After months of driving and riding in Humvees at top speed in Iraq, Spc. Adam Szafran of South Portland finally got to take a ride last week in the shiny black Chevy Tahoe SUV he bought over the Internet while in Iraq.

Szafran was one of hundreds of members of the 133rd Engineer Battalion who returned to homecoming celebrations late last week and over the weekend.

Members of the 133rd Engineer Battalion continued to return to Maine from Iraq late last week and over the weekend, bringing more joyous reunions and starting more people on the path of adjusting to life after the 14-month deployment.

The Headquarters Support Company returned to the Stevens Avenue armory in Portland Friday, and a smaller group of soldiers came back Saturday.

Szafran’s homecoming began with a trip home from the armory in the passenger seat of his new SUV, as his father drove home.

In the truck were not Szafran’s fellow soldiers, but his parents and grandparents, who came up from Connecticut.

“I can’t believe he’s had two birthdays over there,” said Szafran’s mother, Sheila Szafran.

Adam, now 24, got to take the truck for a spin later in the evening, skipping out briefly from an open house at his parents’ home, where neighbors and friends and family came to welcome Adam home.

In the middle of it, he and two friends ducked quietly out the front door, saying little. Several minutes later, they returned, grinning, “I hadn’t taken it for a ride yet,” Adam explained.

Staff Sgt. Stephen Bragg of Scarborough found a huge collection of friends and relatives waiting in the Stevens Avenue armory in Portland when he got home Friday afternoon.

He called the welcome – not just from his group but hundreds of loved ones greeting dozens of soldiers – “a bit overwhelming,” though it did give him the opportunity to have some fun on the Army’s time.

The soldiers were given welcome-home flowers at a rest stop in Kennebunkport. On the ride up to Portland, Bragg wrote on the plastic wrapper around the flowers, “For Hannah,” the name of the family’s dog.

And just after the troops were given the order to break formation and greet their families, Bragg handed the flowers – with the message – to his wife, Carolyn.

The hug, and the laugh that followed when she read her husband’s two-word note, ended 14 long months of waiting. It was a wait that culminated in two-plus hours of standing in the armory, fingering her wedding ring and watching the door where the troops would enter.

By Wednesday, Bragg was beginning to return to normal. “I just shoveled the driveway,” he announced cheerily when asked what he had been doing since his return.

The weather hasn’t been as much of an adjustment as people might expect.

Though the temperature in Iraq got up to 147 degrees in the heat of the summer, the members of the 133rd are used to cold.

“When we left for the desert, we left from the snow,” Bragg said, remembering a four-day, three-night outdoor training exercise in January in Fort Drum, N.Y., before the unit left for the Middle East.

And by the end of the time in Iraq, winter was starting to set in. “We wore hats and mittens, and we wore our long underwear,” Bragg said.

“Mosul got a pretty good little snowstorm” just before the 133rd left – the second time the city had gotten snowed on, he said.

Since his return home, Bragg has been visiting friends and family, and going to his son’s hockey games. His daughter, who also plays hockey, has some games coming up, and he’ll get to see them as well.

“I’m spending time with my mom and dad” and other friends and family, Bragg said. “I’ve only eaten at home one night” since coming back.

He’s also getting a cold. “It’s kind of catching up to me now,” he said, attributing the mild illness to a lowering of his body’s guard.

“I think I’m starting to relax a little,” Bragg said.

But not a lot: “I go from living in a room with six guys to living with the family. It’s a little quieter, but not much,” he laughed.

Bragg, who owns a medical billing business, went into the office Tuesday, to say hello and have lunch with his staff, but expects to spend a couple more weeks relaxing and readjusting before heading back to the job.

He’s also taking a brief break from spending every moment with his fellow soldiers. He has “not yet” met up with others from the 133rd. “We will, though,” he said.