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.