Home At Last and updating my blog...

I've been home two months now and have been getting a royal ribbing at not having updated my blog, so here goes...

The transition from citizen-Marine has gone well. With the previous deployments experience, my little family has done well to learn from past returns and everyone has done a great job reacquainting themselves with me and I with them. My kids love me, I think, and my wife isn't fully annoyed with my presence yet, so I think I’m doing fairly well as far as the family re-integration goes. For the first week or so my four-year-old boy was like a deer-tick on me, and it was great! Before I left he was very attached to his Mommy and Daddy was good for wrestling and that was about it. Now it's different but good-different. My seven-year-old daughter has also been close and she is now at the point in our relationship were she casts looks of adoration in my direction and would rather play a board-game than wrestle. I will savor these moments while I can. I know time will fly and before we know it our children will be teenagers, those home-grown insurgents capable of wreaking havoc in your domicile and sometimes your life. (I am an optimist but a realist as well)

Looking back on our mission in Iraq, I know we did well. We built bridges and strengthened relationships with the people. We also got them engaged and worked with them so that they could “own” their country, or at least the part of it that we were in. The day we left, as I found out weeks later, a dear friend of mine was killed by insurgents. He was an Iraqi police official and fairly high up in the chain. He was a good man and a patriot. He was my brother and I will never forget him. His loss was felt by my team as well and no small amount of tears were shed or prayers made for his soul. I plan on memorializing this Iraqi patriot in some manner, but at this time I haven’t figured out how…