Guam Goodbyes

Since we only have a short time left here on Guam, Carlton and I decided to enjoy a couple activities before we left!! So we went snorkeling one last time at Gab Gab

Carlton and I took advantage of daycare on another day to go parasailing! I have never been before but Carlton has. It wasn't as exciting as I was expecting because they had us sitting in a seat instead of using the harness. The seat reminded me of the bench type seat you would find on a ferris wheel. We were very reclined in the seat and had to lean forward to be able to see but we did have some great views!

Our official photo

We also managed to squeeze in a short kayak jaunt before we had to leave to pick up Gavin from daycare.

Carlton was also one of the guys from the boat to receive an award on the pier this past week. He decided to hold Gavin while he was giving his farewell speech to the guys on the boat.

And here are a couple videos of Gavin cruising around! Not walking on his own yet but he's really close!!

We are in our final preparations of leaving Guam. We finally got our itinerary Wednesday, so we now have dates/times for our upcoming flights. We took the dogs up to the Air Force base Pet Lodge on Friday and are now in the process of cleaning the house. The fun part is that our A/C hasn't been working since Wednesday, so it's been about 80ish in the house since then. We've had maintenance out to check it 3 days in a row and they can't seem to figure out what's wrong or how to fix it. The portable A/C units I had previously are all in use now, so we are just having to deal with the discomfort. Super fun to clean with the house at 83 and about 76% humidity. We may end up going to a hotel room one night earlier just to have the A/C!

We had a going away lunch on Friday and got to say goodbye to some of our friends that have been on this Guam journey with us for the past three years. We will miss them!!

Kryse is one of Gavin's favorite people!

Jenn has been an awesome friend!

Kryse has been an amazing friend!

Lee and Carlton - Yin and Yang!

So we fly out of Guam on Tuesday morning and get into Hawaii on Monday evening...gotta love the time difference. We will spend two nights in Hawaii and then fly to L.A. We are going to rent a car there and drive down to San Diego....hopefully purchase a car at a dealer on the way. We will see how the test drive goes. So we should be in San Diego from May 3rd to the 8th! Hope we get to visit with all our San Diego friends before we head on to the rest of our road trip!!

More Birthday Pics & DADDY!!

In my last post I mentioned that we had First Birthday pics taken with Gavin doing his first smash cake and I finally have those to show you!! So here you go!

He definitely wasn't sure what to make of the cake when I first put it in front of him. He loved getting the frosting all over his hands and squishing it between his fingers!

He took a bite but didn't seem interested in eating any at that time. Later in the evening, I gave him a piece and he really enjoyed it!! Most of the frosting was gone though!

We also got to experience our last homecoming on March 30th! The USS Topeka pulled into port and I won First Kiss! The FRG randomly picks names out of a container for first kiss and first hug. First hug goes to the kids of the service member and first kiss goes to the spouse. It means that the service member gets to get off the boat first to greet their family which was an awesome surprise for our last homecoming!! Here are a few pictures:

Waiting for Daddy

First Kiss!

First Kiss different angle

Gavin is surprised!

Here is a link to the article written about the homecoming!
USS Topeka Homecoming

We are whole again!

Smile for Daddy

Hat's a bit big

Daddy, stop talking so much

Now that we have Daddy home again, we took advantage of our first weekend together and showed him the marine life at Underwater World.

 Gavin loved the seahorses!

Daddy has big shoes!

The movers are coming this week, so we have lots of organizing to do before they arrive! We are still planning on putting our dogs in the kennel here on Guam for the month during our drive across the country. United Airlines put out a memo that from April 3rd to the 30th, they will allow military members to fly their pets. That is too early for us to use but we are taking that to mean that they plan to continue the program but will just make some adjustments to it. So we are moving forward with our original plans and hope that the airline doesn't make any changes that hinder our ability to fly the dogs back to the states. Time will tell. I leave you with one final video of Gavin playing in his playpen with his elephant Edgar.

Birthdays and Being Blind-sided

Gavin turned one!! I had some pictures taken with a cake smash before his birthday and hopefully I will be able to share those in the next blog post! His Birthday was actually March 18th but we had a small party for him on March 21st. Mostly adults (of course) but we had three kids join us for the festivities. Here are some pics and videos:

We sang Happy Birthday to Gavin and I had the kids blow out candles on his big cake since he's not ready for that just yet. He had a small smash cake to enjoy on his own.

Smash cake

The bib and hat didn't stay on

The kids were nice enough to help Gavin open his gifts. He wasn't exactly sure what was going on or what the protocol was but he slowly got into it!

Violet helping him with his new Vtech book

RIBBON!!!

So fun...who needs toys?

Anne was a big help in opening all the boxes and getting the books and toys out for Gavin. I think the other kids really appreciated that as well! Overall Gavin had fun at his first birthday. He enjoyed playing with the other kids and really enjoyed the frosting on his smash cake!

Our Superhero decorations!

For my birthday, my parents sent me this dish towel which seems like it will be appropriate in a few months. Carlton got me this card which seemed perfect with the scuba divers on the front!! He also bought me the set of Harry Potter books which comes in a cute trunk! The card he left behind back in January when the boat left and the books he had delivered about a month after he left. It was a nice surprise for my birthday!

As for our upcoming move, we just got hit with a potentially major snag. For those of you who haven't heard, United Airlines has suspended their pet cargo services. They've had a few accidents recently and decided to suspend any pets flying in cargo while they review their program. They are supposed to make an announcement regarding the program on May 1st. I have no idea if they will discontinue the program altogether or just make changes to it. The problem is May 1st is when we are supposed to fly out of Guam! Which means we won't know the decision until after we have already left (it will still be April 30th on the mainland when we leave Guam). So we will be leaving here not having any idea if we will be able to get our dogs off Guam or not. United Airlines is the only company that had the pet flying service. The Air Force Base here does not offer that service and doesn't have the appropriate planes to provide it. There are a lot of military families here with dogs that will be struggling if there is no airline providing this service in the future! As if moving halfway across the world isn't stressful enough, we had to have this wrench thrown into our plans. Ugh!!