Dave takes command

Hi all, just wanted to let you know that we got an email from Dave today.  He said "Today is the official day that I take full responsibility of the battle space."  He also said that he has to give a speech.  I told him that he should have someone video it or take pictures for him.  Not sure if I got to him in time considering the 9.5 hour time difference. We don't hear much from him since they are pretty busy switching over, and he has to share a computer...maybe now that he is in charge, he will get his own! :O)
We all had a great Thanksgiving, hope you did too!  Dave sent us an email that day wishing us all a happy day, he also said that being over there helps him focus on what we all should be thankful for. "As you see the violence, poverty, poor conditions etc here, you really see how well we have it." 

We don't often think about how good we have it here, and how terrible other places can be!!  So next time you want to complain, think about it!
Hope you are all doing well!

Talk soon, C

An email from Dave

Hey all, this is an email I got from Dave today from Aghanistan-


I am here ... we are currently 10.5 hours ahead.

Have some training the next few days then we start the "relief in place"
process ... then it will be all ours.

Another new address for Dave!!

Hey all, Dave is now sitting in Krygyzstan, and they will be leaving for Afghanistan tomorrow some time.  They are 12 hours ahead of us, if you Skype, see if you can get him!  I skyped with him a bit this morning and asked about the address I posted, he said it was right, but to make these changes:
Updegraff, Dave-HHT
1-113th CAV

all the rest is the same. He is estimating it will take about one week for packages to get there. He says it is in the 40s and they are all chilly!  He also sent some pictures...the guy standing alone is a Kyrgyzstan police man, the guys lined up by the plane are A and B troop.  I will try to post the pics including a map of where Kyrquzstan is compared to Afghanistan.

New Address

Hey all, we are back from our vacation!  We have been back for a week, it has taken me this long to get the time to post anything. We had a wonderful time, the house was beautiful, the beach was right outside of the house, and for the first three days it was in the upper 80's and the ocean was like bath water!  Dave and I slept with the windows in our room open and listened to the waves all night!  Wayyyy coool!  We saw egrets, some cute birds called some kind of tern...they sat on the posts in the water facing the sun and kept summing themselves, there were tons of hermit crab thingys and Jack collected 496 while we were there...believe me, he counted!....then there were fiddler like crabs with only one pincer, seagulls, sandpipers, pelicans and on the last day, the dolphins made an appearance to say good-bye!  On the last two days, it cooled down quite a bit, and got pretty windy, so we weren't able to go out on a boat to fish...Jack was pretty upset about it, but he got over it.  As you will see in the pictures, he was able to fish right in back, on the shore....but he didn't catch anything there.  He did catch two fish when he went a special place with Dave.  I could go on and on, but you will learn more by looking at the photos. You will see many posts in the water, they are remnants of the piers that were torn down (along with MANY houses) when Katrina went through!  Not sure how many I can post here, but all of them are on my FaceBook account, so go look there if you want! 

***The last address I gave you has changed, this is the new one Dave me!
 Soldiers Name (Last, First)
 D Co., 1-113 CAV
 Bagram Airfield APO AE 09354 
..

They are planning to leave within the next few days....Dave can't give us an exact date.  ALSO, Dave is not able to see the Blog, he saw it for the first time while we were on vacation.....I am only getting comments from two people tho!  Come on, people, just sign up, it is FREE....and make a comment.  I will send them all on to Dave once he is able to get email!

AFGHANISTAN BOUND

Well, the time is almoset t here, Dave has told me that they are expected to be in Afghanistan on November 2nd.  Here is his address for once he is there, if anything changes, I will let you know!

LTC Dave Updegraff begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting
HHT/1-113 CAV
2/34th IBCT
Bagram Airfield
APO AE 09354

Back to Mississippi!!

Well, Dave and his guys are back in Shelby MI.  I posted pictures of the rock they painted before leaving California, if you didn't see it, go take a look. It is so cool!  I would love to just go there and walk through all of the rocks.  If I get any more, I will post them soon.  A week from today, the kids and I are heading down to Mississippi to visit Dave.  Everyone got a four day pass and they have been taking the leave in stages...Dave's ended up next week.  At first he just wanted me to go down and see him.  He didn't want to have to deal with the emotion of saying good-bye to the kids again.....BUT I really struggled with that, he wanted me to just not tell the kids where I was going.  It isn't like I take off on trips all the time, the kids would ask questions, my friends would talk about it, I just didn't see that working out well.  SO, we decided that we would all go down for the visit. (This was decided even after I got yelled at for 20 minutes by my sister Terry....she thought it would be great to just have a couples trip without the kids, and put her to some use taking care of the kids while I was gone, since she is staying here with us...I have found many other ways to put her to good use, such as painting, mowing, cleaning, cooking, driving someone to the ortho, etc, etc...so, no problem there!!)  Anyhow, Dave found a two bedroom beach house to rent for the week not far from the base.  They were only allowed to go 300 miles from the base.  The kids are so happy about it.....Dave said we would go out deep sea fishing, so Jack hasn't stopped talking about that, he loves to fish!!  Katie is happy that she gets to skip an entire week of school!  Dave's dad Tom is going to join us for a day from Atlanta too!  I will fill you in on how it goes, and post the many pictures I plan on taking!  It will be a rough ariplane trip home for us, (ME) so hopefully we will have had enough fun there so we can ride home on the high of that, not the low of Dave's shipping out! Wish us luck!!  :O)

After completing the training at the National Traning Center in CA,, it is tradition for each unit to paint a rock...check out Dave's unit!!