Back to School 2011

Ah the first day of school.  I am in that window of time when my two high-schoolers have been gone for an hour, my middle schooler just started his walk up the street to start his day and I have about 10 min of down time before I need to wake a sleepy 3rd grader.  Then it will be 'just-you-and-me-time-baby' for me and Little Girl.  We use that you-and-me phrase a lot.  It will probably be exciting for her for about 15 minutes and then she will be bored.  Because I do boring stuff like laundry and picking up the house. Perhaps we can work some fun in there today, play-dough if she's lucky.  She will be lonely until the kids get home I am sure.

So to re-cap on what has been going on, we just escaped death two times this past week.  First there was Tuesday's earthquake then the hurricane.  The earthquake was the largest quake for this area for something like 100 years.  That is how we roll.  When we lived in Iowa we experienced the worst flooding in over 500 years.  Then in Korea there was all kinds of havoc being flung upon us by the North Koreans with their 'test' missiles.  It would seem that where ever we live there are catastrophes afoot- yet we manage to come through okay.  How about that Irene?  As wide as Europe- are you kidding me?  I tell ya, we must be living right because all we experienced from Irene was a couple hours without power.  From 2:00 to 4:00 in the morning.  Big Girl immediately blamed her sister for turning out the hall light and the bickering woke the parents up.  T commented on my amazing patience with her.  I have a tendency to be... well... extra cranky when you wake me up unnecessarily.  I have been known to bite off a few heads and hardly remember it come morning time.  I think I was feeling sorry for Big Girl.  She has exhibited some symptoms of anxiety lately and I have had to sit the boys down and give them the 'what-for' about teasing and pushing her to her limits.  That girl carries the world on her shoulders.  And if you've seen her then you know her shoulders are pretty small.  I'm not quite sure what to do for her, or if there is anything I can do.  This may just be her lot in life.

Our end-of-summer vacation plans changed at the last minute due to the storms, but we enjoyed ourselves anyways.  We went inland to a water park resort town called Massanutten VA.  We also went to Charlottesville VA to Thomas Jefferson's estate Monticello.  T and I had gone there for an anniversary some 9 yrs ago as a couple.  We found out it's much different when you take a family of 5 kids with you, especially when you take the 3:00pm estate tour right when your youngest girl is ready for a nap and not ready for a tour of our 3rd president's home.  Even though she said quite loudly in front of the tour guide "I want to go home" we made do.  We noted that Thomas Jefferson and Little Boy have a lot in common.  Both red heads, both played violin, both have April birthdays, both very high achieving smarty-pants types.  My son even chose TJ as his famous American character to represent in school 4 yrs ago...   We ate at a great BBQ place with the stickiest floor ever.  We rented movies, we played in the jacuzzi tub, we floated down the lazy river at the water park, we had bad fajitas at Chilis, we bought a generator, we drove through a lot of rain and made it home before the hurricane.  Then it looked as if a hurricane hit the inside of my house for a couple days.  Now it is the calm after the storm as all the kids are at their first day of school.  No I don't miss them yet.  As Little Boy left this morning for his 10 min walk to middle school I called out to him "remember who you are" and his reply was "yes- I am Thomas Jefferson."  Let's just hope he stays away from girls named Sally H.  He's only 14.

What a Trip!

I have noting but good to report about our trip to Utah! It was so pleasant to see family again and to take in the Utah friendliness, majestic mountains, churchy bookstores, and a trampoline in every back yard! There were parties, puppies, chickens, baby bunnies, cousins, hikes, and more. The twins didn't fight. The relatives went ga ga over my children. It was awesome! Here are a lot of photos of our vacation. At least the 2nd half when we purchased a new camera after ours was stolen at Temple Square. (someone has a lot of nerve- and a new camera)...

Dragon Tales

I don't know which ride sounds scarier... You decide.

PS Thanks Busch Gardens for offering a free day each year to members of the armed forces and their families.  Even though we don't drink your beer (or any other for that matter), we appreciate your generosity.  You ROCK!

Hawaii Recap

Did I mention that on our way home from Korea that we did a 5 day layover in Hawaii? I am bad about posting things in order, but it was a trip worth reporting for sure. We stayed at a lovely Hilton hotel, went to a luau, played on the beach, ate lots of pineapple and took in the Polynesian Culture Center with our friends the Ks. They happen to be locals and came over from the big island to see us. It was fun to hang out with them. I was amazed at AK, who as always is bursting with energy and makes everything funner. She was not slowed down by the fact that she was 6+ months pregnant. I decided it's easier being pregnant when you are not 38 watching her as she caught kids repeatedly as they jumped off the hotel beds into her belly. That is not something I did while pregnant with Baby Girl.

Also on an unrelated subject Middle Boy had his 11th birthday. He was one happy kid! In fact I think that the wait for his birthday about killed the poor kid because he went from being quite disagreeable before to being an angel on the day of his birthday. He got almost all the requests on his birthday wish list. With the exception of a BB gun. Mom's not ready to say yes to that one yet. Probably never- I hate weapons!

Anyways- I sure am grateful to have Middle Booy as my son. He is always so good at helping me when I need him. He is thoughtful and funny, and reserved for a boy his age. He loves animals and is a good friend to his brothers. He loves a job and his happiest when working on something. He would rather be outdoors than in, and loves sports of all kinds. Middle Boy has made some good friends in our neighborhood. He is a great kid, and I love him a lot. Oh- he's also one of the best looking kids you'll run across in a day. Unless you see my other 4 that is :)

Disney Sea

The Wildest Ride in the Wilderness

This has got to be my all time favorite ride at Disneyland. I just love the atmosphere and the best part is when they say that it's the "wildest ride in the wilderness!" Although they didn't say this in Japan (unless it was said in Japanese and we didn't understand), it was still a joyful time. I mean just look at these happy faces.

More Disney

Toyko Disney

We (and by that I mean the kids and me), are big Disney fans. So I was thrilled that Japan had a Disneyland for us to take the kids to. I grew up going to the theme park in Anaheim and T grew up mostly camping for family vacations. He couldn't really relate to my tears of joy on our first family Disney adventure when I realized that the magic kingdom in Florida is laid out the same as the one I grew up going to in California. It could have been the post pregnancy hormones, but when I saw that castle and the same Disney parade going on as we walked into the park, I was reduced to tears. FYI- Disney Tokyo has the same basic layout as the other two parks. They really know how to get to you.

You got like 3 feet of air that time dude!

Big Boy was in a good mood as we walked to the subway in Tokyo. Must have been because we were headed to Disneyland!

Pirate Ship

Here's the pirate ship thing we got to ride around in for more views of the famous Mt Fuji (still covered in haze at this point as well). The kids enjoyed playing gameboy on this ship. It was so worth it!

Gondola Ride

Here you see us looking out the window of this Gondola ride included in our tour. This is when you are supposed to really see a good view of Mt Fuji. Instead this is pretty much what we saw. We also experienced a good windy snow storm when we got out. So we spent most of the time remaining (on this part at least) in the restroom and the gift shop. Sigh! At least the guy with the blue streaks in his pony tail was being entertaining. He must have been afraid of heights 'cause he was nervously chattering away the entire time. I think it also could have been my 5 children making him act weird.

Family at Fuji

Well here we are in front of a photo of Mount Fuji at least...

A Pretty Drive

One of my favorite parts of the Mount Fuji Tour we took was the nature scenes on the way there. Even though the weather report was forcast for sunny on the day we booked our tour, it was hazy and rainy/snowy. So we never really saw the mountain. Pretty disappointing, but there was the bright side. Look at this bright side why don't 'cha

What!?

One of Little Boy's interesting personality traits at the moment is that he fails to ever comprehend that he can possibly be wrong about anything. He has a beachball sized blind spot in this area. For example, he will be caught in the act of say eating forbidden cookies and when you say to him "why are you eating cookies?" He will reply "I wasn't!" in the most convincing way while chewing and swallowing. So here is Little Boy on the bus tour to Mt Fuji playing a newly purchased baseball game on his gameboy. He was having some difficulty with hitting the ball or something (new game you know), and he kept repeatedly shouting out "WHAT!?" like to the umpire in the game. Absolutley refusing to accept he was in the wrong (typically). So the tour guide is in the middle of telling us all about the sights and customs here in Japan, and she says that at this restaurant on our left we can purchase a reasonably priced meal for about 15.00 a plate. Juat at that moment Little Boy shouts out "WHAT?!" You had to be there to appreciate it.

Mount Fuji Fun

We recently took a vacation to Tokyo Japan. On our vacation we took a tour of Mt Fuji. This was a fun snowy stop we made. We haven't had this much snow in Seoul for 2 years.

How many times to I have to tell you?!

So we see A here with her newly purchased toy. We got this electronic dog in Tokyo for her. It's leash has two controls on it. One for barking and one for walking. She was playing with it in the airport terminal in Japan while we were waiting for the flight home to Seoul when suddenly there seemed to be a crowd gathering and laughing at her. Not too unusual really in Korea. (the laughing part maybe). She was apparently putting on quite a show. She would push the button making her puppy walk then pick it up and proceed to spank it repeatedly saying harshly "how many times do I have to tell you NOT to WALK!" Then she'd go ahead and make it walk again, setting the poor dog up for failure again with repeated spankings. I must say I had some inner guilt at the situation since she did get spanked (a rarity in our home), during our vacation a couple of times. She just refused to stay on her couch and go to sleep. I also recalled the words I used at the time. Something along the lines of "how many times do I have to tell you...." So we see the power of our words and deeds on children. It all gets taken out on the dogs. I recall thinking to myself several times on this vacation that; vacation time with family is often an exercise in forgiveness. I sure had to forgive E one day when he was in a bad mood at Disney, and pretty much making us all miserable. We decided it was time to head back and I was disappointed, but when I looked at my cold, wet, (it was raining and he refused to wear his raincoat- hence the grouchy situation), unhappy son- I suddenly had a change of heart towards him. I decided to forgive him of his stubbornness and I gave him an underneath dry jacket I had on to warm him up. It was amazing the change in his (and my) countenance. We had a nice ride back to the hotel. So sometimes I fall short, but sometimes I am a good parent. It just depends...

please enjoy some pics of our recent vacation to Saipan! It was a blast.