FARMINGTON – Maj. Glenn Kapiloff was expecting to spend some of his Christmas Eve in Iraq watching television or playing ping-pong with some of his fellow instructors.

“Things are going as well as could be expected,” Kapiloff wrote in an e-mail Christmas Eve.

Kapiloff is an Army reservist whose unit of military officer instructors was mobilized this fall, arriving in Iraq two days before Thanksgiving.

In civilian life Kapiloff, the father of four daughters, is the director of SAD 9’s Foster Regional Applied Technology Center in Farmington.

“We were all saddened by the explosion up in Mosul,” Kapiloff wrote Friday. “One of the soldiers killed had trained with us back at Camp Atterbury and was a member of the 98th Division.”

Kapiloff is making his temporary home with the 1st Cavalry Division at a camp known as Victor North.

His unit was getting ready for a big command post exercise with the Iraqis that was to start Sunday.

“Several explosions have been heard here tonight,” Kapiloff wrote, but he didn’t know what caused them. He noted it could have been car bombs or mortars, among other types of explosives.