Where I Have Been

So 2006 was a crazy year. But 2006 was also one of the best years of my life. So much happened there’s no way I could even put it all out here in words. To make this easy on me and to not consume your entire day with past tales of my life in 2006, I will give you a few key points from the past twelve months.

January - Started out with a bang. Tristan, Matt, Ashlee, Blake, and AJ all came down for a hell of a time. We all went down for New Years on 6th St. in Austin and it was a great time. It was the first time for most of them to come down and visit even though I had been in Texas for nearly a year. I use to have so really incriminating photos of AJ but luckily for him there were lost. All and all it was a great way to kick off the New Year.

February – Not a whole lot of stuff happened this month. I got promoted to the rank of Sergeant which was a really proud moment for me. I had only been in the Army 30 months and moved up pretty quickly. I guess when you are this good it’s easy. I also got my Gunner slot, which is pretty cool. I enjoy gunning and I like being in a leadership position as well. As bad as it is sometimes I really do enjoy being in the Army. I am good at it.

March – I spent a few weeks at the Army’s “Warrior Leaders Course” and it was a total waste of time. I really could go on for quite some time about how truly worthless this course has become but no one would really care. The end result is that 80% of the course curriculum is out dated and deals with an extremely small percentage of what is actually done as an NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer). I did graduate on the Commandants list which is pretty hard to do. But like I said before when you are this good it’s easy. And that’s enough about that.

April – This was a good month. Why you might ask. Holly and I went to Houston for what was planned to be nice relaxing weekend away. What she didn’t know is that I had a ring in my pocket and was just trying to build up the nerve to “pop the question”. After wandering all over the city that night I finally asked her. And she thought it was a joke. Yeah, talk about a blow to the ego. But once she finally realized that I was for real she answered with a “yes”. Which was the answer I was going for, so I must say that I was pretty happy about it. So yeah April was a great month.

May – I was at JRTC down at Ft. Polk, Louisiana. It was an interesting experience. We did our thing and got the hell out of there. You can really only spend so much time in that place. And well, that’s about all for the month of May.

June – June was a great month. In June Holly and I bought our first house. It was really rough at first but with the help of our parents and one extremely hard working weekend we started to make our house a home. A really nice home too. Holly and I also adopted our first child, Lola. Lola is a Chihuahua, Corgi, Kangaroo mix

July – I really can’t think of anything that went on in July.

August – Yeah I got nothing.

September – I think all I did was get ready for this little vacation in the sand. The very last days of September were great though. Holly and I had all our friends and family over for one last weekend together. It was great; I couldn’t have imagined a better weekend with everyone. It was a great way to get to say goodbye to everyone.

October – Welcome to Kuwait. Kuwait is the worst place I have ever been in my young life. Even worse than Iraq. I hated that place. We landed there on the 1st and on the 17th we finally made our way up here. Here is a little place known as Samarra. Good old Samarra, Iraq. It’s not the roughest place in country but the area around here is not safe by any means. During my first patrol in sector we got hit by an IED. This would be some foreshadowing on things to come for sure.

November – This was our first full month in country. It was a rough month for the battalion as well. The battalion lost two soldiers to a suicide VBIED. (Vehicle based improvised explosive device) That was the first memorial service I had ever been to and hopefully it will be the last. Once again, our platoon was hit with another IED but once again we made it through just fine.

December – Yep, just another month over here. And once again we got hit with another IED. But no serious damage to the trucks and we kept on keeping on. Christmas over here was just another day. It wasn’t the first time I had spent the Holidays overseas and sadly it probably won’t be the last. I also turned 23 years old, I’m getting old this is scary.

So that should bring you all up to speed with the doings of the past year. There really was a whole lot more, but a year is a long time and I have a pretty sorry memory so things start to slip after a while. So yeah now everyone should be on the same page we can start this little show.

My name is Jake and I am in Iraq, this is what goes on in my life. Hope you enjoy.