Thanks, Earl - she's put in as much practice time over the last few days as she normally does in a couple weeks...
You're right about Kala and Lanikai being pretty much the standard among the better mass-produced ukes - a couple of the more proficient players in our group own examples in one or more different sizes/woods, and I own a Lanikai concert banjolele myself; as I said, I suspect that much of Ohana's quality and reputation result from the fact that, although competitively priced, they keep their output low, standards high, and distribution limited - I'm reminded of the highly-regarded/highly-recommended MIK Peerless jazz guitars in this respect...
I've already made preparations for the drop-G conversion: bought three sets of dedicated strings when I bought the uke, and we'll bring it into the shop for the requisite nut/bridge work when it's time for a string change. BTW I've been aware of this tuning for a long time - learned about it from Chuck Romanoff (of the Maine folk group Schooner Fare) who uses it on tenor banjo, and I've been doing the same for the last twenty years or so; FYI this was a fairly common practice among the better Jazz-Age uke players who wanted to pick up some good-paying jobs playing rhythm in jazz bands - although you lost the low-end extension, most of the time it wasn't even missed when the horns and drums kicked in full-tilt and you laid into it with a hard pick...
Thanks for the link to your uke group website; there's definitely a wealth of info there - which will take me a couple days to digest - and given the number of beginners among our ranks, I'm going to pass the link along to them at our Friday meeting; small correction: GHS makes a dedicated "Hawaiian" light-gauge fluorocarbon set for A-D-F#-B tuning...