SURVIVOR -- YORON ISLAND

Team Skoshi

5 days

4 nights

4 hour ferry ride

1 1/2 mile hike

100 American kids

100 Japanese kids

100 Indonesian kids

10 Minshiku houses

30 chaperones

10 teams

rice, fish, seaweed - ALL native food

HUGE AMOUNT OF FUN!

EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME!

To view more info on Brenna's Survivor Adventure click:

http://www.okinawa.pac.dodea.edu/Welcome/Gouldman2/index.html

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! We hope you all had a great day. We had a quiet day with church early then a brunch with 3 other families at one of the Marine O'Clubs. It was a nice, but very wet day!! Luckily, the Easter Bunny had brought a Wii system for the girls, so we had a lot of indoor fun with the new games. Sydney has fast become the bowling champion already. Leave it to Syd to master a game! I think her record is 7 strikes in a row. Anyway, we were thinking of everyone and hope all is well across the continents! We are really looking forward to our upcoming trip to Kyoto on mainland Japan, so look for those pictures in April!

Rare Opportunity

We were out shopping one Saturday, during our "confinement period" and decided to take Dan to the Marine Corp Gift Corner. He had never been, and I thought he needed to see the treasures I keep talking about. Well, the girls each had their own money, so they went off looking at the latest shipment of treasures. I was off browsing the new merchandise brought in from Thailand, and Dan was kind of just wandering around trying to keep track of all of us. Well, evidently, he was people watching and noticed two very beautiful women shopping. I was much too busy picking out some new lanterns for my front door step. Anyway, Morgan and Sydney were standing in line to make their purchases and one of the beautiful girls struck up a conversation with her. After Morgan was done, she wandered outside and sat down to wait. The girls came out and kept on talking with Morgan and then Brenna. Pretty soon we hear, "Can Morgan's dad come out here please?" Well, my heart sank. I was thinking something got broken or something. It turned out that the director of the USO was just seeking permission to photograph our girls. The two beautiful women were Miss USA, Rachel Smith and Miss Teen USA, Hilary Cruz, who were on Okinawa as a morale booster for the troops. I was floored and disappointed that I hadn't been paying more attention to the people, Dan was stunned, and the girls were on Cloud 9. You can view Rachel Smith's blog at http://www.missusa.com/missusa/blog.php She is as gorgeous in person as she is in her photos. It was a great day and experience for all of us.

Morgan's Tough Break!

Well, we have our first ever Gabriel broken bone - or FRACTURE, as Morgan would like us to call it. On Saturday, Morgan fell off a swing at the park (yes, she was swinging very high, but not goofing around), when she slipped off and used her arms to brace her fall. She came running at me with limp arms - all shook up and crying. Dan and I waited overnight, but it became apparent that she needed to be seen first thing on Monday. Sure enough, the X-rays showed a buckle fracture on her radius. Four or so weeks in the cast. She had some anxiety going into the casting, but actually did extremely well. She is getting a lot of attention, which I'm sure will last a little while, but is embarassed about wearing a cast. All is well and it could have been a lot worse, so we are thankful! Now, we just have to deal with the inconvenience of having the darn thing on her arm - I'm sure others out there can sympathize and understand fully what we are going to be going through. She already discovered an alternate use for her chopstick - a good scratcher for a hard to get itch!!