Wow!  How awesome it was to receive all of your great letters.  We got them exactly on Christmas day, too - perfect timing.  I posted all the letters up on a wall in our building that we are living in so all the guys could read what you all wrote - already I have had a lot of comments about how cool it was to have complete strangers write such encouraging things.  Thanks for taking the time to do so.

I am a Captain in the Army assigned to the 1st Battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment (we are paratroopers which means we jump from airplanes into combat) in the 82nd Airborne Division.  I went to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban back in 2004 and deployed over here to Bayji, Iraq (just north of Tikrit) at the end of this past July.  I married my wife Amy a year and a half ago after dating and being engaged for a little less than 3 years.  She is an amazing wife and I am so blessed to be married to her.  It sure is hard to be gone from her, but she supports me and believes in me and that is some awesome support.  I tell you what, though - I sure am looking forward to coming home one day to see her again!  I grew up in the small  town of Moraga which is just across the Bay from you - went to Campolindo High School and then Wheaton College in Chicago, IL.  While I've been in the Army, I have lived in Washington, Georgia, and currently live in North Carolina where Amy is finishing up her last year of medical school at Duke University.  She wants to be a pediatrician.  I like to surf, snowboard, mountain bike, and rock climb - for sports, I played soccer, football, basketball, and ran track growing up.  I love to read all kinds of books, play the guitar and drums, and my favorite subjects in school were history and math (I probably just lost any cool points that I may have had with you guys there!).  So that is a little bit about who I am and where I am coming from.

I wanted to write each of you back in response to each of your letters, so read below for those responses.  But first, I just want to say that I was overwhelmingly impressed by you all and what I read in each of your cards and letters. You all are VERY talented and certainly are staying very busy with so many awesome activities in life - and that is sadly very rare these days.  Don't let anyone get in the way of you chasing after your dreams.  For as long as I can remember, I wanted to serve my country in the military.  As I grew older, I knew I wanted to become an Army Ranger.  It was a tough process and involved a lot of sacrifices, but I was blessed to able to achieve that goal a few years ago and have not looked back since.  So stay focused - set your goals for what you want to accomplish each day, each week, month, year and for the future - and set off accomplishing them one by one.  I have no doubt that you all are capable of doing some incredible things - just by reading all of your letters, I KNOW that you all have some awesome adventures ahead for you.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.  It was great to hear from each and every one of you, and my guys and I are proud to be here serving you and the rest of our great country.