I meant to update my blog on Wednesday...

Now it's Sunday. It's hard to think of where the time has been spent. Somethings about Wednesday I won't forget though, like how I won the Disney Princess Wii game for my girls. They got the game for Christmas, and everyday ask if they can play it. Which mostly means someone else has to play it while they watch and pretend to pay it. It's annoying.



But on Wednesday, I really didn't have any excuses. I simply stayed in my pjs and got down to the business of getting that game won. Belle's kingdom remained locked until all other kingdoms were won. And the fancy golden outfits couldn't be selected until you completed all the other chapters. And oh how they wanted those golden outfits! Sometimes I had to laugh at myself as I methodically worked through Snow White's kingdom, winning games right and left, thinking how good I was at video games, then remembering this video game is made for 3 year-olds. Whatever, I got the golden outfits, and unlocked Belle's Kingdom, and my ladies witnessed with their own eyes the credits rolling on the game. So I had them totally convinced that the Wii could be turned off for a good long time!



And with their sense of completion about finishing the game, they went off and happily and quietly played the afternoon away with their more tangible princesses.




Giving me some much desired quiet hours in my sewing room to finally being the Village Frock that at one point had been intended as a Christmas present. It's nearly Valentine's day, right?




Thursday seems to have passed by in a blur. But on Friday I had been telling the girls it would be our big day to go and get hair cuts. You will recall we've had some hair issues over the course of 2008. Mostly Jane has had some hair issues. One full year later she is finally getting a hair cut that is all one length. Progress!




Ruby insisted that she got a hair cut this time too. She's been watching Jane get hair cuts all year long and feeling left out. Little did she know she had the most coveted hair-do of all, the un-cut hair. But a little trim always does a lady good.

Later that night, dinner was off base at The Pizza Club. We are trying to find more places that accommodate large and loud families. Pizza Club will stay on the list! And after dinner we splurged and took all the children to our favorite video store and let everyone pick something out (each movie sets us back a whopping $3). The favorite pick of the night was by far for George, who has been waiting since before Christmas for a DVD quality copy of High School Musical 3. Thanks to his iPod, he can now sing every single word, to every single song, right along with the movie. Watching George sing along made that movie 110% better. He's got a groove.

Saturday was spent in a whirlwind of basketball games, a primary activity, and enjoying the random 50 degree weather.

But when Sunday morning rolled around, George was feverish and sore throaty. As a result, the majority of us are having to miss church today. Ruby didn't let that stand in the way of modeling the finally finished Village Frock. The "standing still" pose was not making her happy, but the authorized twirling pose made her smile. I'm smiling that somethings really do get finished around here (other than Wii games).

A blizzard.

We are sitting in the middle of a blizzard, Korean style.

The roads are closed and we're snowed in!

More pictures of angels to follow.

A full report.

The first photo in my January 2009 photo album is of this:



These are the colors and the patterns that are the things of my January dreams. It's the source of my inspiration this month. I have no idea what it will all come to, but I could look at this particular pallet all day long. It's all fabric designed by Anna Maria Horner.

And for Christmas, Darin gifted me with her book. It's like the gift that keeps on giving to both of us. Chapter ONE was on how to organize your space, it caused me to do some serious introspection about my sewing space.




And to Darin's total delight inspired me to change it into this:

And after accomplishing such a feat, I was inspired to attempt my first project from her book, the Taxi Tote:





And yes, in Korea's ever vigilant attempt to win me over, one gloomy day at Happy Quilt, there I spotted an actual bolt of Anna Maria fabric. I'm continuing to contemplate buying the whole bolt. My line of thinking goes something like this; If I show the universe that I love it, by buying the whole bolt, more Anna Maria bolts will magically appear. Do you think I'm onto something?! Anyway, the Taxi Tote has come with me to church two Sundays in a row, and that's saying a lot for a tote bag of mine. Me and my totes are usually fair weather friends.

So I continued to sew in January...

Re-attempting the piped pillow tutorial with much greater success and less stress the second time around. Loved the seagull fabric from the Alexander Henry 2008 collection which is also starting to magically appear in Korea!


My second favorite fabric of 2009 the black, white and red ballerina print by Michael Miller. In a peasant dress by Anna Maria.


And another tiered skirt with a flower top. More springy, because winter can't last forever right?

Did you know out of our base in Korea there are flights that go to Hawaii? January is a bit of a rough month around here. Frequently as Darin heads out the door to work, I tell him, "If I'm not here when you get home, I probably went to Hawaii."

He replies back, "Oh yeah, what about the boys going to school?"

And I reply back, "Hmm?" (Like I didn't hear what he said. It's a funny joke every time I do it.)

But someday, and maybe sooner rather than later, I think I really will try to go to Hawaii. More to come on that in the future.

And in answer to the question, "Do you get the US holidays off in Korea?", let me just say that "Yes, we do. And we also get the Korea holidays off as well. Lots of great days off!"

So to celebrate MLK jr. Day, we went sledding. No, there is no snow here in Korea right now, but this sledding hill makes just enough to give us hours of good family fun:

And tomorrow will be the boys last day of school this week due to the Korean New Year celebration. It's one of those weekends when they advise that you not try to travel. So the question remains, what should we do? Hawaii maybe? (J/K Darin!)

And finally a package in the mail from Liz today! That always makes for a great day. The girls were hoping it was full of Barbies and Princess toys. Too bad it wasn't. In an attempt to make them forget that it was not full of toys, I let them spread the felt squares all around the living room....



And then to draw the activity out I told them to find items around the house that matched up with the color of square.



Little did I know that they have just enough of their father in them to make a simple game turn into a bit of a nightmare as Jane could NOT let well enough alone. Every square HAD to have items in an exact matching shade of the color square. Talk about kill joy. I was just trying to distract them, but then I had to fully engage to help them accomplish the task at hand, which wasn't a task at all, but just a game. Those Earnests are all the same, a bunch of perfectionist!! But in the end, each square had a matching item or four. And I now have a WHOLE lot of things to clean up. But, the girls loved it and are still out there playing with it right now. And Jane has requested that we leave it that way forever.

And yes, we push the grocery cart into our house to unload the groceries and packages. Ah, the joys of living in an apartment building!

In all seriousness, the felt squares will most likely be used to craft up some sort of birthday banner for the month of February. We have half of our birthdays during two days of February. So that definitely is giving us something to look forward to next month (other than going to Hawaii).

And with that, I'll wrap up our full report of the month of January so far.

Wordless Wednesday

Thanks!

Isn't it great to be related to super talented people?! I love the header Alyssa. Thanks for the creation.

xo-Annee

Good bye 2008.

We decided to celebrate the New Year with the East Coast (of the USA). So that meant at 2pm on January 1st ( Korea time) we sat down to watch the apple drop in Time Square.

It was the perfect plan. At 2:05pm on New Years Day, I totally had enough energy to make the Wiley's cheese fondue recipe and hang out with the kids all afternoon long. As opposed to 12:05am on Jan. 1st (Korea time), when I was fast asleep in my bed.

So out with the old, and in with the new, is the motto for 2009. Maybe. I hope 2009 will be full of optimism. Less complaining about living in Korea (Darin is pessimistic about this resolution). More consistent blogging. For Christmas Darin made me a Blog Book with all the blog entries up until October 2008 and it is now my most valuable possession. It's a beautiful family record which makes me appreciate anew the act of blogging. We haven't had such a consistent family record in the 10-years of our marriage.



Also, I hope 2009 will be full of fewer tantrums over what to wear. Seriously. Maybe I'll call it the year of "reigning in the drama". (You don't suppose there is any hope of that really, do you?!) With two girls the exact same age, I realize the next fifteen years (maybe 1000 years) of my life are going to be tumultuous at best. But somehow I feel that at age 3, and at 9 o'clock in the morning, I shouldn't have TWO girls who have melted onto the floor crying about what to wear that day. Right?



I have this awesome video to give you a glimpse of what I'm talking about. It's a few weeks old, that's how long I've been trying to get it uploaded. Ruby in particular had been crying about what to wear. My patience was wearing very thin, since it was so early in the morning (not my strongest time of the day). So instead of totally freaking out on her, I decided to pull out the video camera and see how long it would take her to notice that her tantrum was being filmed. I think I captured one and a half minutes of pure girl drama before she realized a camera was involved. Any day that the girls get dressed without a protest, I utter a silent prayer of thanksgiving. If perhaps this refiners fire is about me not showing enough gratitude, I'm working on that angle.


(The outfit settled upon AFTER the 15 minute crying tantrum.)

HAPPY NEW YEAR! It's going to be good, I can feel it in my bones.

On Monday we went to Lotte World.

Lotte World claims to be the largest indoor amusement park in the world. On Monday, we went to check that out. It's probably true. We discovered a few other great things about Lotte World while we were there...

It also has an outdoor section with a castle, thus giving it added appeal to our own Fair Maidens who love a good castle themed park.

But then when it got too cold outside, we could simply cross back over the bridge and find a plethora of fun rides to go on, inside. It was a very handy feature on a cold and drizzly day in December.

Additionally, Lotte World is attached to a mall. A fancy mall. That added a plethora of attractions for the mom. And a lovely "American" food court. We decided in order to please everyone we'd play it safe with Pizza Hut. But then to make things crazy, we ordered the pizza topped with french fries and mayo, a la American?


And then for added intrigue while we were eating our french fry topped pizza we spied a table full of girls wearing Gymboree uniforms! I nearly leaped up from my chair and ran over to become best friends with them. But then, I realized that they were part of the Gymobree "Play and Music" franchise. So, I am still in search of Gymboree in Korea. June was the last time I got to walk into a Gymboree. It's still a little hard for me to talk about.

After lunch it started to rain outside, thus making the lines inside EXTRA long. So then we talked the children into following the sings inside Lotte World to the "Korean Folk Museum". There are no rides in this section of Lotte World so as you can imagine the crowds were much thinner, but you can...

...view miniature exhibits of Korean folk life.

...sit down on a chair for a coloring station.

...and view traditional Korean costumes.

When we could detain the children no longer in the Korean Folk Museum we braved the crowds once again in the "amusement" part of the Lotte World. (Perhaps they count the Korean Folk Museum as part of their overall square footage in their "world's largest indoor amusement park" claim. Our children might disagree with that computation.)

Once back inside Lotte Adventure, Henry convinced us that the now 60 minute wait for the "Splash Mountain" ride was reasonable, since it had been a 100 minute wait earlier.

George lost his first front tooth.
(The second one fell out a day later while swimming, making him a very rich toothless 7-year-old.)

And Jane got accosted by the Korean Paparazzi, and performed like a champ.

She had the whole crowd smiling at the end of her photo shoot. Thanks to Jane for being our sweet blond American Ambassador. Ruby, not so friendly to the strangers with cameras in hand...




And after nine hours of fun at Lotte World Theme Park, it's really amazing that we were still smiling.



P.S. Thanks to the parking lot attendant who stayed late enough to move the double parked car behind us (you can double park in Korea, as long as you leave your car in neutral). We really needed his services after totally shutting that place down!