Christmas Spirit

Ah the wonders of Christmas.

As I approached my desk this morning I was greeted by a pile of gifts and envelopes that was heretofore unprecedented. Couple that with some of the things I have had the opportunity to see children write recently and dare I say—the Christmas Spirit may be eeking its way into my corner of the desert and the cold heart it has produced this year. Amongst the gifts were a couple of care packages—(mind you, this is in addition to the monster care package I received from my Mom last week), one from none other than Richmond from One For the Road with enough cookies to feed the entire CAOC (to which they are happily obliging). There was also a care package from the office at home (before you begin to think that they’ve changed completely, read on), and an envelope from Sarah’s school.

Sarah’s school took addresses from the kids that go there of family members who are deployed overseas. Inside the manila envelope was a bunch of pictures that the kids from the 4^th grade had drawn to distribute to the other guys in the CAOC. Really adorable, and it is extremely cool to see what kids that age see in the world. Some adults had put some Christmas cards to me in there as well—all of which were really nice of them to do. Sarah’s Brownie Troop is putting some stuff together as well to send out here—can’t wait for that to show up.

The package from the unit was also very nice and thoughtful—a nice stocking stuffed with goodies, a video game, stuff like that. There are four of us out here from back home in my specific unit, three majors and a SSgt. I’m not exactly sure where the disconnect occurred, but the three majors got our stuff in the box. The SSgt didn’t get bupkus. I truly hope that hers is just in another box somewhere on its way out here—until then we’re not mentioning the gifts to her.