ahead and win the war while I was gone, and I would get back and they would tell me to get back on a plane we're going home. That didn't happen. I guess I'm just going to have to win this war myself.

Mom & I talked to Jonny & Jenny today. Jonny will begin the long trip back to Afghanistan tomarrow. Let's keep him and all of our young men serving over there in our prayers.

Jenny & Destiney will be coming home to America next week sometime. We are looking forward to them staying with us for a while this fall before Jonny comes home in November.

We will try to teach Destiney to speak "southern" english. (great words like y'all and rekennin' and fixin' to do that.) I'll be fun.

WORLDS GREATEST BABY PICTURE OF ALL TIME!

This is Destiney. I like to call this picture "What you lookin' at?

I know all of our grandchildern are wonderfull and beautiful (good genetics and all that), but this picture of Destiney always makes me laugh. Place it on your desktop and it looks even better.

This blogspot is getting boring. You all need to post a little more often.

Hiking and other Adventures

I went to Utah... it was awesome possum.
I got to go hiking in Logan canyon and we went to this place they refer to as the Wall of China. It was breathtakingly beautiful. I just thought I would share a few pics from my trip since I am horrible about updating my own blog. lol.

The bottom of the trail

A little Climbing to make it more adventurous.

Just a Neat View

A really cool outcropping on the wall- it was almost a circle.

Destiny Dance

FIGHTING THE WAR ON BOREDOM

In hopes of expanding her visibility to a larger viewing audience and greater perspective fan base, I present to you Destiny star of Destiny Dance!

Happy Birthday Maddie!

Six years ago today Maddie joined our family!













Happy Birthday!