Another Wilde Week!

Only 2 weeks of officer training left to go! I am so excited to go back home to Meghan, Braylei and Tayscen! I miss them so much! Braylei is going through a growth spurt and is getting more and more clever by the day! She loves to carry a little step stool all over the place and is now using it to turn lights on and off as well as open doors. Her new movie phase is the CG animated Madagascar, asking for "Video! Lions!" Meanwhile, Tayscen is up to 9 pounds, is eager to hold his head up on his own, and definitely enjoys eating! Meghan is doing excellent, and her incision from the c-section has healed and looks darn near close to her pre-pregnancy self, save her uterus is still a little enlarged. She has adjusted to taking care of two kids amazingly well. I don't know how she does it! She is incredible! I can't wait to see them again.

Meghan has also been working hard, with the help of her family, in painting our new house so it will be ready to move into when I return! Everything looks so great! They painted the living room, loft, and the kids' bedrooms! The living room is a khaki color called prince I believe, while the loft, which will be the kids' play area primarily, is kind of a khaki green. Braylei has a sherbet green half wall with yellow and pink stripes, and Tayscen's room features a rich chocolate brown. We haven't decided what we will do with our room. We also ordered chocolate brown leather living room furniture and bookcases for our room and the loft. We are looking at TVs but haven't decided on that quite yet either. I am so excited for our house! I get to install ceiling fans and a garage door opener when I get back! Yea!

Meanwhile, this past week was pretty exciting. We spent Monday and Tuesday out in the field, working on FOB (forward operating base) operations, and convoy operations. A convoy is a group of vehicles with the mission to get from one point to another. In the field, or in theater (an area of war) anything coming into or going out of the FOB is conducted by convoy. It isn't safe or prudent to have single vehicles coming to and fro. Plus in today's warzone, Iraqi insurgents using roadside bombs disguised as everyday items. So there are many battle drills that we must know so that if something were to happen. I was selected to be one of the Truck Commanders (TC), which was a crazy, but cool experience. I did, however, inadvertently cause the death of two Iraqi citizens at a wedding party due to a gun firing wedding ritual that was unknown to me. I mistook it as enemy contact, and by the time I saw otherwise and gave the command for my truck not to fire, the truck behind me saw my signal and opened fire before I could stop them. That's exactly why we practice these drills before we're actually in that situation for real. During the convoy, the rain started coming down very hard on us again, which in many respects made it seem really cool because we were dismounted at the down and we were simulating a medical evacuation. It was pretty intense. On the Wednesday, the 4th, we were back in San Antonio and we had the day off. I was able to get in contact with my old college roommate, Russ Wilde, who recently took a job as a news reporter for a station in nearby Austin. He and his wife met me in town and we were able to have lunch and see the new Transformers movie,which is brilliant, by the way! We then hit up downtown San Antonio where we saw the Tower of the Americas, the River Walk, and the Alamo. It was really good to see them. The rest of the week was just classroom work, which was pretty dull. Nothing major went down this weekend. I did have a really awesome missionary experience at church today with a wonderful young medic, her 4 year old son, along with her mother and grandmother. I was able to share my conversion story with them, and help answer some of the more obscure questions that I remember asking when I was in their shoes! It is always important to me to express how thankful I am for my upbringing and hold in esteem the catholic church and all others that I investigated years ago. There is light and truth in everything, and we must all see it. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I believe that the fullness of the gospel's light and truth has been restored to this earth. But never let go of all the good within you and around you. I would just invite anyone to look and see if we can help them find a supplement to the wondrous light they already have in their lives, not to reconstruct it, but rather enrich it. People will say what they will about my religion, but the only thing that matters is what our hearts tell us. I intend to follow my heart through the promptings of the Holy Ghost, who so beautiful guides me through this life!