We Made It!!

Well we are finally here in Okinawa. The flight was REALLY long, but the kids did great! No complaining, and not to much crying out of Danielle. We slept a lot on the flight because we spent the night before in the airport. We ended up boarding the plane at about 3:30 am on Thursday Pacific Time and then we arrived at 6:00 pm Friday Okinawain time, which was about 5:00 am back in the states (East Coast Time) Just try and figure that all out! We had three stops on our trip- Alaska, for refueling; we "deplaned" at an airforce base on the mainland Japan for about 2 hours while they cleaned and refueled the plane; then we stopped at Iwakuni (another base on the mainland) to drop some people off and pick some more up; then from there we arrived on Okinawa. If anyone else ever makes this trip I stongly suggest that you book your own flights out here and then get reimbursed for the tickets later. It would save yourself a lot of time.

I know some of you have been wanting to see some of our Disney World pictures. I tried to narrow it down a little.... we had about 200!

Our first day started off with taking Danielle to the emergency clinic in Pensacola... after a few breathing treatments, steriods, and chest x-rays she was diagnosed with croup. Because of this we had to take it easy with her, a couple of times we had to take turns staying in our hotel room with her. We still had a great time...and so did Danielle.




The kids did well in the hospital, we were only there for about 4 hours!



We finally made it to Disney!! The kids were a little excited to go to our first park... Animal Kingdom.

This smile just one day after our hospital visit...

Caidence loved to see all of the "real" Disney Princess's...Snow White even came up to her during the parade to say hello, and we let her wear her Sleeping Beauty dress to Dinner with the Princess's and when we got on the bus the driver announced that we needed to be on our best behavior because a Disney Princess was riding with us... that made her feel so special!!

Sleeping Beauty is her favorite... and thanks to Grandma Bly she now owns the movie

Cruisin in Dino Land

This was our first encounter with the Characters... Danielle was not to happy about it!!

Our first night out we ate at Chef Mickeys and all of the main Disney characters came to our table to see us.

We can only hope that they remember the fun they had forever!!

Brandoni's 6th Birthday

We celebrated our little boys 6th birthday yesterday... I guess he's not so little anymore!!

The day started by shooting off the rest of Derek's rounds, Brandon's favorite rifle was the 22- it wasn't quite as loud as the other one's!

I told Derek's mom to go ahead and sell these while we are gone, I don't think Derek felt the same way.

We were able to go a few rounds on the slip and slide before it started raining on us.

Caidence wasn't as adventerous as the birthday boy.

Derek's mom worked very hard on making an Optimus Prime pinata for the party..... and it was destroyed in about 7 minutes!!

Crazy Kid!!

Lets open some presents!!

Danielle thinks everyday should be about her.



Now for the best part of a birthday party.

This is my Blog....

Well, lets see if I am able to keep up with this blog better than I did with the one I started when Danielle was born!! I started this one so that everyone would be able to keep up with us while we are stationed in Okinawa. We are going to miss all of our family and friends and hopefully this will be a way for us all to keep in touch. Also, it will allow everyone to watch the kids grow up over the next three years. When we come back from Japan Brandon will be 9, Caidence 7, and Danielle 4. I personally can't imagine my kids being this old (and independent) but I guess it is going to happen.

With Love...