Week 26 from Afghanistan

Its great to write "Week 26"- halfway done and it is all downhill from here!  I appreciate the prayers and letters that help as I've moved through this journey.  I can now set my sites on my R&R, scheduled for spring--then, by the time I return from that, I'll only have a few months left.

It's been deathly slow here in Afghanistan.  With the holidays, even though we had some pressing business to attend to, it becomes challenging, because the folks at CENTCOM and in DC are all on vacation.  Hopefully we will be back in the swing of thing this week.  We are all hoping that the President's meeting with President Karzai this week will yield some decisions about our force posture here.  There is a lot in stand-by mode while we wait for a decision.  

Anyway, its been really quiet.  The gym tends to be the best thing about my day.

Hope all is well.  Warm regards

Week 25 from AFG

Slow week this week for us with the holidays. Pretty quiet--nothing significant to report. We watched It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve, and had a Star Wars marathon on Christmas Day.

Thanks for all who included us in their Christmas Newsletters.  It is fun to hear how everyone is doing and to see your beautiful families.   

I've gotten a few notes congratulating us on our move.  Yes, we are excited. It will be fun.

Wish you all a Happy New Year

Week 24 from Afghanistan

I hope you had a good day and were able to enjoy a nice Christmas program wherever you were today. Things have gotten really quiet here. There was a bombing down the street earlier, but overall attacks are way down as Taliban sit tight for the winter. The climate has been a bit milder, and hopefully that doesn't allow more attacks, but there is snow in the mountains, and that is what makes fighting the toughest for them.

We are all waiting in anticipation for President Obama to make a decision on force presence here. I saw an article in the Washington Post saying he was considering a more rapid withdrawal.

Week 14 from Afghanistan

I hope you had a good week. The longer I am here, the more the days blend together. As a staff officer, your efforts do not yield immediate fruit, and all you can hope for at this headquarters level is to make incremental progress each day.

I am thankful for opportunities I have had to work with and develop young people--that is likewise incremental, but it is wonderful to see folks you have worked with for a long time improve in capacity. We get to see that as parents, as members of the Priesthood in our callings, and professionally. In most of our field units in the states, we have a regular crop of new agents rotating in each year direct from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. They come in as "probationary agents" who have to accomplish a number of required on the job training experiences over the course of a year before they become fully accredited Federal Agents. Usually about 1/3 of our agents at stateside offices are filled by probationary agents. Since 9/11 we have had a pretty standard process of bringing these folks on board, giving them an intense professional experience during their probationary year, and then sending them off for about three months of advanced and pre-deployment training before we send them off to a unit performing a mission where they ply their trade against terrorist, insurgents and spies.
They hit the ground and don't stop for their whole 6 months--16-20 hour days in hazardous and austere conditions. By the time they come back from that, they are among the most competent agents in Federal Law Enforcement. I have been a commander four times; twice in the states, once in Turkey, and once in Iraq. Of all the things I have been able to do as a leader, one of my favorite has been to develop these probationary agents and prepare them to the very best of my ability to be ready for what they will face in a combat environment. In my units, we press them and challenge them to ensure they conduct their operations to as high a standard as possible, because once they are chasing Taliban or al-Qa'ida, the environment is unforgiving. I've got five folks from my ***** team deployed here throughout the country. I see the statistics for all the counterintelligence forces here in theater--Army, Marine, Navy and Air Force--and week to week it is our Air Force units that are taking most of the enemy off the battlefield. I got a note from one of my former probationary agents today. He is doing amazing work and is loving the opportunity he has to serve. Its great to see the folks you have worked so hard with move from a crawl to a walk and then off to a sprint.

Day in the life of OSI Agent

I've had a few questions about being an OSI wife and what all that entails.  Several have seen my post from Feb 2011  Here's a good article from the OSI website about what an agent does.

A day in the life of Barksdale AFB OSI agents

Update from Afghanistan

Here is a short snippet from hubby's latest email to both our families. Great people doing great things in AFG.  (A few edits for PERSEC/OPSEC)

"I had an opportunity to travel again this week and met with teams that work tirelessly to identify, exploit and neutralize insurgent networks. These folks in the fight work 18-20 hour days in the worst conditions imaginable, from greatly exposed positions to destroy the Taliban networks that threaten enduring peace in Afghanistan. One of the teams I visited was led by a young Major that I have worked with in the past. If you met him back in the States, you would see a clean cut, good decent man, a born leader. He has been here for just over four months, just a third of the way through; you can see the toll that the mission has taken on him. The folks that work for him come in at a dead sprint for six month rotations, while he and his superintendent serve a year. As we talked about his need to balance out mission and health over the yearlong marathon he has to run, he told me that it was an easy thing to say, but that as the commander of these men, he didn't feel right about getting extra sleep or taking time out for himself when his guys were in harms way. He is out on every mission with them.

"Two of the agents on this Major's team worked for me at (former AFB). I had dinner with them and talked to them about their experiences here. These are two of the finest young men I have had the privilege of working with in my career. They came to my unit at (former AFB) straight from the best law enforcement training in the world, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center-FLETC. All federal agencies train there--the US Marshals, Secret Service etc (all but FBI and DEA). They came out of school excited to do the mission and hit the ground in (former city where AFB is) ready to work. Over two years they ran some of our most significant cases, to include the Air Force's leading undercover operation targeting criminal networks involved in the theft and resale of high end military property. They worked some pretty long hours back there and gained significant experience. After two years of that we pushed them through a pipeline of training to get them ready for deployment to Afghanistan. As I said, these are some of the most talented young people I have worked with. They been well trained and prepared. They have been here about two months, conducting source operations into Taliban networks, and driving capture/kill operations against the enemy. What they told me at dinner was that when they first started working with the team here, after the first couple weeks of non-stop outside the wire operations, they both nearly broke down--they asked themselves how they could possibly function like this. They questioned whether they were up to the task, whether they had the right training, experience, and endurance to possibly survive this experience. Now it is all just part of their standard routine. They are one of the most respected teams in country--there is nothing standard about it."

OSI Video

It looks a little cheesy but it's actually pretty accurate.
This is what my hubby does in the Air Force. My boys think this video is cool, even though they hardly ever get to hear about what Dad does at work.

Liaison

Last minute liaison get together with the FBI. Kind of a combined going away for one of our own who worked on several occasions with the local FBI field office.
Things like this are better to deal with now that our eldest is old enough to babysit the younger two. Although it throws a bit of a wrench into the established routine. Our Aspergers child doesn't do well with sudden schedule changes. (More on that subject later.)  
(Later) 
Why is it when you go to functions where there are more than one group of people coming together, that no one mingles from one group to the other?

Spring Break

For the last 6 years, we've spent Spring Break in the Outer Banks, North Carolina.  This year we are slumming and staying home.  Dear Husband has a Commanders Conference this week- of all weeks for Region to plan a conference and they pick Holy Week, the week of Passover, Good Friday and Spring Break for nearly everyone in the country.  So we're staying home this year.  But thank goodness we decided to rent a home with a pool.  I bought some new pool toys and will heat up the pool for a little bit each day and we will veg poolside.  I have lots of hamburgers and hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, ice cream sandwiches, lots of sunscreen, watermelons, cantaloupe, grapes, cheese and crackers, popcorn, and netflix!

VIP visit

My husband's boss is coming out from DC in a few weeks. DH offered our home as a place for a detachment function- for him to meet with the agents in the office and to especially meet with some of the deployed/remote families.
Which means I need to come up with a nice dinner that will accommodate small kids- we have quite a few of those. Since we have the pool I think we'll go with a nice BBQ with a few sides provided by some of the others wives. I have a friend from church who has a catering business so I think I'm going to talk with her about setting up a nice dessert display.

90Percent Attitude

DH and I went this weekend to visit a family who just recently moved into the area.  He is a new agent and this is their first assignment.  Great family.  They will do well here because the wife has a great attitude.  This is a new place for them far different from where they've come from.  She is getting out and exploring new shopping centers, finding all the parks and trails for her kids, and trying hard to get to know her neighbors. 

PCSing and finding happiness and fun in the new place is 90% about your attitude.  If you don't have that then your miserable.  I noticed at our last spouses night that a lot of the wives had been told by their agent husbands not to go here or to stay away from there and to definitely not forget to set the alarm.  They've scared them into not liking where they are.   Don't get me wrong, I'm all about OpSec- knowing your surroundings, being aware and vigilent, but too much can also be detrimental to having an enjoyable assignment. 

Finding that balance and having a positive attitude makes all the difference.

Being an OSI Wife

Being a Military Spouse is one thing- a demanding job of itself.  But being an OSI Wife is an even more arduous job.  I've always thought they should give out Hazardous Duty Pay to OSI Wives. Why?  Here are just a few of the perils of be an OSI Wife.

• You never know what your husband does each day. Asking about his day will never get you an real answer.  I've learned over the years that an OSI wife's best qualification is to be a listener.  Don't ask any questions, just listen when he needs to vent and be ok with that.
• You have to learn to live with late night calls that require him to get up and leave without explanation, calls in the middle of date night or family dinner, and watching him spend more time on his Blackberry than with the kids. 
• He may not always be home at the end of the work day.  There are days when he won't be home 'til 10pm.  And then up again at 6am the next morning.
• You won't make very many friends with the other military spouses and definitely not with the military members themselves.  Once they find out your husband is OSI forget being invited to the block BBQ.
• You'll come across those other wives who want the inside on whatever is happening on base or in the community. They will try every way to get you to "spill the beans".  Then there are the wives that want to pass on info on someone else. No matter how many times you urge them to go to the OSI office and fill out a report (or whatever it is you do when you want to leak info on someone else).   

Over the years I've coined a title for myself that I share with other OSI wives.  I'm just a "Dumb OSI Wife".  Maybe I should make T-shirts and share them with the other OSI Wives I know.  I don't know anything, and I don't want to know, so don't ask me.

Country First

One of the hardest lessons most military spouses learn is "Country first".   I watched as my mom struggled to raise seven kids with a husband who was married first and foremost to the the Army.  She learned to cope and learned to do a lot of things on her own. My dad was in the 82nd Airborne- often TDY to the Key West, out in wilderness training, or on "jumps" at all hours of the day and night. 

This upbringing was most helpful when I married an AF-OSI agent.  I learned (and honestly- am still learning) to cope with a husband who is often called away in the middle of the night, who can't tell you a thing about his day or what happened at work, and not being readily accepted by the other USAF families because they don't want my husband knowing what they're up to- often times not good things.  I've learned to disregard the secretive phone calls knowing that there are things he can't share.  I've learned to not take it personally when we can't go do what we've planned because some airman got himself in trouble downtown, or there was a suicide on base that needs his attention.

Despite all the other things, there are great things about being a military spouse.  We've lived in some amazing places (mostly in Turkey, but still amazing) and have met some truly extraordinary people.  My kids are world travelers and have a global understanding that most kids their age know nothing about.  Because of my own upbringing, moving around is second nature.  I look forward to moves and changes.  I'm better able to get out of my comfort zone and take the initiative to meet new people, make new friends, and get used to new surroundings.  I hope my kids will appreciate this when they are older.