Happy Halloween!

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Dear Dr. Seymore Gutz,
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I hope that your Halloween is very fun and safe.  Your dad will miss taking you trick or treating near your mom's house this year.  We will do it up big next year!
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Here's a picture of your Dad in his Halloween costume.

Love you more than a bag full of Halloween candy,

Dad

It's Raining ...

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It's pouring
Your old man is snoring at work.
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Hi my man,
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A real live rainy day in Baghdad today.  I even saw lightning and heard thunder on my walk to work.  I didn't really get rained on, but there were still sprinkles when I came to my office.
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I'm sure it would be no big deal to you since it's been raining in Virginia so much, but it was pretty exciting here.
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Love you like a lightning bolt,
Dad

Mommy, I mean, mummy!

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Hello my friend,
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One of the most memorable things about studying ancient Egypt is learning about mummies.  The Egyptians believed in life after death, at least for the kings and queens, and thought that you would need your body again after you died.
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So to make sure that your body didn't rot away to nothing, or get eaten by animals or worms (yuck!), they invented mummification.  That's a long word for turning a dead body into a mummy.
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They would make special cuts in a dead king's body and wrap it in gauze and then dump a special kind of salt all over the wrapped up body so that all the water would come out.  With no water in it, the mummy would last a long time.  Thousands of years, even!

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I hope you like studying mummies as much as I did.  One of my earliest memories was being sort of scared seeing a mummy for the first time in a museum.  But, it was really cool...

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Love you for as long as a mummy will stay mummified,

Dad

Is it civilization yet?

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Dear Patrick,
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One of the ways that we know that ancient people like the Egyptians were civilized is that they were able to get their workers together to build big (huge, even!) projects.  In Egypt, those projects were the pyramids.
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The pyramids were tombs for the dead kings (called pharoahs) of Egypt.  They took so long to build, the Egyptians would start building a pyramid as soon as a new king was named.
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The great pyramids of Giza are considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
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The civilizations in Iraq built big projects too.  Projects like the Ziggurat of Urr showed that they were organized into a society.  The ziggurat was not a tomb, though, it was just to show off!
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Love you with love as big as a pyramid,
Dad.

Not too much to say.

Hi Buddy,

Don't have too much to say today.  I'm at work and trying to get some stuff done.  Hopefully, later this afternoon, I'll get out of here and do something fun.

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One week till Halloween!  You must be excited!  Your mom told me that your costume came.  I can't wait to see a picture of you in it.
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Love you like a Halloween that falls on a Saturday!!!
Dad

Old Rivers; Old Civilizations

Hey Buddy,

I think it's great that you are studying Ancient Egypt.  There are a lot of things that are the same between Ancient Egypt and Ancient Iraq.
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Both are very old civilizations.  Egyptian civilization began about 5000 years ago and civilization in ancient Iraq began about 7000 years ago.  The area of Iraq was called Mesopotamia.

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Both Egypt and Iraq began because it was warm and there was plenty of water from big rivers.  In Egypt, it's the Nile River.  The Nile is the longest river in the world.  In Iraq, it's the Tigris River and the Euphrates River.  Mesopotamia means "land between rivers."

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Without the rivers, no one would have ever lived in Ancient Egypt or in Ancient Iraq.  There never would have been great civilizations like that where people could learn how to live together in big cities.

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The rivers are part of human beings' ancient history.

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Love you as long as the Nile,

Dad

Good Game. Good Game.

Hi Big Guy!
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Your mom told me that you had another good game this weekend.  She said you had a header and impressed everyone.  I thought that was especially cool since sometime you and I practice headers together.  That's what is great about sports sometimes is that you get to try in games what you work on when you practice.  Here's a DC United striker heading it away from the goalie.

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She also said you had a backheel to keep the ball from going out of bounds.  Here's a video of a backheel from Ronaldo, one of the best players in the world, to score a goal.  He was playing for Manchester United then.  That's one of my other favorite teams.

Love you like a sweet soccer move,
Dad