Christmas in February

Christmas 2013 will forever be remembered as the Christmas where the person formally known as Amy threatened to cancel Christmas and narrowly avoided telling her three year old son that Santa does not exist as a result of prolonged lack of sleep. 

To sum our Christmas up, I lost my shit.  

The saddest part about this was the fact that the incident that pushed me over the edge was there were no new slippers under the tree with my name on them.

True story. 

I tried to blame the Zero REM sleep combined with two cups of Chad's extra strong coffee for the meltdown but in hindsight, it does not make me feel any better.

I think back on Christmas morning and all I see is the three sleepy faces looking peculiarly up at me as I go on some non-sensical tirade about how noooobbooodddyyy cares, everyone is an ingrate, our Korean kitchen can just go up in flames because it burned my dutch baby and how much I. HATE. CHRISTMAS.

By mid-morning, I just wanted to curl up and die with embarrassment.

By dinner time, I wished I could have started the entire day over.

By bedtime, I was happy to see December 25, 2013 come to a close.

Before falling asleep (but after I apologized to my husband), I said a silent prayer asking for forgiveness. I prayed to be a better me tomorrow and everyday leading up to Christmas 2014. 

And I may have put a plug in there about new slippers as well.

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And because I don't want anyone thinking I'm a worse mother than I (admittedly) was on Christmas, I did do a little 1st birthday party for our Ava.
"Party" is used loosely here as it was more of a glorified play-date but it was good food, great company and some Christmas cookies were decently decorated so overall it was a nice birthday for her.

So far my quiet prayer for 2014 has been answered (and I got new slippers in the mail a week after Christmas) in case you were wondering.

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“You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don't help.” 
― Bill Watterson

Calvin & Hobbes

It's Fall at The Independence Hall of Korea

Oh yes. I'm pretty sure that people realize by now that I *suck* at keeping up with this blog. Somewhere between Germany and Korea I quit my job while gaining a child and I just can't get my crap together.  It really makes no sense to me. I worked more then but I have less time now? How is that possible?  I just can't wrap my head around it. So I won't. Moving on. 

It's my favorite time of year again and it's been the pits having to remind myself that I'm not in Germany anymore. Well, technically, it's easy to remember that I'm not in Germany but I often like to close my eyes and go to my happy place. That place is coincidentally in Germany. So there. Anyways, we are making the best of it.

Last month, Koreans celebrated their version of our Thanksgiving (Chuseok). We were told not to plan anything for that weekend because in addition to most things being closed... it's tradition for Koreans to visit their "ancestoral homelands" (thanks, wikipedia) and traffic heading South is a serious nightmare. So we kept close to home and took a couple walks around our neighborhood. 

A few weeks later we managed to get out and visit one of the places I wanted to scope out prior to my parent's visit. The Independence Hall of Korea is about 30 minutes away but it's *FREE* (except for parking) and great if you want to let your kid loose for a couple of hours. It's actually a really large park with about 8 museums on it, all featuring a variety of different exhibits.  One has relics that date back thousands of years while another focuses on the impact of Japanese imperialism. It's pretty much anything you ever wanted to learn about Korea all in one lovely place. Rhett ran for hours and walked up a gazillion steps. His favorite part was feeding the koi (my least favorite). We happened to go on a day that every Korean boy/girl scout troop on the peninsula had also decided to go but since this place is so huge... it didn't bother us at all. Independence Hall also has the largest tiled roof structure in all of Asia. In case you were wondering. We definitely plan on visiting again soon... with my parents... who arrive on Friday. So don't count on much blogging.

Like you did anyways. 

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Nong-seong is a small memorial park built where a fortress use to exist. It's really peaceful and has pretty views of our little town. 

Chuseok dinner, maybe?

The Independence Hall of Korea

The size of these fish really freaked me out. They were practically leaping over each other to get some food. 

I had a request recently to name the foods I photograph so in keeping with that promise... here is Bibimbap with all it's accouterments. It's basically a bunch of vegetables, sprouts etc. over hot rice with an egg. This one had fern stems that I wasn't sure about at first but they tasted fine. Bibimbap is especially delicious when you mix in the chili paste. And of course we had pickled radish and kimchi. 

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For more information regarding The Independence Hall of Korea

go here.

Summer in Korea. Over. Thank you, Lord.

It's raining.
It's not the insane monsoon kind of rain though.
It's quietly sprinkling outside with that funny rain smell being carried throughout our house on a nice, cool breeze.
It's over. 
We have officially survived our first Korean summer.
I couldn't be MORE thankful for this change in weather.
I love fall. I have mentioned this here. Here. Here. And here.
But this fall seems especially promising. A new place. A new home... ripe with possibilities.
I love that time after a PCS (army move) when you've had time to reflect and you can finally breathe a sigh of relief because things are starting to feel more normal.
No one craves more normalcy than those who watched their entire life's possession thrown into boxes, followed by being ripped from your home, transplanted onto another continent, forced to find a house within 10 days of getting off an airplane all while dragging your young children through the military's in-processing brouhaha.
::Sigh::
I'm glad that's over.
And we should be here in Korea just long enough to forget how hellacious it was before doing it all over again.
This crazy mixed up life we lead.
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One good thing about summer that we enjoy every year is Rhett's birthday. I can hardly believe I have a three year old. I still like talking about the delicious food we had for his second birthday. Anyways, because I had no official excuse to not do anything like last year we had a little birthday bash with friends. It was a lot of work but it was worth it because Rhett had a good time. Well... I'm about 90% sure he had a good time in between his time-outs and a pretty long nap smack dab in the middle of his party.

 

----- And Ava turned 8 months old! 

---- The end of summer also meant the beginning of school days in the White household. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this event.

---- And lastly, with all this routine in my life I have no excuse to have a messy house. A housekeeper helps too. Here's what our little Korean apartment looks like with all our belongings (on laundry day) for those of you who were asking. ;)