Paul is officially gone for a 12 month deployment to Iraq. He left the night before Thanksgiving day. We're very happy that a couple of weeks before he left, I had the honor of putting on his new 1st LT rank. Congrats to you Paul!

Here's an excerpt from an email I've sent out to family and friends:

Paul's doing good, just tonight I talked with him on the phone for about 20 minutes and he said his days are going by fast! Today was his first day to officially take lead on his responsibilities as the BDOC (base defense operations center) officer. He said all is going well. One of his prayer requests was that he is able to get 4-8 more guys added to his platoon because they seem to be spread thin between manning the towers, manning the front gate and coordinating safety check interactions with TCNs (third country nationals) and the nationals working on the FOB (forward operating base). Don't you just love the Army and it's ACRONYMS (capitalized letters that make the Army feel better about themselves). Hehe. A little FYI, the base where he is in Al Iskandyriah is called Kalsu, apparently named after a football player from Buffalo, NY who died fighting in Vietnam, because the first unit stationed at this FOB back in 2003 was from Buffalo, NY. Paul should be there until November of next year.

Paul's APO address is:

Smith, Paul, S

HHC 172nd Support Battalion

APO, AE 09312

Just wanted to let you know, I will be gone for the next 5 days down to Baumholder, Germany where I am getting certified in Infant Massage to be able to teach it to the moms I work with. Plus it gives me 52 continuing education units for my RN license! Yippee But you can always call me if you feel like it:

011 49 9721 646 9712

I do not remember if I told you this or not, but if you dial this number and I'm home, I usually answer and then call you right back, since we have set up a plan for free calls to the states from our home phone. Plus my skype username is heidi.smith.99 and Paul's skype username is paul.smith.99. As soon as Paul gets internet up and running in his CHU (containerized housing unit) he should be able to use skype video.

I can hardly believe I will get to see you all in about a month and a half. I'm flying into San Antonio on January 26th and staying with my parents for a couple of days; then the plan is for me to spend the weekend with Tris and Miss Liss, drive over to Dallas and visit Grandma Mills and the fam there, drive down to La Vernia to see my Grandparents and family there, and drive down to Corpus the Wednesday before the wedding; Debbie said she and Joel will be flying in on that Wednesday as well, so maybe Lisa and I can just drive to the airport on Wednesday and pick you all up! I'll stay in Corpus for a couple days after the wedding to visit family and friends there, then leave the Monday after Lisa's wedding back up to San Antone to stay with my parents for 3 days before I fly back to Germany on Thursday the 12th of February.

Thanks for taking the time to get all the way down here to the end of this long, run-on sentence of a novel :)

Love you much,

Heidi