Morgan is Home!!

Well it has been a long and busy year. I am glad to say that Morgan is now home. I want to share a few photos of his homecoming.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Nicholas is finally home..

Well after 18 long days the wait is over. Nicholas came home on Tuesday. He is absolutely amazing and so sweet. He is doing great at home and sleeping all the time and growing. We would like to thank everyone for there thoughts and prayers. We truly appreciate them.

Leave

Hey everybody, I just wanted to past on the news that my leave was extended for ten days. It wasn't what I asked for, but I am grateful for what I can get. I am now leaving on the 5th of June, so hopefully Nick will be home from the hospital for a day or two. Other than that everything is going well. Maybe by this evening at some point he will get his feeding tube out.

A Little Update...

Well Nicholas is 11 days old already. He is still in Nashville in the NICU and we have NO idea when he will be coming home. I am so overwhelmed with him being there I don't know what to do. I was OK for the first few days but now I am completely worn out with it. He is doing a lot better but still has quite a few milestones to go until he can come home with us. He is weighing in at around 4 pounds 9 ounces. He is still very sleep and they have a very hard time getting him to wake up and eat. He has been weaned off of the caffeine that they were giving him for sleep apnea spells and so far he has not had anymore of them. (please pray that he doesn't have anymore) He is now breathing on his own and we are so thankful for that. I am just getting impatient with him not eating. LOL He is still being tube fed all but two bottles a day. He is up to 10 ounces of breast milk in a day which is like nothing when you think of other babies but hey he is breathing on his own. :) Thank you all for the continued prayers we truly appreciate it.

Introducing Nicholas Andrew Layne Stanley

Nicholas Andrew Layne Stanley was born May 8, 2009 at 12:16 am. He weighed in at 4 pounds 12 ounces and was 17 inches long. He is currently in the NICU in Nashville because he came 7 weeks early. He is doing well and will hopefully come home in the next couple of week.


Here are some pictures of our sweet baby boy.

Im Home....for a minute

Hey everybody just wanted to drop everybody a line. I am currently in the states helping hold our softball team known as the Stanley family together. I was rushing home in the middle of begging for a seat on a C-17 when Dena had Nick at 12:17 a.m. on the 8th of May 2009. I was coming home early because of the kids not having anyone to watch them until school was out, and because of Dena's Gestational Diabetes with the risk of Pre-eclampsia ( I have no idea if I spelled that right). I should be in the states until the 26th of May, but if Nick isn't out of the NICU by then I am going to try and get an extension. Anyways, Nick was born at 4lbs 12 ozs. and he was about 17 inches long. He was born just before 33 weeks, so he is still pretty early. They took him straight to the NICU at the hospital in Nashville, where he has to stay until he is a little bit more developed. He is pretty Janduced so he spends a lot of time under the lamps. He also has a greater risk of sleep apnia, they tell me this is because his central nervous system isn't fully developed yet. They call these events of forgetting to breath momentarily as "spells". He had 13 spells last night, which the doctor and all the nurses say is totally expected of a premi baby at his age. But of course Dena is freaking out about it and putting herself through torture making a bigger deal of it than it really is, but then again she is a mom, and that is what mom's do. Couple that with Dena not getting a lot of sleep because she wakes up every two hours and dutifully pumps milk out for Nick to eat the next day, so she is a little sleep deprived. Needless to say I am glad I made the decision to come home for this whole fiasco. We got to change his diaper and take his temperature today and yesterday. And I got lucky and was able to hold him yesterday. Dena can't wait to get him home, and I will admit I am pretty anxious about it myself, but I know that the doc's won't let him come home until he is totally ready. And it seems that the facilities at Centennial Women's are first rate, so I am relaxed about that.

Other than that everything in Afghanistan is going well, the status is the bad guys still don't like us. And we still don't like them. So they try to blow us up, and we try to blow them up. Helo ops is starting to pick up, and everybody is flying more. I have also requested to go to the instructor pilots course at Fort Rucker after we get back, so if I am excepted I will be training new pilots coming to the company. Well that is about it I am including a lot of pictures for everyone to look at and download. I hope everyone else is doing well and staying safe.


Morgan

Pre-Summer Fun....

We went to a friends house yesterday and the kids had a blast. I just wanted to share a few photos of them.

Afghan Update

Hello everybody,

I just wanted to drop a blog post on everyone for an overall update. Things are going well here, we aren't flying to much just because of spring weather. I hurt my back yesterday, just rolling over in bed. I guess it is a sign that I am getting older, but nobody worry it is already starting to feel a little better. To date I have flown about 165 hours in country so I am getting more experience. I am also going to post some pictures with this update so my relatives from Chicago can see what is going on here. Dad should show them the blog when they get to Arkansas. As far as school is going I am still taking two classes at a time, and after I am finished with the next two classes I will be completely finished with the general studies portion of my degree and can start taking the more in depth core classes, which I am looking forward to. Needless to say I am sick of taking english courses. To the Pensacola team, I haven't heard from you guys in awhile I hope all is going well, I am sure you are still doing some grieving. To my mom, I love you and thank you for taking so much of your time to send me packages. For everyone Dena is doing well, she is pretty lucky this pregnancy because Nick seems to be sitting high, she is 29 weeks this week, and she hasn't had to start waddling yet. Emily is signed up for softball, which starts June 1st, this also happens to be Nick's due date. So if anyone out there wants to volunteer to help out with that let me know. Both the girls are taking two dance classes, and their recital is coming up soon, ask Dena about the specifics. Ryan is basically just being Ryan, from all the newest sets of pictures I have seen he is getting really tall, and he likes to talk using what we call complicated words. It is pretty entertaining because nothing he says really makes any sense, because it is just a bunch of complicated words thrown together. I will be running a half marathon on the 2nd of May, I expect it to be kind of boring because it is hard to run new places on a fob that is only 2 miles square. But I will get a cool medal out of it that I will probably wear around everywhere I go. Well I will talk to all of you later.


Morgan

Weird Day (Disturbing Post Read at on peril!!)

Well today marks the weirdest day that I have experienced so far during my deployment, and probably the most mentally stressful day as well. Unfortunatly, it fell on my oldest daughters birthday. Happy Birthday baby girl!! My day began at 0100 local when we got an urgent medivac call to pick up a soldier who was shot in the leg during a gun fight with some enemy soldiers luckly it was relatively close to our FOB. There are two upsides to this, we were able to get him out and back to our FOB for treatment he is doing fine and on his way to Germany. Secondly, our Apache brothers were able to put about 100 rounds of high explosive depleted uranium 30mm rounds into the building killing all three enemy insurgents inside. They showed me there gun camera footage, and the footage of their ISLID which is their thermal camera. I was able to watch their bright temperatures leave as they cooled down. After finally being able to get to sleep around 0500l we were awoken again at 0700L for another urgent call to one of the Afghani border observation posts. Apparently, there were 2 wounded Aghani's, with two KIA. Our medivac bird landed at the LZ and evaced the two wounded. Unfortunatly, one died later of his wounds. The IED basically turned both of his legs into chopped liver, and they couldn't put enough fluids back into him fast enough. Once we landed we were told two dead, it turned into seven. My crew cheif said that he didn't think that we could fit that many on board with liters. I told him to stack them if the Afghani's didn't have a problem with it, they didn't. There was an SF medic who spoke Pashtun so he was able to coordinate for us. They would bring a body on a liter under a blanket lift the liter into the aircraft, pull the blanket off and dump the corpse onto the floor, then go back for another corpse. So all in all there were seven dead. We landed to off load the corpses and my door gunner was helping. He got a lot of blood all over his uniform, and he was literally taking pieces of bodies and putting them in the back of a truck. Please pray for him, he seems to be playing it tough, but we all know that it has affected him the most. I now know why they always say don't look back. I was also disturbed by what I saw. The most morbid thing that I witnessed today was when we landed, and got out. The crew chief ran off to get the chemical stuff to spray on blood, and they were also rolling up with the pressure washer. This is because there were lakes of blood and poop in our aircraft from the corpses. Leblanc's gloves were laying in a pool blood, and just under his gloves was a fully bloomed rose, half in the blood and half out. It was one of the sadist things I have ever seen and I will probably never forget it. I don't seem to be overly affected by seeing 7 dead bodies loaded and unloaded from my aircraft like fire wood, this is because Afghani deaths just don't effect me the same as U.S. KIA's. What I keep asking myself is why is one person's life more important than anothers. Shouldn't all human life be valued equally? So I think I feel guilty for not feeling as bad about it as if it were a U.S. kill. I came up with my own name for it, I call it "Battlefield Rationalization". I think that most people in the military develope this callus in battle. My way of couping with this ordeal is writing it out. I am sorry if you read this and are disturbed, but it I feel better when I do this. I hope that I won't have to use battlefield rationalization again, but I fear that with the nicer weather that I will have to depend on it more often than not. Also pray for those Afghani soldiers, and their families. Most of them don't even get paid, that is true patriotism, or maybe for most its just plain revenge.

Be Safe,

Morgan

I will obviously not be posting any photographs with this blog entry.

Ryan...

Well it is way easier to get good photos of Ryan than it is the girls. But anyways here are some pictures of our boy from today!

Washing the carseats......

So Ryan had an accident in his car seat today. I am telling you washing a child's car seat is a pain in my butt! You have to take the whole thing apart and have a college degree to get it back together. Anyways with Emily still being in a booster seat I decided to have her bring hers in so that I could wash it at the same time. Well I carried Ryan's up and sat it in front of the washer and walked into the kitchen to get the kids some dinner ready. Emily was behind me coming up the stairs to the washer. From the kitchen I can tell she is now at the washer with her seat.
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Then I hear her yell in her very serious voice " Mommy you cant wash my car seat it doesn't fit". I walk in and see this. I died laughing!! Kids are so funny and literal. I mean I did tell her I was going to wash her car seat. HAHAHA!

So I am still working on the boy's room. (wow that is a little odd to say) This is what I have of Nick's bed so far. It is comming together but still has a ways to go. So here is a picture of his new bed I wanted to share.

Update....

Wow I can't believe that I have not updated this in a whole month. I have been semi-busy and have not had a chance to update or post anything. Sorry guys. Anyways this being the last day of February I will say how fast this month has gone by. YAHOO for that since it is one month closer to Morgan coming home.

Well sadly our family suffered yet another loss. Morgans grandpa passed away a week ago. Not unexpected but still very hard on the entire family. He will truly be missed. But on a lighter note I am sure he has already found a crowd of people to tell all of his war stories too. :)

Morgan has been on nights this month. While I hate barely getting to talk to him I have been getting a lot more done since he is not on the computer all morning with me. HA HA! I am very ready for him to go back to days so we can talk more though. He seems to be doing pretty well and will hopefully have an update for you guys soon.

Well I am now 23 weeks pregnant and getting anxious to have the baby. I don't know if I am excited or terrified. I have all of his diapers ready, well bought but not washed. His grandma Kaye bought a lot of them so thank you Kaye.:) I will share a picture of his diaper stash in this update. I have been getting the room ready for him as well. He will be sharing a room with Ryan since Morgan and I are too selfish to give up the office/spare room. I mean the kids don't spend any time in there rooms anyways. I got him a new bed as well. It is a round crib and will be saving a TON of space in the room since the room is fairly small. I have sent his bedding off to be altered to match Ryan's bedding. I cant wait. It should be done next week. I now have to start buying the dreaded baby gear that cost way too much money but you have to have. HA HA!

The kids are all doing well. Ryan is still doing great using the potty. Emily is learning how to read and is very excited about it. Jordyn will be 9 years old on the 11th of march and her mouth might be 14. LOL But they are doing well and staying adjusted pretty well to daddy being gone. He has been calling them before school and that has helped a lot. We miss him so much.:(

Well I am off to learn how to stop time since I refuse to have another Birthday tomorrow. Question?? How can I stop time, get Morgan home, and have this baby so I can see his sweet little face all at the same time? Dang just what I though, impossible. O well maybe next year.

Excuse the picture quality. I took them on my phone. I was too lazy to get the camera from downstairs. :) The Helicopter diaper is my FAVORITE!!!

My Educational Plans

Hello everybody, I felt that I needed to make this post so that what I say here can help stay accountable for my aggressive plans for my advanced education. As well as giving a brief explanation of how I can afford these plans. First of all I will let everybody know that I am currently enrolled at American Military University working towards my bachelors in Psychology. I have already completed 60 credit hours towards this degree. The military has a program called Tuition Assistance. Basically, this program gives every service member $4,500.00 every fiscal year to go to college, currently this covers about 6 classes a year. Which in most circumstances is fine because it is normally hard for me to do more than 6 classes a year, mainly because of my family, and work commitments. AMU has a cool program for its military students, because they have a book grant that provides all my books to me for free. I can keep them throw them away or sell them back when I am finished with the class. It also is completely web based. I can log in at anytime and check my classes or look at my academic plan to see what classes I have left. I currently have a 3.6 GPA, so I feel pretty smart right now.
My longterm plan is to apply for the Army's Physicians Assistant Program. If I am accepted to this program I will go to school in San Antonio for one year, and then I will do one year of clinicals at an Army post of my choosing. After graduation I will recieve a Bachelors and a Masters Degree from the University of Arizona. I will be a 1st Luitenant and have a rapid promotion to Captain in 18 months. My service commitment after graduation will be 4 years. So it should line right up with my 20 years of service. To apply for this program I have to have a couple of prerequisites. These are Chemistry 1 & 2, Anatomy and Physiology 1 & 2, 60 credit hours at an accredited college, and finally an SAT score of 1450, with a math and reading comprehinsion score greater that 1000 and a score of 450 or higher in each group. So my plan is to complete the SAT before I leave Afghanistan, the Army will pay for one SAT test, so I want to get it right the first time, so there will be no money out of pocket if possible. Then when I get back to Campbell I will enroll at Austin Peay University and take the Chem. 1 & 2, as well as the Anatomy and Physiology classes.
My super long term plan is once I am about 2 years from retirement I will begin my doctorate in Clinical Psychology. I won't go into detail on that one yet because it is pretty far away for now. So now everyone should know what my intentions are for my education, short and long term. Things that I think I will need to be successful are patience, determination, support from loved ones, an SAT study book for 2009, and a pinch of luck.

Thanks for reading our blog


Morgan

Morgan and I on our Anniversary..

This is crappy quality but I wanted to share. I had to take a picture of a picture because my scanner is not working. This is us right before mogan deployed and on our 7 year anniversary. I love this picture.

My Little Fish..

I just wanted to share a picture or two of Ryan Chillin out in the bath tub today. He thinks he can really swim. LOL

Ryan's New Bed

Well after searching for a BIG BOY bed for Ryan I have finally found one. I have over time been buying pieces of a bedding set that I LOVED. It matches what Ryan had on his crib as a baby. Now all of my searching is over and his bed and bedding looks great. Here is my babys new bed. He is getting so big. O and he will be sleeping in the crib tonight. I want him to get used to it being in the room before putting him in it. He is not good with change.

Fallen Hero

A 101st Airborne Division Soldier died Dec. 24 when his Combat Outpost came under enemy attack in Patkia, Afghanistan. Corporal Charles P. Gaffney, 42, of Phoenix, Ariz. was an infantryman assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). Gaffney entered the Army August 2006 and arrived at Fort Campbell November 2007. Gaffney’s awards and decorations include: Army Commendation Medal; Army Achievement Medal; National Defense Service Medal; Global War on Terrorism Service Medal; Overseas Service Ribbon; Armed Forces Reserve Medal; Combat Infantry Badge and Weapons Qualification: M4-rifle, expert. He is survived by his wife, Latticia, and daughters Cara and Mia, all of Caldwell, Idaho; and father Charles Gaffney, of Phoenix, Ariz. A memorial service for the fallen Soldier will be held in Afghanistan. Fort Campbell holds an Eagle Remembrance Ceremony the second Wednesday of each month.

This is the soldier that we couldn't help, everyone put his family in your prayers.

Lost but not forgotten

Morgan

January 9th Black Friday

Well everybody, so far in my flying career I have been relativly blessed. I've never had to fly in really crapy weather, I've never been shot at, and I have never had to experience any major emergencies while flying. On black Friday the majority of that all changed, luckly I wasn't shot at and I think that was because the weather was so bad no one wanted to leave their caves and houses to shoot at anything. We got called on a priority medivac because a first sergeant in Gardez dropped a seventy pound weight on his foot, so he had a torn metatarcel extreme swelling, and a bottle of pills to kill the pain. We were supposed to pick him up and bring him back here to get an x-ray. Well we started up and got clearance to take the active runway for take off. As we picked up to a forward hover at ten feet we were turning on to the active, and I immediatley got a Master Caution followed by the engine out tone in my helmet. It took about 3 seconds to figure out what was going on and I simply landed the aircraft on the active and taxied it out of the way so other planes could land. The engine stopped because it wasn't getting any fuel. I even had the boost pumps on luckly our Maintenance Test Pilot finally declared the aircraft unsafe and told sikorsky that they owed us a new aircraft. We immediatly switched to another aircraft and departed to pick up the patient. By the time we picked him up and got fuel the weather had deteriorated greatly. We couldn't get back of the mountains where we came through earlier so we went south still no joy. As we were landing back at the FOB where we picked up the patient it began to snow. So we turned on our Engine Anti-Ice and pitot heat. We took off again hoping to find a break in the weather, but we were turned around by HQ because they said we didn't have approval to fly anymore based on the weather. So we turned around to head back, about half way back it began snow heavily and visibility came down to about a half mile. In the process we lost sight of themedivac bird, because we turned to avoid some really bad visibility. I turned on our rotor de-ice and got a T/R de-ice fail caution, which means that the deice capability wasn't working on our tail rotor. The deice system on a black hawk basically works like this. It picks up unusual vibrations from the blades, this vibration is caused by ice forming on the surface. When it reaches a certain vibration it heats up the blades, and melts the ice enough to where the ice is thrown off of the blade from the motion of the blades. It repeats this process as necessary. If iced had formed on my tail rotor, I could have possibly lost directional control of the aircraft. With this being said I was a little worried, and I think I had a piece of the seat cushion sucked into my butt crack, because it was puckering. Luckly, we made it back to the FOB without incident and immediatly shut down. We ended up spending the night and returned the next day. All in all it was a pretty crappy day, it just goes to show that you never know whats going to happen the next day, and that weather in Afghanistan is very volatile. I love all you guys and miss you, stay safe I know I am trying to.

Morgan

WOOL LONGIES!

So with morgan being gone I have nothing better to do than research cool baby stuff. (Well taking care of the other kids but this is way more fun, LOL) So the newest find is Longies and Shorties that are diaper covers/pants/shorts. How freaking awsome is that? I really want a pair of Monster or Sock Monkey Longies to bring Nick home in. I am so in love with these. Kryste you might not want to look because you are going to love them too! Thank you to all my Aviation Sweethearts friends who decided to do cloth diapers and posted about them. Thanks to you all I am going to die by the hands of Morgan becuase I am totally in love with all this expensive stuff. LOL Here are some examples made my a company called Cranky Pants.

Guess whats new around here....

So Ryan is I would say officially POTTY TRAINED! I would say since he has had only one accident in 4 days. He is pooping and peeing in the potty and even wearing undies out in public. I am sure that it will take a while to get him potty trained at night time but I am not even worried about that.

I'm jumping for joy! This was my only major deployment goal and we have already accomplished it. Well he has accomplished it. He has done this pretty much on his very own!! He was so ready and will cry to wear his undies even at nap. He is not even 2 and a half yet.

YEAH RYAN!!!!

OMG Look how cute these are!!!

I am turning into a complete freak. Look how cute these diapers are!!!

Cloth Diapers

So after many many weeks of freaking out and stressing myself out over what kind of diapers I am going to use I have finally picked one!! I am so excited. I am going to use The Goodmama's brand. You can view them at www.thegoodmama.com . So what is so great about them? Well they are super soft, they fit from 10-35lbs so I will not have to buy new sizes as the baby grows. Down side is the price. They are pretty expensive but worth it. I have done tons of research and these are the diapers for us. They are also having a great sale right now. Buy two get one free. So that brings them out to like 23.00 each. O and did I mention free shipping? O the little things that excite me these days. I'm off to sell a kid to pay for my newest addiction. Cloth diapers!