Houghtelin Family Blog

oh man, its war.

Chris — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:47:59 +0000

holy cow i got a few days off because i finished basic yesterday. so far its been the worst thing and the most satisfying thing i’ve ever done lol. after getting of the plane and going to the base, i find myself with all of my stuff being taken away to be put in storage. and i mean everything. mom had me bring lots of clothes to wear at basic. all taken. cell phone? gone. so they put a tag on my bag and dress me in army shorts and shirt. then they keep me in some of the oldest three story barracks i’ve ever seen and for the next four days i go out and get issued gear and get shots as they prep me for basic. that time is called “reception” i spent a total of two weeks at reception. so after the first four days of getting my gear they just make us sit around and clean for the next week and a half. so. boring. so all of the guys there wanted to go to basic so bad. but we did leave finally and day zero was really intense. we throw our stuff on a few trucks and bus over to our new barracks and that’s where it all began. we get off the bus onto an open area where all of our stuff is piled up. about a 120 guys each with a duffle, personal, and laundry bag so that’s 360 bags in a big pile and we’re all told to get our bags. in 2 minutes. we failed. lol. but we all had somebody’s bag and we marched over to the barracks. and that was tough for most of us. but that first week we began to learn the standards for making bunks and making our lockers look good and buffing floors and mopping and general barracks maintance. so i can make a room look clean. but the first few weeks are what’s called red phase. that’s the tough phase where we would spend hours a day getting smoked (pushups and situps and stuff like that.) and spending time in classes about crud we didn’t care about and falling asleep which would get us smoked some more. but after a few weeks we survived to white phase. score! fewer pushups and more flexibility. white phase also means we started weapons training. m4, m203, mk19, grenades, at4, m249, m240b, and the m2. just look em up if you want to know what they are. and after the next 3 days people in our compnay decided to steal from the store. so we got put back in red phase and after dinner each day they would bring us into the pit. the pit is very bad place. its like a huge sandbox. in the pit there’s four commands you need to follow. front, back, go, and hit it. when the drill sargeant says front, you start doing pushups as fast as you can. back, and you flip on your back and kicking your legs in the air(flutter kicks). go, and you run in place. hit it and you jump to the ground and smash your body on the ground and jump back up to running in place. plus they would switch commands very quickly front, back, front, back, front, back, GO, hit it. you can barely do half a pushup and they would yell back and you flip on your back. we would do this for about an hour and a half each day for three days while getting yelled looking for the people who stole. so it sucked to be thrashed for somebody else being dumb. but finally we got phased forward into blue phase (yay!) and things really got better and we even got to drive humvee’s and we did building clearing and did a few very terrible marches. up and down hills for 19 kilometers wearing full body armour and helmet with elbow and knee pads. three days later and my blisters still bug me. lol. and afterwords we found out it was closer to 19 kilometers. but that was the very last thing i did for basic. come monday i begin tank training. my emotions are all over the place. im excited but afraid. i don’t wanna fail but a lot of the guys in our platoon kinda suck. plus tankers are getting a lot of infantry training because tanks are not the future of war. so i joined a dying breed. i definitly plan on changing my job as soon as possible. back to psy ops. well that’s a fair bit of info. but hey, lets breathe some life into houghtelin.com. i’ll use it.

How not to go down hill

mhoughtelin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 06:06:28 +0000

Donners Pass Truck Wreck

http://cdlofit.ning.com/video/video/show?id=526987:Video:371322

This video is on Donners Pass in California. This proves you can go down hill too fast only once. you can go down too slow as many times as you want. Both people were killed.

Holy Crap

Matt — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:39:09 +0000

Ya know yall need to get up in here and start writing something……..NOW!

What are you still reading this? get writing!

Bangel Kittens

Matt — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:46:14 +0000

We got are bangel kittens on the 7th of this month and there are beautiful. Look for the pics in Crystal’s myspace web page pics. Every thing else here is same o same o so. I hope the rest of you are doing good to.

Liam Getting his First tooth

Matt — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:56:39 +0000

Liam has been crabby for the last 3 days and to day Crystal looked into Liam’s mouth and saw that a tooth is cutting its way out of his lower jaw. When i get some pics i will post them.

mhoughtelin — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:07:49 +0000

Chris had a great time riding with his Dad

mhoughtelin — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:00:10 +0000

Chris is just goofing around. This is just before he is left to wait for his Brother Josh to pick him up, at Big Cabin, Kansas.

Welcome to Kansas.

Lets see if you can figure out where I’m at…

mhoughtelin — Sat, 10 May 2008 15:28:51 +0000

This is a screen shot of my GPS. I’m the little green dot in the center of both pictures.

I’m in Puerto Vallarta!

Josh — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:37:52 +0000

Zippy and I are on a 5 day (Sunday March 9th to Thursday March 13th) vacation to Puerto Vallarta Mexico. We are staying at the Fiesta Americana. I can’t believe how awesome it is here.

Check out My Blog Post: Hola From Puerto Vallarta!

This place is insane? Click here to see the pictures I’ve taken so far.

I won’t hesitate to say this is one of the best vacation spots I have ever found myself at. I may be a bit biased becuase I like Mexico and hablo espanol a little but dang this is an absolutely wonderful vacation destination.

Here is a view from our balcony.

All the pictures are on my Flickr PhotoSet

New Member to the Houghtelin Family

mhoughtelin — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:32:26 +0000

Born Feburary 27, 2008 at about 1:50am MST, William Scott Houghtelin to Crystal & Matthew Houghtelin.

Daddy Matt changing his son’s diedee.