Thanks for waiting...

Sorry it's been so long, time's been flying here. Here's a recap of the last few weeks:

Last time I wrote I was on my way to El Paso to see Melissa and the boys, we had a great time. We went to New Mexico and did an Easter egg hunt. The boys were funny! They had little areas roped off for different age groups with eggs all over the ground. Isaac kept going under the rope to get the eggs before they actually said "Go". Luke was cute, he was carrying the bucket around, and would stop and inspect each egg before putting it in the bucket while all the other kids were running around snatching up everything they could. The weather was cold and rainy so after Isaac picked up his first egg he said his hands were cold, thus ending his hunt. Luke kept plugging at it, by the end we had about a dozen eggs. It didn't last long but it was fun. We stayed at a hotel there and took the boys swimming. Isaac must be half fish, because he was swimming by himself by the end of the weekend (with the help of arm floaties). It was hard to leave, but I had to get back into training, which we have been going at fast and furious.

We have been doing a lot of weapons training. First we qualified on our pistol, the M9 a 9MM semi-automatic pistol. This was the first time I qualified with it, but I did pretty well, shooting 26 out of 30 targets. Next I fired my M203 grenade launcher. I've qualified on that one before, but it's still fun to shoot. It did kick a bit, I still have some bruises on my arm. After that we shot our rifle, the M4. It's a 5.56MM rifle, pretty much like a small hunting rifle. We have a sight mounted on it that has a red dot in the middle, once you put it on the target, you are pretty much guarenteed to hit it. I shot 35 out of 40 targets ranging from 50 to 300 yards. We came back at night and fired with our night optics. This was really cool, the laser can't be seen with the naked eye, you have to wear night vision goggles in order to see it.

This week we focused on crew-serve weapons, aka the big guns. These are the weapons that are mounted on top of the trucks and used for security on convoys. We fired the M2 50 caliber machine gun and the M240 machine gun. The M240 fires a 7.62MM bullet, more like the large hunting rifles. We fired these in the day time at targets from 400 to 1000 yards. There is nothing like the sound of 10 machine guns ripping up targets to get your blood pumping! We also fired these at night using a thermal scope. These scopes are a poachers dream! You could find the enemy/target behind a brush pile just because of their body heat. Night qualification is always fun because every fourth or fifth round is a tracer. This bullet burns red once it is fired allowing you to see where you are shooting. It's fun watching these richochet off the targets and ground, it was like a low-budget 4th of July show.

I guess that's all I have for now, mom and dad are coming for the weekend, hopefully we'll be able to find something interesting to do here in hum-drum Kansas... 'till next time