Winding down.

Hello all!

I want start off by saying Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you all had a great thanksgiving with family and friends.  Yes, don't worry we got turkey too but not nearly as good as home cooked stuff but it was still pretty good.

Spending the holidays here is kind of bizarre.  I was thinking about how big of a deal Thanksgiving and everything is back home and how much you prepared for it but over here it truly is just another day.  I mean you could tell once you got to the DFAC that it was Thanksgiving because they decorated it and everything (they even had a little Indian guy standing on a pedestal with no shirt and body painted like a statue holding a bow and arrow dressed like a Native American, I wish I was kidding...seriously the strangest thing I have ever seen).  But other than that it was another normal day on KAF.  Not complaining just a strange observation.

Things here have being going alright, days are going by relatively quickly which is good, we are definitely winding down here which is very exciting.  During our meetings things are brought up like "the 87th will be here on ____ so start preparing to train them up" and "start mailing things home that you wont need so we dont have to ship it back" so its exciting for sure. 

I want to take a second before I forget to say thank you to everyone who has sent me any packagaes, letters, facebook messages anything like that.  If I didn't say thank you I apologize thigns here were at an insane pace for most of the deployment so I didn't always have time to say thank you but please know that I truly appreciate everything!

We took a PT (physical training) test yesterday and it went pretty well I was happy with the result.  For those that don't know, the APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test) consists of 3 events: 2 minute pushups, 2 minute situps and a 2 mile run.  Basically for pushups and situps you just do as many as you can until you cant anymore and during the 2 mile run you have a time that you have to get under or you fail (for my age group its 16:36).  Its graded on a scale of 300 (100 points max for each event) and the more you do or faster you run the more points you get which helps with promotions and stuff like that.  The one I was most nervous about was the pushup because I am not a big guy, I have been working out a lot so I knew I would pass but for some reason I was still nervous.  I ended up getting 67 pushups, 75 sit ups and ran a 14:30 2 mile for a score of 265.  I was a little disappointed in my run score because I thought that would be my strongest event but we ran it outside and it was pretty cold and actually raining.  Figures, it has rained 3 times since we have been here and it just so happens that our PT test falls on one of those days.  Oh well, I was pretty happy over all.  Thats the best score I have ever gotten but probably the 2nd highest run time I have ever gotten so that was upsetting. Oh well theres always next year!

I have been looking forward to seeing everyone whenI get back and every day I think about it!  I miss everyone a lot and can't wait to see you all! Just know that if I don't see you right away its not because I don't want to, I plan on just relaxing at home for a few days before I do anything; I'll probably sleep a lot and spend time a lot of time with Lindsey and family but rest assured I look forward to seeing ALL OF YOU!  Jaime and I have already mentioned a DTW night/maybe a DTC (downtown Cleveland...I just made it up feel free to use it) as well. 

Thats it for now, take care!