Isabelle Sr. Green Belt Test

This morning Isabelle had another taekwondo test.

She tested for her Sr. Green belt.

She did great!

I was glad we waited an extra month for her to get extra ready.

She was so excited to get her trophy this time.

Here's a video of Isabelle doing her form.

I love watching her test.

It always surprises me how much she has grown 

and improved in her technique.

You did awesome Mee Hae!

Keep up the hard work!

We love you!

Potty Party!

I had something very exciting happen today.

Most people wouldn't even talk about it, let alone be excited about it.

Other mother's will completely feel my joy.

Lately William has been asking to sit on the potty.

I am not currently potty training him.  As I said in an earlier post, parents that potty train their children while those children are teething are nuts.  I do however let him sit on the potty when he asks to.

Today when he woke up from his nap I went to change his diaper.

When I went to put his new diaper on he went a little bezerk and ran diaper-less into the bathroom. He sat on his potty, which happens to play music if the child successfully pees.  It also works when they step into the little bowl with their foot.  It is a favorite toy of Williams right now.  I am running off course.  He sat on his potty and low and behold what always happens when someone sits on a potty?  My cell phone rings of course!  I told William "You stay here, I'll be right back."  I don't know why I bother saying those things, because he rarely if ever obeys. I ran downstairs to get my phone and that's when I heard the potty music followed by William screaming. I ran back upstairs and he was just standing there staring at his potty.  He was frightened because it had never played the music without his foot inside the bowl before.  I looked in the bowl and sure enough - we struck gold!  I turned into crazy excited mom and William clapped his hands along with me not really knowing why.  

Did I overreact?  For sure.

Did I just give you too much information?
Yes.  It's your fault for reading a post titled "potty party".

Will I start officially potty training him now?
No way Jose!  I figure this boy is going to train himself!

Does it sometimes pay to have a compulsive neat freak for a son?
You betcha!

Here is William with a congratulatory chocolate chip cookie.

 

Today he made one small step for baby and one giant leap towards big boyhood!

Did I mention I am a little excited about this?

The Past Few Days.

I have been terrible about blogging this last week or so.

I blame it on July and vacation.

So here is what we've been up to the last few days.

Here's Isabelle helping me make Kimchi.

 

Here are the kids playing in a big dirty box.

I wanted to close the doors and leave them there for a while,

but I am pretty sure that would be child abuse, so I restrained myself.

 

This is William doing push ups.

 

 

Just kidding, it was actually William having a temper tantrum in the driveway.

He began this in the sun, after about 10 seconds he decided it would be better to finish it in the shade.

They just had to help Grandpa with the tractor.

 

I doubt he could have done it without them.

 

What is it about machinery and dirt that attracts children?

William inspected the lights for us.

 

Luckily for us they were just fine.

He also got his arm stuck in his dump truck.

Luckily for him I pulled it out without the aide of butter or dish soap.

The weather was so nice that swimming became a necessity.

 

And a little art occurred too.

 

That pretty much wraps up the last few days for us.

Holy Moley!

My least favorite part of being a parent (so far) is teething.

I really hate it.  I am pretty sure my children hate it too.

It takes over a year to get it over with and done.

Somehow it always catches me by surprise.  

I think things like "Why have I changed 8 poopie diapers today?" and "When did my child get such a nasty personality?  Could he have been possessed by demons?"

Then within a few days I see their new tooth pop up and I think "How long have I been a parent, shouldn't I know what's going on by now?"  This thought is followed by massive amounts of guilt for not being patient, loving and understanding with the little demon.

Liam has had 2 molars break through in the last week and I think the last 2 are well on their way.  

Molars are like the final test just to make sure you had fun with the entire teething process.

We are probably going to have a party when he gets those last 2 molars in completely.

I also wonder what other crazy parents think when they start potty training an 18 month old.  Really?  You want to potty train and teeth at the same time?  That's flat out insane! 

So Liam this is your mommy saying "I'm sorry I was cranky with you.  I'm sorry teething has hurt you and made you feel all yucky.  You are almost done - keep up the good work, and push those babies up as fast as you can! Love you!"

BOOK REVIEW: THE SILVER CHAIR

Title: The Silver Chair - Book 6 in the Narnia Series

Author: C.S. Lewis

Number of Pages: 243

Number of Stars I'm Giving: 4.5

I would have given this book five stars, but the fact that it takes one third of the book before it gets interesting is a little disappointing.  After the first third it turns into a really interesting story with a few wonderful messages.  It even inspired me to mark it up a bit by underlining and making a couple of side notes!  Next to "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" this has had the most powerful religious messages to me.  The evil queen says just what I think Satan would say.  She is so smooth and easy to follow, and all that she takes away is your soul!  

Eustace doesn't really seem like the same character he was in the previous book so that was a little strange. Jill does a lot of growing up by the end of the book.  I found myself missing the characters of Lucy and Edmund - not Susan though :).

One of my favorites quotes in the book is 

"And the lesson of it all is, that those Northern Witches (Aka: Satan) always mean the same thing, but in every age they have a different plan for getting it."  How blind must we people be to always fall for the same lies, century after century after century?

I also liked when Jill felt she needed forgiveness from Aslan and he told her

"Think of it no more. I will not always be scolding. You have done the work for which I sent you into Narnia."

Those would be wonderful words to hear someday - not from a lion and not about Narnia - you get the point!

A fun and quick book to read if you can get yourself past the first third!

Korean Recipe Experiments

One of my New Years resolutions was to learn how to make

more Korean food than I already do - which isn't much. 

And to learn to cook it better - which shouldn't be too difficult!

So far I have been really terrible with this goal.

That's why I am ecstatic about finding my new favorite website (maangchi.com).

She has tons of recipes that I have wanted to make and she even has step by step videos.

If I can't cook with that much coaching then I am really in trouble!

Today I picked a few of my favorite Korean dishes and after a drive to the Korean market to pick up some much needed ingredients I was ready to go all day!

First I made some Oisobagi Kimchi (cucumber kimchi).

This is my favorite kind of kimchi and I am told the easiest kind to make.

I found it challenging enough for me.

I used American salt for the first part which turned out to be a big mistake.

After I washed all of the salt off about 5 times - it actually tastes pretty darn good!

If it looks spicy that's because it is!  Yummm!

Next I moved onto Radish Soup - I don't know what it's called in Korean.

This is my least favorite thing I made today, but it is still very edible so that's a bonus.
It was VERY easy to make, so hopefully I'll get better at making it and we can have it ALL of the time.

The other bonus about this soup is it's very inexpensive and healthy.

I then started to make one of my favorite Korean Side dishes called Jangjorim. 

I just call it Soy Sauce Beef.  It also has delicious boiled eggs, garlic and peppers in it!

The peppers are more sweet than spicy and the sauce is the best when drizzled over rice.

Last but certainly not least I made Sigumchi - a spinach side dish.

This side dish is no joke.  It's sooo good.  And my kids will both eat plate fulls of it!

It literally takes less than 10 minutes to make, so you should give it a try one day.

Mine always turns out differently, it's hard to get that perfect amount of spinach vs. sauce!

I will certainly be posting about more of my adventures with Korean food!  

Korean food is my FAVORITE - no doubt!

Camping Trip 2011

We got back from camping at Oak City a little before 1:00 a.m. last night.

We literally had mountains of fun.

 

The scenery and wildlife is a big part of why we go camping.

There was wildlife and scenery a plenty.

 

Maybe a little too much wildlife for my taste.

Spider fan anyone?

 

Perhaps vultures are more to your liking?

 

DOE - a deer, a female deer.

And meet her boyfriend - Buck.

 

I also saw many cows. They liked to wake us up in the mornings.

I don't have a picture.

If you can't imagine a cow then you need a better imagination.

I also saw a lizard, but couldn't catch it.

Either lizards are getting faster, or I am getting slower!

Isabelle enjoyed collecting the scenery.

Of course our trip was filled with the usual camping experiences.

Such as...

Hiking.

 

Crossing Bridges.

 

With help at times.

 

 

Four Wheeling.

Does this helmet make my head look big?

 

Now if I could only reach the clutch...

 

Thank heavens for older cousins!

Time for swinging.

 

"Mom, there is something wrong with this swing!"

 

"Ah, being off of the ground does seem to help!"

 

"Let me give you a hand big sister."

Sadly he is too young to know you have to move out of the way after pushing someone in the swing.

 

YIPPEE! 

When you are camping you must eat lots of snacks.

 

 

Good company makes the food  taste better.

 

Yepi thought she had died and gone to doggy heaven.

 

She got held and played with enough to last her 

until next years camping trip!

She also got to find lots of leftover barbecue snacks all over the place.

At home she only gets the droppings from 2 kids, 

but camping she had no less than 7 kids to clean up after!

 

It helps to have friends.

If anyone got scared of the graceful deer coming into camp, 

Yepi became the protector of the campsite.

Stand back - she is one ferocious little puppy!

Shooting goes hand in hand with camping.

Here is Isabelle contemplating how to shoot.

 

No need to worry - she got the hang of it very quickly.

She was destroying targets left and right.

It was very impressive.

 

There is just something so American about shooting a 

gun on the 4th of July.

Some people might think this is child abuse.

To each his own I suppose!

 

We believe in teaching our children about guns and gun safety very early on.

 

The kids were great at entertaining themselves.

 

Anyone up for a game of baseball?

 

This one is always up for anything!

Lets move on to Frisbee.

 

Followed by a little football.

 

Here we have the "boys only" tent with an exciting game of aggravation taking place. At other times this became the "girls only" tent, and many battles for territory would pursue.

After a couple of days Soungsik made all of the kids bows and arrows.

The kids promptly started up the ever classic game of

"Indians and Ninjas"

 

Mostly camping is about sitting around.

 

 

And getting massaged.

 

And maybe, just once, succumbing to sleep.

William was Grandpa's little shadow.

 

But being a shadow does have it's risks.

 

It wouldn't be a camping trip by the sand dunes if somebody didn't get stuck.

 

It was only about 110 degrees on the sand.

Fortunately there is no shortage of nice people in Oak City and 

people came within a few minutes to help us push!

We did lots of other fun things as well.

Of course there were nights by the campfire,

and the always disgusting and messy roasted marsh mellows.

We went swimming in Delta on Saturday and this was the highlight of the 

trip for me because I had 2 teenage girls ask if Isabelle was my younger sister.

"Why yes you beautiful angels!  

She is my younger sister, with a mere 12 year age difference!

How sweet of you to ask!"

I got a little - and I mean little reading done.

Much visiting accomplished though.

I thought I had achieved a pretty decent tan until I came home 

and it washed off in the shower - c'est la vie!

We stopped by the graveyard to visit Grandma and Grandpa's gravesites.

I also have two sets of great grandparents here, as well as my uncle who died on his mission, an aunt who died on the day she was born and my cousin would be only a few months older than myself that died in a car crash a few years ago. We miss them all so much and it's important for us to have them stay alive in our memories and to be introduced to our children.

On the 4th we went to see the fireworks which officially wrapped up the trip.

Liam and Yepi slept soundly through the entire thing.

Isabelle loved it and that made it all worth it.

Now I am off to see if I can rid the car, house, children, pet, clothes etc. 

from all of the camping fun (AKA dirt)!