2021 Christmas Letter

     What a year 2021 has been for our portion of the Moore Dynasty. Many changes in work, additions to our family and of course many experiences by all! It was not a dull year by any stretch of the imagination. It was a year of extreme ups and downs, highs and lows, valleys and mountain highs. We made it together, the 5 of us now, and are looking forward to next year and what it will bring!

     Oren, our oldest, continues to grow like a weed weighing almost 45 pounds and fast enough to really give you a good bruise should he choose to headbutt you at full speed. This year we went through a short lived plane obsession phase that has been replaced with a more permanent obsession: snakes. The boy loves his toy snakes, stuffed animal snakes, watching snake videos, trying to be a snake, talking about snakes and more importantly catching snakes. While he hasn't caught one yet, he has found them under rocks often enough that having a snake in a bucket after dad catches it is becoming more frequent. Just this morning we caught a beautiful Texas Brown Snake and as usual he was pretty upset when we had to let him go. Oren is so extremely smart and continues to blow my mind with his vocabulary on a daily basis.

    Ryker, our middle child, is about as wild as a child can get I imagine. This year he has really found his voice and started talking in complete and coherent sentences versus the mumbling we started the year off with. Quickly this has progressed to the full on expression of his disdain or disagreement with the instructions his mother and I give him. His favorite and most frequently uttered word is, "no". He is full of sass and is not quiet about it! He is extremely rambunctious and fears nothing. The boy would jump from the tallest of towers given the chance and says "hi" to every other person in the grocery store. He smiles through the crack in his bedroom door when he gets out of bed too early and likes to snuggle a few minutes later because he is tired once more. He mimics his older brothers fascination with snakes and has many snake toys and makes as many snake sounds as Oren. Ryker too has shot up in height this year and is picky as ever with his food making him a skinny fellow like me when I was a boy. He is, or so I am told by my mother, of the same manner as I was when I was a child. Lord, I know what comes around goes around but please be with us should he be half as much trouble as I was. A foreshadow of things to come, this year Ryker single handedly destroyed his crib by tripping and smashing his head into the crib, breaking a wooden support while suffering nothing more than a nasty bruise. That was how he ended up with a twin size bed!

    Nico is second brightest light of the world next to the Sun God has given us. He hardly ever fails to smile his no tooth, gummy baby smile whenever you look at him. He laughs at every tickle and every toy. He rolls over and looks at you with such a cute baby boy face you can't help but pinch his chubby cheeks and give him a kiss! At 6 months old now he sleeps most of the night, sucks down bottles and eats 2-3 baby food jars a day. His grandparents from NC and TX spoil him with new clothes and toys all the time! He loves hugs from his bigger brothers and can watch them play all day! Only getting upset that he, a baby, is unable to walk or crawl fast enough to keep up with them. We are soaking up every second of him being our last baby boy under our full time care, and eagerly await every last milestone for him to reach as a baby!

    BethAnne had one heck of a year being the literal best mom and wife in the world! Pregnant for half of the year, she gave birth to our 3rd son, Nico Moore, in mid June. She toughed out this last pregnancy while managing to wrangle our 3 year old and 2 year old, Oren and Ryker. She also had to weather me being gone for nearly 2-months to ALC as COVID lockdown rules stupidly kept me locked down on Fort Sam Houston. On top of 2 toddlers and a newborn she was also my rock at home as I worked pretty late most days from June to mid December due to my new position. This was a huge challenge for her and she did outstanding and she is looking forward to have 3 young boys at home and myself being home more often going back to a shorter work schedule! BethAnne has also put in her retirement packet with the National Guard, and we are praying that it goes through smoothly. The Texas National Guard attempted to send her to the Texas/Mexico border for 9 months to a year and that was about the last straw for her. She has recently been able to pick up a new hobby over the holiday season, jewelry making, and I pray the boys will give her enough time in the evenings to enjoy it! I love you babe, thank you from the bottom of my heart for every thing you do; you are the glue that keeps this family of 5 together and happy!

   I started off this year as a regular DA select recruiter doing good and putting in my one person per phase line. I ended it as a station commander ready to hand the station off the incoming station commander. As previously stated, I went to ALC this year and I'm glad that it's only a one time school and that I will have a few years until I attend SLC. I have a huge respect for the NCO Corps but the NCOES system should be re-evaluated; that is all I will say about that. I was able to catch up with a buddy of mine there so not a complete loss. I got a new motorcycle this year, a KTM 1290 Super Adventure R, which I have ridden in all sorts of weather. My loving wife got me a Big Green Egg grill/smoker which I absolutely love and have been firing up several times a week since getting it! I have been spoiled this year by her in all aspects and cannot fully express my gratitude for her. I have decided that I shall not be converting to a full time recruiter (79R) and wish to head back to the operational Army when my 3-years in USAWRECK is done. Early mornings and late nights every single work day kind of sucks when you have such a wonderful family at home! 

    The Good Lord has blessed us every single day this year. We have laughed and cried. We have been with family and friends. We have grown together and closer. It's been a heck of a year, I hope that next year will only get better. Farewell 2021, welcome 2022, lets just keep going up from 2020!! God be with you and yours this year. - The Moore's

End of The Year Update

     As 2021 comes to a close, I am currently enjoying my second week of vacation, with only but a few precious days left before returning to the chaos of recruiting. Over the last 6 months I have learned what unpredictability and stress is in the office setting. I'll get to that though. These precious days of vacation have been filled with time spent with my family; taking my boys out to the park, playing disc golf with my dad and enjoying some quiet time with my wife. I have had a few beers, I have been on a few good long bike rides and had lots of laughs and smiles in between; exactly as it, life that is, should be. I feel as if I have earned this leave more than any other time in my military career, here's why:

    In June 2021, I was officially tagged by my commander to take over College Station Recruiting Center as the Station Commander. The series of events that led to this moment started rolling a few months prior when the then station commander got a DUI. The next person to the helm was a fellow SSG who is less than 2 years from retirement from the military and is ancient as far as military ages go. (Over 45 and you are considered somewhat of a rarity and a dinosaur.) Despite this replacement being a trained 79R (permanent recruiter) he was failing at this duty due to his lack of skill, ability and looming personal issues. I felt sorry for him, not only for the beatings he took from our command at his incompetence but mostly for the personal issues he was dealing with on top of it. Either way, in late May 2021 I told a mentor 79R SFC that I would be willing to take the station if the time came, seeing as it was already tanking hard. After a few more weeks of the replacement leader, the command team pitched me as the new leader to the battalion command team and they approved. My commander came to visit and after a conversation in the parking lot it was mostly official at that point. 

    My days at the office from then on started at 0800-0815 with me getting there, followed by my 0830 meeting that lasted from 15 minutes to over an hour; this meeting was the morning sync with my commander letting him know the plan and status of the station, prospecting and projections for enlistment. The rest of the day is usually, honestly, a complete clusterf*ck. Kids who are at MEPS trying to enlist will fail one thing or the other, I'll get 20 phone calls about it, hopefully find a way to circumvent the issue and get the kid going to sign a contract. If it's a day like this, I feel either like punching someone in the face, usually multiple people, or going through existential crisis mode on the way home. 

    Other days are more hum drum and I have to make it sound like we did something great for prospecting or projections that day. These very rare days are usually spent quietly catching up on the vast amount of data to be inputted into an endless stream of needless tracking forms on Excel or in Word. If there is one thing that drives me nuts about recruiting is the sheer amount of numbers that commands attempt to use to justify or crucify recruiting efforts. It's a people game, and people are not numbers. Either way, I do what I am told and I fill out the numbers over and over again, day after day and justify my own actions with them. 

    The one thing I hated about this time as station commander, but knew it was going to make me a better worker/soldier is the sheer amount of phone conversations I had to have. I don't like to talk to superiors and I don't like to have to give hard orders to subordinates. ( I truly get no joy from either.) I used to sugar coat everything; whether it was to command teams or to subordinates I did it to make myself seem like the innocent messenger. I have learned this method is ineffective and makes for a leader who is constantly apologizing to subordinates, which gives them a sort of power, and makes you look weak to superiors. I cut that bull crap out and just laid it out very bluntly to everyone. This was in large part to the new 1st Sergeant who took a temp spot as our old 1st Sergeant headed out. This new 1SG would call me, and I kid you not, between 5 - 40 times a day. Think about that. In an 8 hour day that is 1 - 5 times an hour. The first week I was annoyed. The second week I embraced it as good, and for this simple reason: each phone call would be under 1 minute. I kid you not, this man would as a question, a follow on question, give guidance and hang up. No bull crap, no yelling, just took in my information, formulated a possible next action and would expect a follow up on success or failure. Rinse and repeat and that is how he would operate. I quickly adopted it and found great success. 

    Regardless of how the day went, it usually ended after 6pm. Many days after 6:30pm. Some days after 7pm. occasionally later than that and a few times till 8-9pm. Due either to meetings, school events, or applicants taking to damn long in my office, these long days were horrible for my life. I lost motivation to work out in the morning seeing as work now started at 0800 and I wouldn't feel like working out after being beaten up all day until 630pm. I would just get home and try to soak up my kids before they went to bed and shoveling food down my throat so I wasn't so freaking hungry. This job drove me to starting to drink coffee again for the sheer amount of energy I needed to keep sharp with my memory and wakefulness. In part this would help curb my appetite and I ate less. Got down to 141 pounds which was fixed after thanksgiving.  

    The good news is that I am now returning to being a regular recruiter. 0900 work call means mornings are all mine again. As long as I put one person in a month no one will yell at me; and I did that every single month I was a recruiter and a few months as a station commander. I won't stay late regularly unless the new station commander is a dick. I'll bust my ass more than ever 9-5 and go home. I am very excited and thankful this chapter is coming to a close. I miss seeing my family and going home before the sun goes down!!

    My newest boy Nico is growing so much! At 6 months old and almost 20 pounds he is a fast growing boy and is finding his voice. He yells now just for fun, probably due to the fact that his brothers yell almost constantly. He sleeps at night, thank the Lord, and that's just amazing. Ryker, my second child, did not sleep at night very well until about 7 months old and I'm not sure how I still maintain my hair line and color after that. Oren is obsessed with snakes now. I mean that literally. Almost all conversations with him lead to or start with something about the reptiles who lack legs. Ryker is following suit but I think just for the sake of sibling emulation. The boys give my wife a run for her money every day and I can't blame her, they exhaust even the strongest of spirits and could empty the stockpiles of patience from a saint. Bless her and bless them. 

    My wife has been an amazing wife and mother despite the crappy work hours on my end and the stress that it bleeds into our family life. Some days are hard and some are happy but at the end of the day she stays the course and does her damndest to raise upright men and keep me in line as well! For that I am eternally grateful to her and God. She is currently getting crafty with some jewelry making and has bought a few puzzles. 

    I have followed suit, as I usually do when I take leave for more than 3 days, in picking up a new hobby: Book making/binding. I literally made a book almost from scratch. I folded and stitched together paper. I cut paper board and bound the whole thing in maroon leather and included a maroon ribbon page marker. See photo below. I am pretty satisfied with this work as it only took 2-3 days and a few dollars. I am eager to work on a secret project regarding this hobby now and to rebind some old books of mine with a more fitting cover. 

    It is far too late, I must sign off. I apologize for the delay in the update. I pray life will not change after my vacation as to continue to keep me away from my spare time. - Mitch