Christmas 2012

Merry Christmas from South Korea! This will be our last Christmas in Korea and for me it was a rough day. No, I didn't forget the reason for the season, the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, it was just too quiet for me. For the past few years we have had a house full of people on Christmas day and we didn't today. I already told Jim that we will have to host Christmas at our house next year! Of course we need to have a house first but I am sure that we will by then.  We spend the day playing games and watching movies, even took a nap. I didn't even cook a big Christmas dinner as we just snacked all day long. I think after a few days of fruits, veggies, candy and cookies it is time to change the diet!

I forgot to mention that on Christmas Eve after chapel my mom and I helped with an outreach that our chapel does every year. The chapel wraps up cookies and passes them out to the girls that work in the clubs outside of our gate. It is a great opportunity to spread the love of Christ with others and too see their faces light up when they receive something without asking. A lot of the girls that work in the clubs don't know what they have signed up for as they sign contracts thinking that they are going to be modeling or some other kind of job when in reality it is to sell drinks to soldiers. Sometimes they are lucky to get out of that job but most of the time that doesn't happen. There have been times when soldiers fall in love with these girls and in order to marry them have to pay off their contract! Please pray for these young ladies!

Here are some pictures from our day today.

 This is Christmas  Eve after services. Zane got to pick one gift to open.

What is this?

A remote control truck! He ran it all over the house last night. He will have to wait until the snow melts to run it outside. Thank you Aunt Chris, Uncle Jason, Anthony and Logan!

Battleship from pop-pop and grandma who happened to be on Skype. Zane was checking out a scratch.

Opening the big gift under the tree.

Pulling

more pulling

untying

Cool- a pillow mat!

It works! He wanted to sleep on it in the living room tonight!

playing Battleship with a little hlep from nai nai

afternoon naps while watching movies

Merry Christmas to all!

What do we miss?

Well the time has come for us to return to the states. AT first I wasn't so happy about going back but I am getting there especially as I find more and more stuff for us to do at Ft. Riley in Kansas.  I can't believe that we only have about 75 more days left in Korea. We are scheduled to leave Korea on 2 March at 6pm, Korean time, and land in Denver at 6pm on the same day. It is going to be a long day of traveling and I am very thankful that my wonderful brother is going to put up with us for a few days before we head to Bismarck, ND to spend sometime with Jim's family before heading off to Kansas. And no, I don't have ruby slippers but I do plan on visiting the Wizard of Oz museum! I mean it is one of my favorite movies!

Ok on to the reason for this post. We get asked by many people, "What do you miss?"  It took me awhile to really figure out an answer to that question because Korea is a humbling experience. It is so different from what we are used to in the states that you learn to live with what you don't have and adjust. If you don't adjust, you just make yourself miserable!  Here is goes!

 Food- I am not really sure what I am missing, outside of restaurants, so this is a hard one. I do know that my wallet won't be going with me the first time I step into a grocery store or it will be a very large bill!  I know that we are looking forward to eating at a few different places again and the one thing we have truly missed, okay two, is breakfast out and really good Mexican food, especially tamales! I just don't have the talent to make tamales and I don't think that they would survive a shipment to Korea! We already have Chick-fil-a and Cracker Barrel scoped out and will be visiting both of those places!

   

So outside of food the things I am really looking forward to possibly having again:

a dishwasher- yes we have hands but- I will leave it there!

water that is warm when you turn on the faucet and don't have to wait, what feels like, 10 minutes for it to heat up and a bathroom that doesn't feel like a meat locker in the morning!

central air- We have ac in our house but it is so expensive to run in the summer time that you only use it at night to make the house comfortable to sleep and you also use fans. 

central heat- I do love having radiant heat, my floors heat up, but the gas prices get jacked up in the winter so running them is costly too! Besides that most of the homes here are concrete with no insulation over the cement! All there is between the cement and the wall, paneling, is air! And we get a pretty good breeze from the windows too. I am very glad we have lots of blankets in the house!

a backyard- you really don't know what you have until you don't have it at all! We have a parking garage to play in, an onion field behind the building and that is about it. We look forward to having a yard for Zane and Maya to play in along with being about to sit outside and just enjoy the weather! 

Storage- I will just leave it at that! I will say that Korea has taught us what we don't need. 

Commercials-We don't have real commercials- they are all put together by the military. We never got Korean cable of we would have had Korean commercials. 

The one thing we are all really looking forward too, seeing friends and family that we haven't seen in 3 years or longer! 

I am sure I am missing or forgot something. It has been one of those weeks and so much so that the other day I washed a load of clothes and forgot the clothes!

Love and miss you all, 

See you soon!

Liz

Sleeping

I love my son, he is a very joyful, happy go lucky kid. Now when he finally crashes, he crashes. This is how we found him last night.

Can you find Zane?

Snow Days

Last week, 6 December, the kids had a snow day. We ONLY had about 2 inches of snow but there was a lot of ice so no school. Zane and I hung out at home playing video games, board games and just having fun. Over the summer I had ordered some plastic beads to use for making our own sun catchers and pulled the bag out so we could do something else that day and well Pinterest is really helping me with craft ideas for Zane. Here is what we made on our first of probably many snow days. It is colder this year than the past two and it snowed much earlier as well.

We decided to make a Christmas tree and filled the tree with green beads, yellow for the star and brown for the trunk.

Zane didn't want to be in the picture.

The finished product before baking.

I did take the cookie cutter out before baking.

After baking in a 400 degree oven for 20-25 minutes.

Zane showing off his finished product. Can you see the tree?

Zane's Kindergarten Picture

Well here it is!  Zane's kindergarten picture! I can't believe how much he has grown up in the past 5 years!  He is a crazy, silly, fun loving young man and likes to make others laugh! It seems like only yesterday that he was born!

Fall Festival and Storybook Parade

For Halloween this year I convinced Zane to be David as he loves the story of David and Goliath. We were able to borrow a shepard's costume from the children's Christmas play a few years ago, made him a sling-shot, non-functioning, and he had a bag of  'duct-tape' rocks.  Zane also had a story book parade at school but he no longer wanted to dress up as David but wear his costume from last year and go as Optimus Prime- the leader of the Transformers. Guess it is a good thing I bought the costume big. We didn't go  trick or treating as Zane isn't really into it and it was raining. It will be interesting to see if he chooses to go next year when we live around a lot more kids! We have to drive to Daegu where the other bases are located to trick or treat, there are lots and lots of people there and it is just madness. We stayed home, had pizza, carved our pumpkin and played games. More fun if you ask me!

Zane dressed up as David and trying to bounce!

He found another bounce house! He would have rather stayed in the bounce house all night then go play the games and get candy!

Zane's spider poem.

Waiting to line up for the parade in his classroom.

waiting in line

Zane's kindergarten class- all lined up and ready to go!

The kids making their way to the back playground.

My handsome little man!

Zane and his buddy TJ.

throwing darts at the fall festival

knocking down the cans- he got them all!

Here he had to find the golden egg and he did!

He was given the directions to get all 3 plinko chips in the number 5 and he did. Wonder how he would do on Price is Right?

Can you guess what you do here?

You got it-throw toilet paper into the toilet!

Waiting for mommy to come over with dinner.

He was trying to eat the doughnut off the string and 

was supposed to not use his hands. Of course the hands came out!

Carving the pumpkin with daddy.

The finished product.

Apple Seeds

I have been meaning to blog about this since Zane and I planted his apple seed and I just haven't. I have the time and figured I need to get it done, along with a few other posts.

A few weeks ago in school Zane's class had a unit on apples. They tasted many different kinds of apples and apple products: apple sauce, apple candy, apple pie and I think you get the idea.

We he came home from school one day with an apple seed and asked if we could plant the seed. I had to ask him where and he said in the field behind the house. I figured that was a good idea since it was home to soybeans at the time and is now full of onions.  After we got home from school he went upstairs to find his shovel and get some water. Here are the pictures that go along with the planting.

Zane with seed in hand, ready to get started.

The apple seed.

Starting to dig the hole.

We had to add some water as the ground was a little to hard to dig.

Added the seed. It is there trust me!

Watering the seed.

Covering it all up.

My little gardener all finished!

Zane does go out and check on the seed to see if it is growing. At first he was asking every hour if it was done growing. We aren't even sure if the seed it still there as they picked the field and have planted onions. Zane does want to help me plant a garden when we get back to the states and is very excited to grow his own vegetables. I am thinking that we might have to plant a small tree in our new home or start one so he can see how long they really do take to grow!