Grandma and Grandpa visit Okinawa!

Grandma and Grandpa made a trip all the way to Okinawa! Mom and dad reported that their trip went very well! After a few days of jet lag, we started touring the island! One of our favorite spots was the Aquarium! It was a beautiful facility and a beautiful day. We are loving having family here to show what Okinawa is all about. I will post more pictures as we get them! We are off to see more sights!

BOO! Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Here are some fun pictures from the last few weeks. The kids had a neighborhood party which was a lot of fun and then of course we had Trick-or-Treating! I think we had somewhere between 300-500 kids. We went through so much candy! I ran out at 7:30 and had to turn out my light. Next year I will plan better. The Japanese Nationals get to come onto base to Trick-or-Treat, as long as they have a sponsor, so there were tons of cute little Japanese kids who had memorized the phrases "Happy Halloween," "Trick-Or-Treat," and "Thank You!" It was fun. The kids had a great time and made a haul themselves. I think this is the first year ever that the kids didn't have to wear parkas under their costumes! It was a beautiful night!

Weekend "Away"

We decided to "get out of town" for a couple days last weekend!! Ha! We drove for about 40 minutes across the island and arrived at a different ocean!! There are several of the different bases that are located right on the ocean. They all have cabins that you can rent to "get away" for a short period of time, so we took advantage of one on White Beach Naval Base and rented a cabin for a couple nights. The weather was kind of poor, we couldn't swim in the ocean, but we still had a great time on the beach looking for shells and playing with all of the hermit crabs. We went with another family, the Parkes, who we have found to be very compatible with us! We will definitely take advantage of these places for a quiet family weekend.

Scuba Diving

Three Gabriels get SCUBA certified!!

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Read all about it!! Dan, Pam and Brenna completed a week long scuba certification course and are now certified Open Water divers!!! It was a long week, lots of reading, studying, test taking, and then skill performance in the pool and ocean, but we did it!! Dan and Brenna flew through the course with flying colors - I on the other hand, had some issues with some of the underwater skills (mask flooding, removal and replacement), but I made it through - by a thread (I had to keep my panic instinct in check). I'm really proud of Brenna, she had to do everything that all the adults had to do!! Hope you enjoy the pictures!

School is IN!!

Well, after a summer filled with new adventures, travel, beaches, new faces, pools, golf, sand, sun, typhoons, rain and shopping, the kids are back to school! YAHOO! We were all excited about getting back into the routine of school. Both Brenna and Morgan got accepted into the Partial Japanese Immersion program offered at Kadena Elementary School! We were very excited about this new adventure. The kids will get a very unique experience in school and will become our family's interpreters!! More about the program to come (as we learn more about what they will be doing), but Brenna has already started learning to write Kanji, Kana, and Hiragana. I won't pretend to know what that all means, but hopefully we will all learn together. Morgan has learned a handful of words in the first two days, so there is great things to come! Little Sydney starts her preschool next week! More pictures will be added to the slide show then.