Ryan's Desert Return

On March 1st, I got back with a group of roughly 300 happy people after 5+ months in Balad, Iraq. We were chartered on Omni Air International, a DC-10 that took us on a worldwide tour on the way home. Rather than traveling East, which was about a 18-hour flight, our flight was routed West. We flew from Qatar to Cypress (Greece) to Shannon (Ireland) to Anchorage (Alaska) to Misawa. All told, the trip was 36 hours (about 26 of those were in the air). Once we were on the ground, though, nothing else really mattered. It was a great time seeing Sarah and Micah in person rather than in pictures. So much had changed in those 5 months...Sarah has lost her baby weight and is fitting into all of her old clothes again, and Micah sits up on his own, laughs, plays, and eats real food! Micah even seemed to recognize me...mustache and all. Micah had a DVD of me reading a couple of books that he watched almost every day. We think that was a huge factor and led to a much easier transition to having an extra body around the house. Some friends of ours snapped some great photos for the homecoming with our camera so you guys could see it too. If you would like to read the Public Affairs news release from the event, just click on the title of this post. Enjoy the pics!

The photo below was taken by the base photographer. The full size version is available at: http://www.misawa.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/090301-F-0168M-093.jpg