More of Guam

We did a little driving around the last day or two and I snapped some pictures while we were out. It is amazingly beautiful here! A lot like Hawaii, but much prettier!

Watch out for these guys! Harmless banana spiders but they will scare the pants off you!

First Day of First Grade!

Colin starts first grade today at his new school. He is very excited and probably most excited about getting to ride the bus some days. We decided to drive him to and from today, but tomorrow morning we have an early appointment to have new tires put on my van and he will need to ride the bus. The weather was AWFUL this morning and it's a good thing he didn't ride the bus. It poured and flooded the base streets near the school, drainage is an issue here apparently, and we were wading our way into the building. Our TV, which was JUST delivered three days ago when we got out household goods was hit by lightning that morning too. It fried our TV and DVR box. Crazy morning indeed!
Here is Colin ready for school before the rain started...

Here we are in Mrs. Tominez's First Grade room ready to start school!

Here is Colin getting on the bus, second day of school...more excited than the first day! LOL

Seven Months Old!

Caleb is seven months today. He is about 19 pounds, wearing mostly 9 month clothes and silly all the time. He loves to talk and socialize and laughs at everything. He's started eating some oatmeal and cereal puffs and thinks they are just ok. He hasn't completely caught on to the food craze just yet. He celebrated 7 months by showing off his masterful pooping abilities. Do you know anyone who can poop up to their armpits? I do!! We got to the BX and pulled Caleb out of his car seat to discover he had exploded in there. There was nothing to do but take him to the family bathroom, tag team him and bathe him in the sink! LOL

Look Out Fish

With Colin's new rod and reel he and Shelby got up extra early to head out fishing. Here are some pictures they sent me while out there.

They didn't catch anything this time, but I'm sure they'll get the hang of it soon!

Colin Turns SIX!

I can't believe it's been SIX years already, wow! Having a birthday in a brand new place with no friends and in a house with no furniture isn't ideal. We did our best to make it fun and special for him. The night before his birthday we took him to a fishing shop and bought he and Shelby fishing rods. He has been dying to go fishing since we lived at Lajes, so he was very excited to pick out his own rod and reel!

He was woke up by us blasting the birthday song on the ipad and spraying him with silly string. The night before we had filled his room with balloons. He lost another tooth the night before too, so he got a special birthday 5 dollar bill from the Tooth Fairy with a fancy happy birthday note from her. We usually get a dollar for a tooth around here, but a birthday tooth is as special as a first tooth so she went all out. After he was covered in silly string he came out to the dining room and had his presents waiting for him. Some of his gifts arrived in time, but with the move and mail I think a few are still out there. He opened presents, played a little and then we got ready to go to a water park. Except on the way there the weather decided not to cooperate and we had to change plans and head to the movie theater instead. He was pretty excited to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and since we didn't get to see new movies at Lajes it was a big deal. After that we headed over to Chuck E Cheese. Colin had no complaints!

Colin's 6th Birthday

Homeless No More!

Everything is finalized on the house and we moved in today! Our household goods are here but cannot be delivered until Friday the 22nd, so we have a couch, table and a few loaner beds coming from the base to hold us over. I was bad and didn't take "before" pictures of the house when we moved in. Shelby did take video though, so if you are really interested here is a boring five minute video of our empty house at move in. I can't wait to paint those white walls!!!

Colin the Entertainer

When you go out to eat do you get quality entertainment like this? Colin had no idea we were filming him, this is just him being goofy at dinner and loving the song that was on. If you don't know the "singing in the shower" song, it's one of his favorites and he can't help himself to sing and dance when it comes on.

 

Around Guam

If you listen to the people on FB spouse groups stationed here you'd think this was some kind of deserted island they were stuck on. People love to complain and this place is no different. We expected it to be better than they said but not nearly as nice as it is. This place rivals any average size town in the US. They have a couple movie theaters, a couple malls, a huge K-Mart, a Home Depot, loads of restaurants, some familiar chains and mostly local spots. It really has all you could need and then some, anyone who complains about this place should be forced to serve time on Terceira for two years. While Terceira was a beautiful place with lots to offer, it is was not nearly as developed and civilized as Guam. Here are some pics I snapped driving around:

We've been total tourists and enjoying the chain food like Outback, TGI Fridays and places we haven't been able to eat in the last 5 years. We did enjoy a beachside Bar B Q at our hotel one night, it was pretty yummy!

Snorkeling Paradise

We've been incredibly busy with inprocessing stuff and getting settled. When ever Shelby moves to a new place there is a nice long checklist of tasks handed to him with all the stuff he must complete and people he needs to greet. Stuff like go check in at the medical clinic and give them your records, go check in at housing office and let them know where you plan to live, go make sure your family's insurance information is updated and they are enrolled at the new base, go meet the squadron leadership, visit finance and start working your travel voucher from your trip. It's a lot of work. And with this new, less customer service oriented, Air Force we are seeing, it can be time consuming. When we aren't doing that we are running around trying to connect utilities and get things turned on. One thing we found completely hilarious is that every single utility company asked us to draw a map to our house. LOL We already knew that GPS isn't the best here, but paper maps! LOL GPS satellites are everywhere, that is not the issue. The problem lies in that GPS makers such as Tom Tom and Garmin just don't have good maps of this island. We use Google Maps on our phone and it always knows where we are, but when we have to search for an address or a business we are often given the wrong location on the map. We've learned to ask for landmarks and directions to pinpoint the general vicinity of where we need to go on the Google Map and then do our own navigation to get there. Thank God for iPhones! However, we don't live in the jungle, we live in a highly popular subdivision with hundreds of homes, how could they not know where it is?! Not to mention the workers are mostly locals that have lived here all their life, you're telling me they don't know the island like the back of their hand? Sheesh!

But after a long day's work and rat race of completing checklists and drawing maps we come home to this.

And under the water is paradise. It's like swimming in a giant aquarium. Every time we go out we see something different, eels, lion fish, and all kinds of other cool stuff. Here is one of the videos taken during a snorkel trip. The videos do the fish and coral no justice, but you get an idea.

Updates and Island Living

We've been NON STOP since we arrived here. We've been hitting the inprocessing hard and getting stuff set up and scheduled for move in. I've been terrible about taking pictures, but the island is beautiful. We've snorkeled in the ocean a few times since our hotel is on the beach and it is like swimming in a giant fish tank. We have seen thousands of tropical fish and we went right out and bought a go pro camera to start photographing and recording these gorgeous sights to share. Pics and video to come soon. We purchased a car that was waiting for us at the airport when we arrived, that was a tremendous help. I have a 2005 Toyota Sienna (aka the swagger wagon) that is a massive upgrade from my bomb van I had on Terceira. This one has functioning door handles, the radio and the interior dome lights actually work, the heat works too (not that I would ever need it here) and it isn't a beat up rust bucket. Woohoo! We have our rental house all squared away and are just awaiting scheduling of delivery of our household goods. Looks like we are moving in Monday! Thank goodness, because this hotel is amazing, but not where I want to live right n

First Foods

Now that we have arrived and no more travelling we are ready to start Caleb on some real food. His first experience with oatmeal went very well, he tore it up! Most babies spit it everywhere and hate the taste and texture, not this little piggy. He opened wide like a bird for every spoonful!

Hafa Adai!

Wednesday morning we woke up and our flight didn't depart until 2 PM, so we let Colin hit the pool for some swim time, get that energy out now! The flight from Hawaii to Guam is just shy of 8 hours. It felt like forever. Caleb slept a lot and so did Colin, which was a blessing. I can't give any props to United for making it comfortable. The seats are so close together, it was a completely full flight and because Guam is a US territory they consider it a domestic flight instead of an international one and the cheap bastards don't feed you for free. Yep, they have you held captive on their 8 hour flight and they charge you for any food you want to eat. I have a whole lot of feedback to provide United after the three legs of this journey to get us to Guam, but at least it's over for this trip! We left Hawaii at 2 PM Wednesday and landed on Guam Thursday at 6:40 PM. We literally lost an entire day on that flight! By the time we got bags and made it to the hotel we were about as beat as could be. Of course Caleb slept the whole flight so he didn't sleep all night, so it was a rough one for me. I can't wait for daylight to see this place we will call home for the next four years.

Aloha!

We started off our day at 0300 in order to be at the airport by 0400 for our flight. We flew 5.5 hours from Baltimore to LA. Spent two hours on the ground and hopped another 5.5 hour flight to Honolulu. By the time we landed at 2 PM local time Hawaii we were beat. The boys did fairly well on the plane, but entertaining a busy 6 month on in an airplane seat is never easy. We managed though. We found a place to get dinner and by the time we made it to bed that night we had all been awake for almost 23 hours. I felt a little guilty that the only place I really wanted to see in Hawaii was the hotel room and the bed.

America, the land of plenty.

Today Cooper begins his journey to Guam, while the rest of us spend one more day cramming in as much shopping and eating as we can. We hit Walmart before 9 for school supplies and other goodies and were at the mall by 10. We ate and shopped and had no trouble at all spending the entire day in the mall and didn't make it out until after 9 PM when Colin and Shelby finally decided it was time to call it quits at Dave & Busters. Tomorrow we get to be at the airport by 0400!

So long Terceira!

Today we left behind Terceira Island and started off on a new assignment/adventure. A five and a half hour flight and we were back on US soil. Only my second time since May of 2009 and Caleb’s first time ever. We were tired but wasted no time going to enjoy Longhorn Steakhouse! I was saddened to see they have changed their menu since my last visit and they no longer have the chili cheese appetizer fries. What the heck Longhorn?! We settled for some pretty amazing white cheddar stuffed mushrooms though. Stuffed and exhausted we called it a night early. Cooper needs to be at the airport at 0400!