Sum it up Saturday x 2!

I know, I know...I missed last week! I apologize for not updating, but our life was a big fog while daddy finished his time in the field.

So, for the week of the 14th:

It was Homecoming week at Humphreys High School! We had a spirit week full of dress-up days, a homecoming parade, pep rally, powder-puff football game, bonfire and the home football game to finish the week out! It was busy!!! All the students enjoyed the week and were out in full cheering action at the football game. I has the pleasure of chaperoning the dance for a bit on Saturday and they all looked so great and had a wonderful time! Here are a few pictures from the week.



 Cheering on the Blackhawks!!!!

6th Grade Class float for the parade :)

The fall weather has been absolutely gorgeous! Cooper  has loved spending time outside at the different playgrounds

                          

                            

 

 

This week:

Daddy finally got home late Wednesday night! We love having him home. Hopefully he won't have to return back the field until after Christmas. We have been busy getting the house back in order. Cooper has been really testing us lately. he is either causing a heart attack or making us laugh these days. He is standing up on everything, which makes me gasp with fear every second. Sometimes he thinks he can brave and tries to reach for the next nearest piece of furniture only to stand there crying out of frustration. He is also figuring out new things everyday day making us laugh! There is a video of his latest toy discovery! He has also started closing his eyes while he's laughing which just may be the cutest thing on the planet! Although the baby babbling is just as adorable, I'm a bit nervous we will have the child who never shuts up once he can form words! We are having an absolute blast with him and getting very sad as we realize we need to order things to be shipped here in time for his first birthday! Is that even possible?!?!

 

 

Someone got loose while I was getting him ready for his bath!

Cooper figured out how to work his toy from the Sesame Street Live! Don't mind the mismatched pajamas :)

Last but not least, we even got a taste of Oktoberfest here in Korea! The MWR services sponsored a full German Oktoberfest with German beer, brats, sauerkraut and potato salad. The night ended with a wonderful concert by Aaron Tippin. (Think, where the Stars and Stripes, and the eagle flies!)  it's starting to get chilly here at night so we had to bundle up a bit!

Hope you enjoyed our update! Many of you will be seeing us very soon and we can't wait! Love you all!

Sum It Up Saturday!

Another week has come and gone. I am finding this a tad bit therapeutic to know that each week I get to write another entry is another week  closer to going home! I'm not going to lie - the first thing I will do once getting into the U.S of A is get the largest McDonald's Diet Coke I can find! The only thing here is Coke Zero which is totally disgusting.

This week we were pretty chill. Cooper was still having some tummy troubles, so we started him on a probiotic to help calm it down and it seems to really be working well! We finally got to see Daddy for a little bit this week as he came home on Wednesday for a couple days, but is headed back out to the field early next week. While Daddy was home we got to see Sesame Street Live! together. We had so much fun seeing Cooper's reaction to the characters. He was laughing, smiling and bouncing himself all around!

This week he has gotten very brave and decided to pull himself up on anything and everything and use it as a guide to help him "walk". His favorite thin to do is stand up on one end of the couch and walk his way down to other end. After a few tumbles he is really getting the hang of it. Lord help us - I don't believe it will be long before he is able to walk.

Below is a mixture of pictures from the last week. Enjoy!!

Sneak Preview for next week: Cooper and Mommy are headed to Bear Creek Park and the Gakwonsa Temple on Monday! Stay tuned for pictures :)

Sum it up Saturday

Sum it up Saturday (10/5/13)

This was our first week alone while Daddy was gone. It was a rough week, but we made it and are ready for week 2 to start today! First, let me sum up what we did this week :)

Sunday: Cooper and I ventured to the New Core Outlet Mall in Pyongtaek. It was my first time driving by myself and I managed to make it there without getting lost or getting into an accident! While we were there we discovered the McDonald's they have inside!!! Wahoo!! I happened to get an ice cream cone and it tasted EXACTLY like back home! YAY :) The rest of the food definitely did not taste like the McDonald's we are use to, but it's as close to American food as we are going to get! It's also a lot cheaper.

 

While we were at the Outlet Mall we walked over to a Daiso store. This is the Korean equivalent to our Dollar General. Greatest find ever!!! I was so excited to find this place and know that it is only a 10 minute trip from our house. I was able to get lots of additional supplies for my classroom for very cheap! They also have a lot of neat Tupperware containers for super reasonable. Love this store :)

  This stamp cracked me up!

 

I meant to post this earlier and we didn't attend this place during this week, but we have been before! It is going to be the greatest place during the winter. A place called, Little Bear. For just under $5, you get two hours to let your child run and play. It includes a free drink and the workers come out to play with your kids. Such an awesome place!

 

 

The rest of our week was a bit rough. Cooper has been battling a cold along with an upset tummy. There were several sleepless nights, but the little booger is still happy and playing during the day.

 

 I have the greatest babysitter ever! She sends me picture messages of Cooper playing during the day. Makes me so thankful to get to "see" him even while I'm at work!

Last but not least - back to Saturday morning! This Saturday there was a 7k Breast Cancer Awareness Walk/Run on post. Cooper and I attended in all of our pink glory! This was the farthest I have gone running/walking since getting into the whole idea of running/walking. I felt good throughout the run and was able to finish in 50 minutes flat. Not to shabby for pushing Cooper along the whole way!

 

Have a great weekend everyone and we will see you back next Saturday!!

 

Sneak Preview:

This week Camp Humphreys is host to Sesame Street! We will be going on Thursday and can't wait to share with you our experience :)

 





Sum it up Saturday

Time for me to get to business on this blog thing! I have been very behind since I first started the blog and you haven't been keeping me on my toes :) So, I've decided to try a new strategy - Sum it up Saturday. I will be summing up our week each Saturday to keep everyone up to date.

This week:

1. I have officially been in the classroom for one month! It is a very different style of teaching than I am used to and I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate my philosophy into the system. It's taking me a little bit to get into the school year. The kids I have are wonderful! My largest class size is 15! For those of you who are teachers - you are most likely becoming a very green jealous monster right now. I would be doing the same :) They are all wonderful, respectful, beautiful children. I look forward to getting to spend the rest of the year with them. I have learned a lot about the DODEA system and am very, very excited to use some of the technology they have available. I'm getting super teacher-y right now, but they have a Google student account for every student! I have been having students create documents in their drives and send them to me. I then can write comments on them and send them back. It's SO cool! This is the one thing helping me get into the school year.

2. Cooper is growing and getting into EVERYTHING! We have officially moved the coffee table into the guest bedroom to keep Cooper from hitting his head every other second. He loves to army crawl everywhere! I find him trying to sneak into every room we have! Our house is set up with the kitchen in the middle and rooms all the way around. He loves to scoot down our long hallway to get away from Mom and Dad.

 

 

3. Cooper is talking, talking, talking! When he actually is able to form words and talk - we are in trouble! This morning he made a video for daddy while he was out in the field :)

 



4. Army life in Korea is much different and beyond our expectations. I was looking forward to going to a duty station where deploying for the next two years was about as much chance as me sticking to a diet! Little did we know, Andy would be working ALL the time! He works very long hours most days and has missions where he goes out into the field for a week at a time. This time he is going for an extended stay out in the field - a month! We have survived 30 hours so far, haha. I am praying that we make it until the end of October when daddy returns. If you have a moment - say a prayer for us :)

5. Haley - this one goes out to you! I have officially booked my ticket home! I was only allowed three days from the school, so it is a much shorter trip than I had wanted, but I wouldn't trade the short days for anything. I can't wait to see family and celebrate with Haley & TJ! I suppose I should get started on that speech ;)

Have a great week everyone! We love and miss you all!!

My "Mom" Moment

Oprah talks about the "Aha" moment and I wait for my students to have "aha" moments every day. I now have my own "aha" moment which I'm claiming to be my "Mom" moments.

I can remember staring at the clock counting down the hours until the parents were due to be home. I would look forward to bed time after the hours of walking the child around to keep them from screaming crying or playing Candy Land 100 times and continuing to pretend I moved 4 spaces instead of the actual 2. Many times I would say to myself, "How on Earth will I survive with children of my own?"

Of course, all the mothers out there know that once you have your own it's not the same. Yes, there are times when you want to make bed time one hour earlier or pretend you've lost the game completely, but most nights you live for one more hour before they have to go to bed and that they will ask you to play the game one more time.

I've had several "mom" moments - the actual birth, his look into my eyes, his first giggles first rolling over, etc. But the last couple of weeks along with my the realization that going back to work as he is older and wiser than before is starting to sink in. Last night was a true testament to this. My "mom" moment tonight started with our routine. Ok, you caught me. The routine I like to think we have that I try to stick to but the routine that I normally can't really keep to 4 out of the 7 nights of the week. But tonight we got it - bath time, lotion, pajamas, brush teeth, story time and then bottle. Bath time was a blast with mom being more wet than Cooper by the end. Cooper loves getting lotion after his baths. He laughs and laughs. He laughs just as much then as he does when we are brushing his teeth. Most of the time I feel like I'm trying to win some competition to be the quickest 'teeth brusher' on the peninsula. (I can say that now that I live on a peninsula - how crazy!) He has 7 sharp little teeth that he enjoys biting on anything including my finger! We then read our books and got our bottle ready for bed. I was now at my favorite moment. We cuddled in and I gave my night time kisses, he gave his open slobbery 'kiss'. He was so exhausted he took his first few gulps like normal and not the wild 'act like mom hasn't fed me in 10 days' child. By the end of the bottle I cuddled him up and put him on shoulder to pat his back. He looked at me, laid his head down and gave me a pat on the back. A PAT ON THE BACK! Ahh...I could have melted right there. He then laid down and slept an entire 10 hours. This was one of my favorite "mom" moments. Up until now, I have loved him unconditionally since the day he was born, and I knew he knew I was his mom by the way he looked at me and looked for me as I left the room. But tonight - tonight I could feel that he knew I was his mom.

If there ever was a doubt before about "How on Earth am I going to survive with my own children?" That doubt is completely erased. I love, love, love my "mom" moments!

Lessons Learned #1

I title this #1 because I'm sure there will be multiple follow-up posts as I have more experiences here. Last weekend we decided to venture out and go to Osan Air Force Base. They are approximately 30 minutes from us and within our distance we can go without having to have a pass. (Paperwork asking permission to go somewhere.) After our adventure out, here are few things I have learned:

1. To say driving here is crazy is an understatement. Andy is the only one with a license right now and I would be very okay with it staying that way! On post is very much like driving in America and in a way reminds me of New Knoxville as they only have one stoplight on post. Off post is a different story! Side note: We brought my Hyundai Santa Fe and it was like it was meant to be - she fits right in here :). The streets are much smaller than we are used to as well as the laws they have for driving. They have larger highways here that are no big deal, but when you get into a city, watch out! For instance you enter the narrow street cities where motorcycles (more like top-notch mopeds) rule the roads. They will come flying from behind dodging in and out of traffic to get to the front. In their way you think? Think again - they take the sidewalks! After dodging the cyclists we came upon a red light. We of course waited patiently for it to turn green. Apparently these are caution lights. People were turning left on red, turning right on red, going straight even! To blow my mind even more when the light did turn green, no one would turn left on green unless there was an arrow! So, you can do anything when the light is red but god forbid you turn left on GREEN? Ayiyi - I have lots to learn!

2. Korea is not very handicap friendly. Nothing but an elevator, if there were more than 3 floors in the same unit, to help those with handicap needs, strollers or trouble going up stairs. We walked some of the streets to get to the Nike Store and it is just store by store by store with only stairs available to get in. It was a struggle getting the stroller everywhere. I will be taking the baby carrier from now on! Below are pictures of the streets across from AK Plaza.

 

 
 



3. I have learned first hand part of their culture - not being very courteous. There were multiple times Andy and I were and had been waiting on the elevator at the mall. We stood there just back from the doors so people could come off when it stopped. Just as the doors opened people flew up from behind us, filled up the elevator and left us standing outside to wait for, yet another elevator. We also experienced the door policy. No holding open the door for someone here. If you so incline to be so generous you will be holding the door open until the person who turns the light out exits. Also, make sure to watch where you are walking so you do not walk straight into a door thinking the person who just opened for themselves will leave it open for you, not so much!

4. They have a neat system for their parking garages. They have several people who actually work the parking garage. As you enter you will put on your hazard lights signaling that you are looking for a parking spot. (We did not know this, so a garage worker had us put our window down to tell us to turn our "triangles" on! Cracked us up!) When it is time to leave, no hazards means you are just trying to exit the parking garage. Very helpful as you are searching for your spot. When you chose a spot, be careful! They do something called a "double-park." If you are double parking, parking in front of someone so they cannot get out, you will place your car in neutral so the person can push your car up in order to get out and then push it back when they have gotten out. CRAZY!!!

5. I need to lose about 50 pounds and make my feet shrink before I will fit into any of their clothes or shoes. We entered a Nike store and I loved a pair of shoes. Only problem - the largest size for shoes was 6.5 and on occasion they have an 8. haha. I will need to do a lot of online shopping! I also looked at some very cute clothing they had in the mall and asked the sales clerk if she had a large. She smiled and kind of giggled while saying, "Oh no ma'am, we only have small or medium." This may be my final motivation to get in shape!

These are the things I have learned so far. I'm sure there will be a lot more to come and I look forward to figuring them out! We are starting to fill our calendar up with trips to Seoul, Thailand, Taiwan and China. Can't wait :)

Here are some more pictures of our trip out:

Streets along our route to Osan.

 

 AK Plaza - shopping center

 At the top of AK Plaza they have a rooftop view. It was a gorgeous garden area where you could see the city.

 

A large duck statue on top of the roof. Not sure exactly what it was for?!

Cooper with Daddy with the view of the city behind them!