Army Lt. Col. Tim Coffman will be home for Christmas this year.

There’s nothing unusual in that, since he was home last Christmas Day. But at that time his bags were packed and he left the next day for a year-long deployment to Iraq.

Tim Coffman’s bags won’t be packed this Christmas, as he has just returned home from his third tour in Iraq.

This year he will spend a quiet Christmas in his Enid home with his wife, Christine, and daughters Rachelynn, 19, and Julia, 15.

When Coffman arrived home Dec. 16 he was greeted by a large sign reading “Welcome Home Daddy,” on the fence at the side of the family’s home.

“It’s nice but its always weird when he gets home,” said Julia, a freshman at Enid High. “When he leaves we get into a routine when he’s gone and then when he comes back everything gets messed up.”

“It’s nice having daddy back,” said Rachelynn, a student at Northern Oklahoma College Enid. “It’s weird, though. I don’t have to worry about grocery shopping or anything. I realize somebody else can drive.”

“It doesn’t seem real yet,” said Christine. “I really can’t quite believe that he’s here. Even when we were standing there waiting for him to walk off the plane, it’s very surreal. The fun part is it’s like dating again.”

For his part, Coffman said the adjustment has been easier this time than his previous stint in Iraq in 2005.

“It’s great,” he said. “I’ve done this so many times. It’s probably harder for the family.”

Conditions in Iraq now are much improved from four years ago.

“When I was there in ’05 there were a lot of people trying to kill me,” he said. “It was nothing to get shot at or have somebody trying to blow you up. This time I didn’t hear a shot in anger the whole year. It’s getting a lot better.”

Coffman spent the past year working with the Iraqi army and police, getting them ready for the eventual departure of American forces. Life is returning to a semblance of normality in Iraq.

“People are trying to get back to normal, as normal as Iraq can be,” Coffman said.

Iraqi troops and police are becoming more able to defend their country, Coffman said, but still have a long way to go.

“They’re not going to be able to defend themselves against other governments, or other national armies, because they aren’t equipped to,” he said. “If you compare them to other Arab armies in the region, they’re probably middle of the road. You listen to the Iraqi politicians and they all want us to go, but if you actually sit down with them (the Iraqi people) and talk to them personally, they don’t want us to go. They know we’re the ones that are basically holding the place together right now.”

Having spent three deployments in Iraq and one in Korea has made Coffman appreciate what most Americans take for granted.

“He didn’t have much threshold for whining,” Chris-tine Coffman said. “He came home and just felt so incredibly privileged to live in this country.”

“I don’t have a lot of tolerance for people here in the states who moan about, ‘My heating bill’s too high or my electricity bill’s too high,’” Coffman said. “Look, you’ve got electricity. You can travel the streets of Enid, Oklahoma, and not worry about your car being blown up underneath you.”

The Coffmans decided to settle in Enid five years ago rather than follow Tim to his various deployments. Christine grew up here, while Tim hails from Cherokee.

“He’s deployed so much we thought it was better for our family to have roots, to have a home,” Christine said. “I feel very safe when he’s gone because I’m in a community that has a lot of respect for the military. We feel very safe and very cared-for here.”

In the five years the family has lived in Enid, Christine estimates, Tim has been gone for four of them. The time apart, she says, has brought them together.

“I think it’s made us closer, I think it’s made us stronger, as a married couple and as a family,” she said.

Tim is on leave now until Feb. 1, when he will report to Fort Sill in Lawton, where he hopes to be for at least a year before facing the possibility of another deployment.

“I’ll be at Fort Sill, hopefully, until I retire, which is in two years,” Coffman said. “At least I’m safe (from deployment) for a year, unless the rules changed, and the rules do change.”

But for this Christmas, at least, Tim Coffman will be home, losing to his daughters during family game time and enjoying the bounty most of us take for granted.