We are having fun, hard days, crazy days, crying days, but totally enjoying our weekend adventures!  Check out the pics

Alright, blogging isn’t my favorite thing to do aymore….love sharing with so many people, but I’m going to cheat.  I posted pictures of our most recent adventure here:

I know, I know, its been a long while.  I’ve got 4 crazy kids peeps.  I’m pretty crazy myself.  We’ve been on an exploring kick lately, our target….the southern end of this beautiful island.  So, when we have no obligations, we take off and go for the day.  Here in Guam when you take off and go you must have some essentials.  Including, but not limited to:  Swimsuit (towel optional, its warm enough you don’t need one), sunscreen and more sunscreen, BUG SPRAY, and water, we usually take the GPS preloaded with geocaches along also b/c you just never know when the caching bug will hit.  So Saturday we hit up Priests Pools, they are in the middle of a village called Merizo.  A short hike through some grass and you get this

Pretty cool right.  Uh, sure….when I was like 6.  What the heck happened to my adventurous spirit, I don’t know, but swimming in green moss filled water just wasn’t my idea of fun.  The boys had moss in the swimsuits!  Loved the area, loved watching the kids play, would totally do it again, but you will not find me in the water.  For the record, I did get in long enough to relieve myself, you know you do it to, so don’t hate!  The top pool seemed to be about 8 feet deep judging by Stan submerging himself and trying to touch the bottom (eyes and mouth closed tightly shut a must)  The boys loved jumping in and “peeing” through the waterfall.  A lot of potty talk around here….we have 4 boys!

We ended the day with a visit to Umatac and Big John.  Big John is great, this big dude with a skinned head (exception being his mohawk) who sits around at the pavilion drinking his budweiser all day.  Greets us with a Hafa Adai (prounced kind of like Half a Day real fast) and asks us if we’d like to see Bessie maybe Betsy not quite sure.  We were feeling adventurous so what the heck.  Meet Bessie folks, “the fastest horse on Guam”

This is a Carabao, kind of a mix between a cow and a water buffalo from what I’ve been told.  Eli looks happy right….Yeah, Bessie bucked all the kids off!  I wish I had a video camera, it was a classic moment.  I laughed for a long time replaying it over and over again in my head.  Eli didn’t appreciate it, thus the no smile, pouty face in the picture.

She likes Bananas too:

Not only did we have fun on the rides, we got to check out the sights (amazing overlook and some cool cannons and fort remains) and sample some amazing local produce…honey bananas, coconuts, sour fruit, star fruit….pure deliciousness.  We will return!

Don’t think that we only let the kids have the fun

OH YES I DID!!!!!

For the comfort of the mothers, this is our overlook on base, well above the shore line as you can see

This is the northern end of the island (where the base is) looking west

So….as long as we are on base, we are protected from the big wave!

Stan’s way of dealing with rowdy kids, can you find them all?

He enjoyed this moment of insight so much that he documented it with a picture!

p.s. please take note, Eli is wearing underwear and he keeps them clean.  Hooray for no more diaper changes!  For the time being that is…

My children have always talked of having pets and each time the discussion arises, I say no.  So, while in Utah the boys dubbed the snails outside as their pets, in Columbus it was the worms.  Well here in Guam, we have these. 

The best thing about these pets, they not only live outside, but inside too!  With the exception of the occassional tail loss as documented above, no lizards (perhaps geckos) are harmed in our home.

How does the lizard stay so still, please look closely

It’s on a leash!  All thanks to a strand of hair from my head and Stan’s creativity.

Please no worries, we take good care of our pets as they keep coming back for more quality time with us.  I think they may even share the word with their friends. 

Living on an Air Force base provides us many opportunities to see airplanes, but its not too often that you get to see the Thunderbirds!  We had an airshow out here, unfortunately while the rest of the base had the afternoon off, Stan had to work the medical tent so I got to sit in the sweltering heat for 5 hours with the boys by myself.  We did see Stan, he looked like this

All official don’t you think, we see lots of green uniforms these days.  I guess its nice to just wake up and know what you are wearing everyday.

At church events start with a prayer, in the AF things start with a flag ceremony and National Anthem.

We had front row seats to the helicopter demonstration run by HSC-25 (its a naval group and the one that Stan actually works with and will fly with, these helicopters are considered his primary aircraft).  The redhorse squadron are the folks repelling out (all I know about them is they where red hats with their uniforms instead of the regular ones)

Some big plane flew over, perhaps a B-52 bomber, I really have no clue, but I know one B-52 did fly by that day, if this is it…..who knows

There was definitely some down time as they built up to the “main event” and once that time came there was even more down town as the pilot felt like the clouds were too low to fly.  We had to wait an extra hour for the Thunderbirds to perform.  After a lot of this

and this

we got this

Seriously an amazing performance, I’m sure hours of training goes into it. 

For awhile I wasn’t sure how worth it it was as Eli was quite happy to be there

the above picture is exactly the reason why I make it a point to be home for nap time most days

But the moments of stillness and excitement definitely make up for it

and then we take a picture and pretend that Stan was with us all along, but don’t be fooled.  He only joined us for the last 10 minutes of the Thunderbirds performance

Maybe next time he’ll get the day off too, here’s crossing our fingers!

While Guam has brought changes for all of us, perhaps the one feeling them the most is Garrett.  Since we’ve arrived on island this cute kid has started school and had a birthday.  Garrett has a true love for learning so starting school was no big deal for him, he was SOOOO excited.  In fact when I picked him up the first day he cried because he thought school would last longer.  He missed the cutoff date for Kindergarten by 12 days, but he attends Pre-K at the Elementary school every day for 2 1/2 hours.  Frankly, I don’t think he minds being the oldest!

First Day of School

This is what all of my pictures looked like when I tried to take pictures before school.  Apparently you can’t just walk out of your cool air conditioned home and expect your camera to be ready to go.  I thought the fog was on the screen so I kept snapping away, but unbeknownst to me it was really on the lens.  So after a little cleaning we got a few last minute pictures with the little poser himself

I’m sure the first 10 pictures were much cuter, but since I can’t see them I’m not too disapointed.

Here they are lining up outside waiting to go to their classroom

School started on Wednesday and on Sunday we “celebrated” Garrett’s birthday.  He chose to wait until dad was here to have his real party, but I at least wanted to acknowledge the day on his actual birthday.  Here he is with his birthday breakfast of peanut butter captain crunch and a poptart.

We sang happy birthday to him and made him pretend to blow out candles in his poptart b/c I had forgotten to buy matches.

He received many phone calls wishing him a happy day.  He loved hearing from everyone

Dad sent some gifts that he opened and we called it good for the day. 

Then the wait was on, the present sat on the cupboard in full view for 6 whole days while we waited for Stan to come join us in Guam.  Here we are waiting at the airport

My personal favorite moment was this:

and this when he has all 3, look closely Logan is there

I almost walked out of the airport then and there to listen to the silence in the car by myself for a minute!  I however did wait to enjoy the quiet until later in the week.

The real party can begin now

EVERYTHING IS BETTER WITH DAD!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GARRETT

We are here, been here for just over a month.  Well all except Stan, he didn’t join us until just 2 weeks ago.  Where is here?  Let me give you a few hints: 

5 minutes of a drive gets us to places looking like this:

or perhaps you seek more adventure and are willing to drive 15 minutes with the last few minutes off roading in a minivan on a dirt road with lots of potholes and puddles

Or maybe you’re patient, don’t mind a 20 minute drive and just want to relax

If you’re the type you could stay at a resort where they make you fancy things by weaving palm tree leaves together like this kind gentleman and his fish on a pole

Is it a western flare that you are seeking?

maybe you just want to walk on the wild side for a minute

We’ve done it all and more in just one short month on this tiny island of Guam folks.  When planning your next vacation or military hop you might just want to think a little more about the island “Where America’s Day Begins”

I like summer too, but we did a lot of fun things this fall.  Loved Leed’s Farm.  It was a glorified pumpkin patch, with all sorts of activities.  A little bit of a drive from our lovely place here in Columbus, but totally worth it. 

Favorites included the zip line

The rolling tubes (do these things have official names?)  We called them the Hamster Wheel.  These were my personal favorite!

We spent a good hour in this area alone, rolling to our hearts content.  The weather kind of worked in our favor.  It was a super cold day, but when we have Stan home we go no matter what.  Turns out, not many other people are fond being outside in teh bitter cold.  It was nice though b/c we never had to wait for any of the activities.

Like a slide

And this itty bitty train ride

Check out how far into his chest, Stan’s knees are in these pictures, hence the reason I opted out!

We also participated in the usual October activities of carving pumpkins and Trick-or-Treating

This was the first year that we let Garrett cut his pumpkin (We usually just have the kids paint them), but he wasn’t too into it.  Would still rather paint.  He did not want to touch the pumpkin guts, but being the kind parents that we are we made him, it goes with the territory, he was definitely not a fan.

Logan enjoyed painting any surface within reach and also eating the pumpkin.  We would cut out pieces and he and Eli would go to town on them, they loved raw pumpkin!

Logan was quite interested in the pumpkin guts

And Eli just liked to eat

Say Cheese

Let the Trick-or-Treating begin

The boys with the neighborhood kids before we all parted ways

He we have A Construction Worker, A Surgeon, and a Pirate

I love the little shoes covers and scrub cap that Stan made for Eli, totally completes the outfit.  What was even more impressive was that Eli kept the hat on the entire night.

Here is Garrett and our next door neighbor Meredith.  Garrett has come to love Meredith

He liked her a lot before Halloween, but especially once her saw her balloon fired up.  He knew that she flew them, but she won him over with the balloon display that night.  Her and her friends set up shop at the end of the street and hand out candy from their baskets, very cool.

Eli caught on quickly to trick-or-treating and had himself a grand ol’ time.

Calling it quits

Enjoying the treasures

We love these little guys, they help us to remember to keep smiling