josh is finally home! he got back last night and we are very glad his tour of duty is over and he is safe at home.

this is a shot of him with his new look from petra, jordan. he stopped off here and also took a short jaunt to egypt before he hopped on a plane back to dallas.

click image for larger view

this is more like it. here's our young man yoshi riding high and proud on top of an israeli tank.

he looks very manley up there on top of all that steel.

we have no idea where in the country he is. it's better for security that he does not disclose that.

the amazing thing to me is that this photo (and a number of others from him) were taken on his cell phone!

we just spoke to him and all is well. he has sent some other pics as well, but i have just not had any time to deal with them yet with all the extra stuff we have been doing trying to deal with the new house (getting it ready to move into) and the old house (getting it ready to sell) too.

ashley sent me this cell phone image that yoshi had sent her from israel near his new base up in the north of the country, but neither myself nor ashley knew for certain if these tanks were facing lebanon or syria.

perhaps yoshi might want to enlighten us with his wisdom?

he is back in place there in israel until september. hopefully september will come quickly with no outbreak of hostilities in the area.

i know that ruthie, myself his family and ashley can't wait for september to rush up upon us so he can be back here safe and sound. hey, it's only 6 months away!

while josh was home for 3 weeks we went outside one day and took some fun photos (yes, i am way behind in my image processing duties, but doing 1 handed photoshop edits are slow). this photo was cool and jon did this editing job in photoshop on it.

well, i went and did it really bad this time. this past sunday, as i was enjoying a fun few minutes of shooting a few baskets at the park with ruthie and jon i had an intimate meeting with the concrete.

i was trying to grab the ball and was chasing after it and started to lose my balance and never did regain it. i fell straight on my shoulder, then slammed my hand into the concrete and to add insult to the injuries, i smacked my head into the concrete as well.

total sum of all this fun: 1 dislocated shoulder, a fractured hand, cuts right next to my eye and a destroyed pair of glasses.

ruthie got me home, cleaned me up and took off my shirt and i heard her say "oops, that's not supposed to look like that" or some words like that. she rushed me over to the emergency room, where we spent the next 5 hours (the staff at richardson medical center were excellent, btw) taking x-rays and waiting. a group of the staff finally grabbed me and yanked my shoulder back into place (i did not scream) and sent me home all wrapped up, in pain and with the additional news that my hand was broken.

ruthie did some incredible work the next morning getting me in to see a specialist about my shoulder, plus we saw a hand specialist and did an mri on the shoulder (hate mri's) all in the same afternoon. the hand guy did x-rays and right away scheduled me for surgery on tuesday morning.

the surgery went quickly, hey at least for me it did cuz i was knocked out and the next thing i knew i was waking up with a huge bandage and a pillow wrapped around my hand up to my elbow.

that was tuesday and the days since have seemed a blur of pain and soreness. this has been the longest i have been able to sit at the computer since this started on sunday.

i am hoping that the pain will subside some over the weekend so i can start some work from home next week. ironically, i was supposed to have started working from home 3 days a week starting this past monday! go figure.

through all of this my wonderful wife ruthie, my boys and my family have been great. the people up at work have been real understanding as well. i feel really blessed to have such caring people in my life right now.

a small bonus of all this crap has been that my step-son josh actually came home from active duty with the israeli defense forces the morning this happened and i have had extra time to spend with him during his short stay here before he returns to israel.

really crappy timing for us buying a house tho. more soon...