This is our baby.... TIKI
She was a 1 1/2 pounds when we brought her home.

This is .... COCONUT
She is CRAZY!!! She weighed just 3.8 pounds when we brought her home.

There is an organization on island called G.A.I.N. The are pretty much the pound on island. Guam has so many wild cats and dogs it's crazy. They are referred to as "Boonie Dogs" and "Boonie Cats". The sad part is that the GAIN is so over populated that they put down at least on dog and one cat each day. Two days before I went there to look at the kittens they brought in 32 dogs. They had to shut down for two hours just to try and accomidate them all. They ended up having to put 10 dogs down :(
I say Tiki and Coconut and fell in love. The kids were so excited!! Madison literally grew wings and flew around the house. The sad thing was that because we got two cats and both girls were so excited Gage started to cry and asked where his dog was. He has been wanting a dog ever since Ellie. (Our Friend/Family's dog in Michigan) I had to tell him when we get out of the Navy we will get a dog. We are only aloud two pets in base houseing. Anyway, here are a couple more pics :)...

Playing at Dodi Beach....

Our friends, the Copelands, invited us to go to Dodi Beach and see all the crabs that come out at sunset. Apparently the typhoons that have gone around the island have washed up a lot of debris. There was even a computer monitor that washed ashore. Even with all the washed up stuff it was still a beautiful beach. Dodi Beach takes a lot of the gruff from passing storms. The beach is on the Pacific Ocean side of the island and apparently the Pacific is a lot rougher than the Philippine Sea side.

These caves where carved out by the Japanese during the Pacific War. They would hide in these caves and shoot through the holes as the soldiers came aboard island.




The Sunset was beautiful.... One of these days I would LOVE for Robby and I to enjoy a sunset - minus the children. The kids had a great time though.

HAPPY NEW YEAR....

We decided to start out our new year with exploring a new beach. We have decided we want to make it to ALL the beaches on Guam so what a way to start 2010! Our friends the Davids came with us and we had a BLAST. I can honestly say that so far this beach is my favorite. It is called Haputo Beach. We hiked down about 300 yards to the beach. The hike was through thick forests and pretty steep. There were narrow cement stairs, actually there were 212 narrow cement stairs. :) Going down was no sweat, but coming back up was a bit of a work out. Especially since Gage decided to RUN most the way up. Anyway, the reason this is our favorite beach so far is because it have BEAUTIFUL soft white sand with a HUGE corral reef. We were able to walk really far out and play in the waves. One of the great attractions of Haputo is this mushroom shape rock off the beach.









These are the last of the steps that we came down to get to the beach....

We have more fun pictures to show you but this is all I have time to do tonight... Love you all tons!

Island Life....

For all of you poor people stuck in the snow, I hope these pictures don't make you hate us too bad :o

While the kids were in their first week of school, Robby had the week off work for house hunting. So of course we decided to go exploring. We accidentally found this beach. As we approached the road to go on we passed a sign that said...
"WARNING.... people have drowned here!" I must admit I was a bit nervous. And of course the one day we had to explore with out the children it was a down pour ALL day. But we quickly learned that if you wait to do something when it stops raining you will never do anything. This is the road we ventured down looking for the beach...




So we finally found a place to park and headed out to the beach. It was gorgeous! Even in the down poor we had a great time. We spent the time looking for shells and found some really pretty ones. After about an hour we had to head back to get the kids. This is us dripping wet and having a blast...




There is a tradition here on Guam that on every Wednesday night the Chamorro village has a big Siesta at the Chamorro Village. We ventured out for the night. Unfortunately it was a school night and our little Gage was exhausted from being at school for a full day. The Chamorro's cooking is amazing and they are known for their different ways of cooking chicken. We LOVED it! Well, everyone but Gage...




























































One thing we have found that we are definately not in short of are lizards... Maddie has died and gone to heaven. We two different kinds on the island, Gekkos and Skinks. Apparently when they get scared their tails fall off, needless to say every lizard around our house is missing a tail. Maddie and her friends constantly catching them...





We have lots more to share with all of you. I will post what I can as soon as possible. Love you all!!

Wow, I don't even know where to begin...

I have been putting off getting the blog going because there would be just too much catch up to do. So I then decided some is better than none, right? I'm not going to start where I left off back in December, obviously you are all disappointed, but it's just not going to happen. I am just going to through in some pictures to get you caught up to the present. It also doesn't help that they've changed things since the last time I was on this. Bare with me here we go......

A real quick run through...
Moved in with Hollie and Kids and mom while Robby worked in Boise. Joined the Navy, then Robby left for Officer Training in Rhode Island. He was gone for 2 1/2 months, but he graduated with flying colors and is officially an Officer of the United States Navy! We then packed up everything we own and shipped it to Guam. Thank goodness the military does that for you. We made it to Guam on October 17ish.(honestly I don't remember) The flight was long but the kids did great, or so I'm told. I took some "calming" drugs because of my fear of flying over the ocean, crashing and if I survived getting eaten by sharks. Anyway, I took those and then woke up in Japan, 10hours later. The kids claim I colored with them and played with them, but I honestly don't remember one thing about that flight. We then continued to Guam, it was about another 3 hour flight.

Once in Guam our sponsor, LT Commander Roger Bunch picked us up from the airport. It took two trips to the hotel for them to get all our luggage there. It was beautiful!! We staid at a resort called The PIC (Pacific Island Club) we loved it there. The kids had a great time because there is a water park right on the beach. So needless to say the kids and I spent the next week playing while Robby started figuring out his new duty.




























We celebrated Halloween while we were living at the PIC. This was pretty interesting because the PIC is the top vacation spot for Japanese. Guam is to the Japanese like Hawaii is to us. So needless to say there are A LOT of tourists here. Anyway, so the kids got all dressed up and we headed out to the base to do some trick-or-treating. As we left the Japanese tourists absolutely loved seeing the kids. They were all saying stuff like... ga;skfrj;ewhdshjnfs, they are so sweet. No, but really they are a very kind culture.

























After living in the hotel for two weeks we were finally able to move into a house on Big Navy. Its a four bedroom but the rooms are only 9x9. Pretty small, but we are all together! (sounds cheesy, but I mean it)



The kids quickly found a way to have fun in our new home. We don't have carpet anywhere due to the high humidity and flooding from typhoons. So we get to walk on hard tiles 24/7. But as you can see the kids really enjoy it.

This is our dinning room standing at the front room







Our living room standing in the same place as the dinning room




Our kitchen is actually not too bad. It looks really small but we have lots of cupboard space.



Laundry Room

The kids started school during our last week at the PIC. Gage is in ALL DAY Kindergarten, Maddie in 3rd and Lizzy in 4th. They are all doing great as little Sea Hawks here at the McCool School.