Korea Vacation

I know. . . I know. Before any of you say anything. KOREA - for vacation!! It sounds insane, but can I just say - Seoul is the COOLEST CITY EVER!!!

For those of you who don't read my random facebook status updates, I am really into Korean Drama's right now. They are really fun and have new creative story lines. After watching a bunch of these I decided I wanted to see Korea for myself. Samuel had gone to Korea a couple of years ago for work and really wanted to go again, so for our anniversary we decided we would take a vacation trip. It was so worth it.

First, can I say, Seoul in the fall is beautiful!!! The girls loved the fall leaves.

We got to see cool old temples and castles.

I love Cala's face in this picture. She finds her dad embarrassing already. :) We got to see some cool old Korean art at the national museum. And, Sam got to try to be art.

We even got to go to the Kimchi Museum. We got to learn about all the kinds of Kimchi (and there are A LOT), and we learned about all the nutritional benefits of kimchi. All of us really liked the kimchi tasting part of the museum.

One of the coolest things we saw was the technology district of Seoul. THey had these cool media towers with touch screens. They told us the news, the subway route, city maps and more. They even take pictures and email it to your home website. We'll show you all that picture later.

Yes there was that whole gun fire and bomb thing up in the northern part of the country, but honestly, it didn't really effect us in Seoul. Overall, it was one of the best family vacation trips ever. We all fell in love with the country and will go back again.

Introducing Da Jeong (Irene)

So, since our life isn't busy enough, we chose to open up our homes to a Korean exchange student from our girl's school (World Mission Christian School). Every year the school takes in students and Australia for a semester and sends our students over there to study. This gives the students chance to learn another language and experience a new culture. Our student's name is Da Jeong, but her English name is Irene. She already speaks English, but she is trying to learn Japanese. She will be staying with us until January 4th. She is such a sweetheart and we enjoy having her in our home. Pray that she has lots of fun with us too. :)

Audrie's 7th Birthday!

My littlest angel turned 7 years old this past week. Can I just say how old I feel right now! Now birthdays are a HUGE deal in my house. They are even bigger than Christmas. My kids could care less about the presents. They actually never ask for anything. It is all about the birthday party.

Birthday party planning starts about three months before the birthday. They plan everything from the location to the food. This year, Audrie insisted on having a pony birthday.

The kids got to learn how to take care of a horse and each one got to take a long ride around the track.

Audrie got to ride two different horses!

Everyone had tons of fun. Already we are excited for the next birthday party day!

Hello Again

Yes, before any of you say a single word. . . it has been FOREVER. But, in our defense we have been insanely busy! Life continues to come at us in all directions, and we are managing to juggle our roles.

So what have we been up to you ask? Well, let's start with summer. This summer was so much fun! We really got to relax and hang out with friends. I worked a day shift all summer, which was a pleasant change and let me get regular sleep hours. My niece, Rayann, came to visit again. We did a lot of shopping and touristy things.

Summer flew by and we got full swing into the rush of life. Sam is fully enjoying his time out of the marines. He grew a beard in celebration.

The girls are doing well too. They are getting HUGE. Cala is in third grade and Audrie is in second grade. They each have their own little cliques and think they are so cool now.

I am doing well too. I am in my last 8 weeks of my master's program. I need a lot of prayer to survive it! I have about a year and 2 months left in the military. Overall, I am just excited to see what life will bring.

I will try my hardest to keep you all updated with all our adventures. We love you all!

TOO MANY HOLIDAYS!!!

So, life again has gotten insanely busy, and it is all my kids fault. Okay, so I am not really upset with them, it is just that they have had entirely too much time off of school. Our children are carbon copies of us. They have these vibrant loud personalities and need social interaction to cure boredom. School is their outlet. Our girls need school, not just for the whole education thing, but also to burn off their energy. Without this, mommy, daddy and the girls all go a little insane.

Well, here in Japan there is a huge love for holidays. Okinawa is notorious for holidays. It is actually nick-named the "festival island". Well, my girls go to a Japanese-American school, so they get the benefit of both American and Japanese holidays.

The first break came with spring break. This is a huge season here because the Japanese school year actually ends in spring, so there are all the end of the year festivals, and then a 2 week spring break. They have this great military beach resort here. So, for the first break, I took the girls and one of their friends out to the beach for a couple of days.

Sam got to relax at home in an estrogen free environment. All i can say is that i must have been insane! It was like i was a camp councilor and personal ATM all rolled up into one. All i did was pay for things and say "NO" all week. The girls had lots of fun though.

So, after we finally recovered from the insanely long spring break, we are all ready for the start of school. Well two weeks go buy and then the girls tell us that they have next week off! We are like "WHAT!!! Didn't you just have TWO weeks off school?!?!?!" Well apparently those two weeks were for spring break. This week was for Golden Week. Golden week is a week where 7-10 different holidays fall right in a row. All Japanese employees and kids get these holidays off, so the week is called "Golden Week". So we had to find a way to entertain our kids for another week. We went to the Pineapple Factory.

Well, thankfully, school is back in session, and there are no scheduled holidays for another 4 weeks -- at least we hope so. :)

And Disney's The Princess and the Frog gets 5 thumbs down

Our family are generally very big fans of all things Disney. We understand the controversy that surrounds the company, but we love the Disney princesses. They are great for our little girls. There movies are all really innocent and fun. Now some people think that the princess obsession is a bad thing. I mean we don't want to create materialistic children. . . right? Well, Sam and I have found a positive spin to the whole princess thing. We explain that because of Jesus we are adopted as children of God. That makes us princes and princesses. With that title comes responsibility. There are some behaviors that princes and princesses cannot have. So the title of princess is one of great responsibility. When the newest Disney movie came out we were so excited. Here is a black Disney princess to add to positive role models of other princesses. WE WERE WRONG. So, to explain our full hatred of this movie, we have chosen to break down the movies suckiness into five thumbs. 1rst thumb down: Animation. The animation in this movie is terrible. The coloring is very dark. The drawings are roughly done. It lacks the clean look of the more modern Disney cartoons. The animation is very reminiscent of the poor 1990s animation move. 2nd thumb down: Music The songs were poorly done. None of them were catchy, and your definitely won't catch your little one singing along to any of the songs. 3rd thumb down: poor character development None of the characters were likable. All of them were shallow and poorly developed so the kids couldn't identify with any of them. Most of them were nasty backwater hillbilly characters that we wouldn't want our kids talking to on the street, much less watching in a hour and 1/2 movie. 4th thumb down: The over use of voodoo Can I just say how dark and evil voodoo is. The movie goes back and forth between over glorifying it with the "good voodoo witch doctor" to showing so much evil with the "bad" voodoo witch doctor. There magic to turn the prince into a frog was done by getting a voodoo skull full of the prince's blood. Later in the movie there is a whole song in which the bad guy conjures up demons to go hunt down the prince. Then there is this creepy dark shadow chase. 5th thumb down: The main character isn't a princess Can I just say that the title of the movie is the PRINCESS and the frog. Ten minutes into watching the poor 1920s black female lead who lives in the slums of New Orleans and works tow waitressing jobs and helps out with a wealthy white family whose daughter is the town princess our girls turn to look at us and say "why isn't she a real princess like the other Disney princesses?" In the end the movie comes off as a poorly put together, mildly racist, eerily evil cartoon. Our advise to you all . . . skip it! Poorly done Disney. . . Poorly done!

Strawberry Picking

A couple of weeks ago the girls went strawberry picking at school. It was a1 1/2 mile walk down the road (really long for kindergartner, first and second graders). It was still worth it. We paid one flat rate and then we got 30 minutes to pick and eat as many strawberries as we wanted. The kids went crazy. We had so much fun. The nurse in me had to cringe every time that the kids picked the strawberry right off the plant and ate it. The farmer swore that it was all sanitary, so I just smiled and turned my head. In the end we all ended up with stomach aches from eating too many strawberries, but it was still a fun experience. :)