We had a plan for Meg and Kate’s visit: a day in Tokyo to meet them, a couple days in the tourist hotel in Guam to introduce them to the island, a few days in our house to show them our daily life, and then back to Japan to see Kyoto and then visit The Making of Harry Potter before sending them back on their way home to France.

But life has a sense of humor, and all our plans were thrown into disarray when illness joined the party and proceeded to tear through the house, felling Dike, Kate and Amelia in rapid succession. So we lost three days to illness and then a slow recovery. And sometimes I wonder… why does it feel like it’s just us that seem to consistently need to re-construct our plans every time we’re audacious enough to make them? Why does it seem like other people are able to make plans and then… follow them through? At any rate, if we were going to get sick during the trip, it was awfully convenient to get sick while we were at our house, and not some random hotel. And we still managed to fit in lots of good visiting, so we made the best of a bad situation.

Yesterday we were able to start getting our plan back on track. We were finally able to get Meg and Kate out on the boat and share the salt and wind and waves of a typical boat day on Guam. We snorkeled at Coral Garden, went down to see if we could catch sight of the dolphins (no luck there, but the ride along the coast was well worth it anyway), then found a place to put down the anchor, enjoy a stroll along the beach, more snorkeling and a picnic lunch. It was a gorgeous day – the visibility was as good as I’ve ever seen it, and the fish came out to play.

This morning we got up early to fly to Kansai to pick up part two of the Japan itinerary. We’ll have a day and a half in Kyoto and then and then a day and a half in Tokyo. Since we spent so much of our time in Guam tending sick kids and doing incessant loads of laundry, we missed the time we had expected to use figuring out what to do with ourselves in Japan. So we’ll be winging it. Again.

More to come!

{note: I wrote this a few days ago, but we’ve been so busy I haven’t made time to post. As of now we are on our way to Tokyo after a jam-packed two days in Kyoto. I’ll try to catch up, but no promises – the next couple days promise to be at least as busy…}