June Bug!

Wow! I can't believe it's JUNE already! I picked up the COL for breakfast this morning! I am very proud and honored to be serving with him. I will surly miss him when this is over.

Had a typical Sunday - good Chapel NeXt service and it always makes me feel good to write about my week starting with worshiping God.

I got a lot of cards this week. So many I've been thinking about what to do with them. I know my wife would LOVE to read all of them so I'm going to pack them all up and send them to her. I think Hallmark is behind this war somehow. :-) I did receive a very nice card from my "Angel" today from Soldiers Angels. It was a card describing a hero and what a hero is and does. I know that all of us on this team don't think of ourselves as heroes - we think we are all just doing our jobs - and we are. It is very humbling to be thought of as a "hero" to someone. Also - my father-in-law just sent me an article written by Ben Stein back in 2004 - interesting all this "hero" stuff is coming from different sources at the same time. Well - I'm not going to try and figure all that out - just know that I think I have the greatest job in the world and I couldn't be more proud of the people that I am here working with. I personally think the people at Soldiers Angels are heroes for all the support they have delivered in less than month since I wrote and asked them to adopt our group. It's overwhelming!

When I get back, I'm going to join the team! Great organization.

So last week was pretty hot - all the weather reports said it was "unseasonable" - I sure hope they are right and it wasn't an indication of more of the same to come. This week (today) wasn't so bad and the forecast is for cooler temperatures (in the low 80's) for this week. Still windy (much more than a breeze) and I hope this doesn't continue either because it makes for difficult and simply miserable work conditions at times.

I took a few pictures today of a concrete pour we had today. It went very well and very quickly. There was plenty of help and the LN's were eager to help and really worked hard. The guys had the hard part jumping knee deep in the concrete - I didn't see any of the LN's willing to take that step! :-)

I went to our third wing awards/promotion ceremony today. We had our very own SSgt Gooden promoted last month and it was a real pleasure to see him up there and receive his promotion order from Col Kwast. Being promoted to the NCO grade is a huge step in a military career! Anytime you cross the tiers you know and feel a special pride in yourself and a huge sense of accomplishment. I hope and pray that feeling carries him forward to help our unit and the Airmen he will now be responsible to supervise. Amen!

I better get busy posting pictures - I'll post them in BAF7. If you've been following along, you should be able to use any previous link - just change to BAF7.

For newcomers - I'll post the link tomorrow after the pics are uploaded.

Mark.