spring break, take 2

the "secret garden" was just beginning to wake up for the spring but was still pretty (even with pre/teenagers in it),

& we walked our little & big legs off (training for when natalie gets here?). lunch was in a hole in the wall. biggest & middlest will eat anything these days, littlest was pigging out on kimbap, don't know what 1 got, i got eggs in my ramyuns. bah. i really need to get over this food-a-phobia. i know, i know. i've tried. whatevs.

next we went back to namsan tower. we've been there a lot. that's ok-still cool. we didn't go up this time-just hung out around the base. took the cable car up & back (thanks 1 for not torturing us with that dang mountain again) & got some nice pics. ate some ice cream & just sat for a bit before taking the cable car back down.

so happy to be on family vacation.













he may be-i can't tell.













all but 1













we really do comb this child's hair. everyday.

cables from the cable car. the pics from inside the car of the scenery outside didn't turn out so well. i won't subject you to them.

since i'm already here...spring break! v.1

we decided to take a mini-vacation & head to seoul for a few days. would have enjoyed a more exotic/adventurous locale but as we are a little unsure of our (ok, 1's) employment status in a few months, figured we should stay close to home & well within a miniaturized budget in case we need to get the heck out of dodge anytime soon. so off to seoul we went.

we tried to be adventurous & left the truck home. 1 always gets way too pissed off having to drive to seoul & i'm too much of a chicken to do it so we took the subway all the way up, all the way around & then all the way back. not too shabby but for the lack of seating (maybe next time we'll reserve a seat on the "real" train) & that one time on the way home when the train stopped & everyone got off. more on that later.

we left on wednesday afternoon & got there wednesday early evening.

and we took stellan with us to let his family know that we are praying for him in south korea.

view from the window-"backyard" of the hotel













pretty flowers on the way to the hotel













cherry blossoms! love them!

middlest was in desperate need of some haircare & the salon up there beats out here & osan's by a mile. 2 hours later (and after much griping on middlest's part about how long it was taking), we emerged with straight, washed, trimmed, pretty hair. spent the evening hanging around the hotel. had some dinner & went on up to the room. biggest & middlest has their own room (what was that i said about a budget?) & were loving that. 1 & i put littlest to bed & went downstairs for some grown up time. the waitress sucked. that was the highlight. yippee.

thursday morning i had a massage appointment. still not an american style massage but getting closer. what is the korean obsession with massaging in group & with the lights on? i think that is one thing i will never get used to! after that and some breakfast, we went exploring. first we went here:

it was neat. but we decided that if you've seen one palace, you've seen them all (1 has seen more
than one. i trust his judgement).

the architecture was beautiful,




























































and apparently blogger really dislikes me. and won't let me upload anymore pics. it may be that it dislikes my fancy camera & its huge images but whatever. it's messing with me-has been since last night. so spring break will be continued in the next post.

random

let's see. where to start?

around here we've been:

1-potty training. this is very exciting for us-maybe not so much for you. check the other blog if you want details. i'll get them up there soon. i think.

2-starting baseball/softball. biggest had his first game this past weekend & his first ever in the park homerun. that was pretty cool. middlest has her first game this coming weekend. all her games are in yongsan. that's not pretty cool. traffic in korea sucks. i don't have much else to say about that at the moment.

3-really starting to lose our interest in school. spring break just left (oh, yeah, i meant to post about that...) & summer is right around the corner. we're still pushing through it though-in hopes that we can finish out the year on a good note. exploring new curriculums for next year. no clue what we are going to do. this ought to be interesting.

4-seeing a break in the weather. whoo hoo! it has begun to warm up & littlest & i take the dog out every day (except for today since it was apparently monsooning a few months early). she loves to walk him but has had a few nose-dives as a result of him getting a little too excited & her feet not moving fast enough to keep up. poor baby. skinned elbows & knees. haven't lost any teeth yet-something to be thankful for!

5-my natalie is coming! my natalie is coming! my sister has purchased her plane ticket & is headed to the land of the morning calm. err...will be headed...in a few months. i have a feeling that i may see more of korea in a week than i have seen in 1 1/2 years. she is planning & scheming & reading & interneting & hanguling & i don't know what other PARTICIPLES i can come up with. ha. so far on the list...hiking at a park, DMZ trip, maybe the (omg so frickin dusty i can't believe i'm contemplating going there again) korean folk village, a korean vegetarian restaurant (if we can find it...snort), many rides on the trains/subways and i really don't know what else. i don't think i'm brave enough to drive to incheon to pick her up. i may take the subway up & then the bus back. which also means i have to keep her awake on the bus. ahem. i have trouble staying awake on the bus. this ought to be interesting. but we're excited to see her & show her this place that we have temporarily adopted as home. i hope my legs can take it. and, oh yes, she is contemplating NCN. cause she's read that that is what the koreans do. and she wants to do what the koreans do. so we might do that. i'm psyched.

(i forgot what number i was on so i had to scroll back up...i think i have ADD or something)
6-2 festivals over the next 2 weekends. the strawberry festival is this coming weekend. strawberries & a folk village. littlest will be in heaven as strawberries are her favorite. i will, however, be in hell. again with the dusty folk village. this is a different one. maybe it won't be so bad? (yeah, yeah, and i'm gonna have 10 kids before it is over. apparently that question was answered today. ain't happening).

the flower festival is the next weekend. all i know is that it is a flower tour. and biggest & middlest groaned when i told them. these are free tours-with lunch included-offered by the nearest big city in the interests of friendship between us and our host nation. it is a great way to get out & see some things that we may not otherwise know about. we always have a great time on these trips! and maybe i'll actually remember to post some pics & a small summary of what went on. mmmhmmm. we see how that always turns out!

happy birthday, baby

thoughts, ramblings and mourning on the other blog-here-if you're so inclined.

me or them?

so, someone posted a few weeks ago that her bloggy buddies weren't holding up their ends of the bargain. where was her reading material? didn't we know that she needed something to do at work? (not trying to pick on you here, B, just that i've been thinking about this for awhile & your post helped spur it on).

it's nice to be needed. really, it is. but during this long, ridiculously cold, ridiculously sick winter, most of my fodder for blogging has gone out the window. it's hard to come up with new stuff when you get to eyeball the same walls everyday. and visit the doctor i don't know how many times in how many weeks (including the hospital visit we threw in there for kicks) to get yet another nebulizer treatment & some medicine you aren't sure you know what it is or, for that matter, agree with.

and so, the muse is reduced to analyzing the everyday minutiae of life. the stuff of psychiatry journals & parenting magazines. and even that presents a roadblock. which brings me to my point (3 paragraphs later cause hell, yeah, that's what i do best!)

why do people blog? is it SUPPOSED to be for the blogosphere? to make sure they have something to do at work? to make sure they have something waiting for them when they open up their readers or just type in your address? i can't count how many times i have read blogs stating that it drives them crazy when people don't blog regularly. that they will cancel their subscriptions or just flat out refuse to visit the URL anymore if there isn't something waiting for them daily.

i guess that is the guilt method? to guilt people into posting? cause, yeah, that totally works for me! i have a reader with Lord-only-knows how many blogs on it. lost of people are faithful, some aren't. it doesn't ruin my day if someone goes missing for a week. it wasn't any extra effort on my part to not see their name on the list. don't read me the wrong way, i wouldn't wish anything to happen to anyone. but life sometimes gets in the way (see my last post & some before that) & sometimes you are too busy cleaning up puke or playing phone tag with the insurance company or pulling the 2-year-old off the ceiling fan or attempting to maybe-not-so-gently push your teenagers into being viable, sensible, friendly human beings to remember to post about the puke, insurance, ceiling fan flier or surly offspring. i get it. i do all of that and more on a daily basis. it's cool. i'll let you slide-no worries. i'll see you around again.

the thing that gets me is that i thought that blogging was a way to blow off steam. some bloggers have important info to share. but lots are just, like i said, posting daily minutiae for the world to read. maybe so we can know that we aren't alone sometimes? maybe so that they can blow off steam and, by typing it out and sharing it, get most of the weight off their chests. because we all know that a sorrow shared is a sorrow divided.

i guess i didn't realize that someone's world would come to an end if i didn't post a little blurb every day of my life. i thought i'd start this & hit it up everytime i had something neat to share or silly to recount. i think that the bloggy greed is another symptom of the world gone mad. feed me, seymour. heaven forbid we rest on our eternally busy tail ends for a time without adding our two cents to the teeming world of internet. we might upset someone's daily balance. forget about our own.

and one final point? i may have sorted out yet another reason for my disinterest lately. posting on here is something of a therapy session for me. where i can bitch about things that have long since ceased interesting 1. where i can put it down on "paper", if you will, which has always helped me work out the details in the past. but it seems i have been located in internet anonymity by more people than i was interested in having know my innermost turmoil. and that kind of turns me off. no longer can i use this therapy session to the best of my ability, for fear that it will come back to bite me in the ass. not interested in all that, thank you very much.

and yes, thank you, i know that i can privatize. i could go to the other blog & selectively privatize posts. i could start yet another blog & leave that one in the black hole where no one could find it or me. and those options really piss me off. i've about had it with this garbage of watching what i say for fear that someone may twist & turn it to suit their own purposes & use my words, my thoughts, my observations & interpretations to shit on someone else just because of some sort of something that i have nothing to do with. i mean, hell, if you can't tell your blog, who can you tell?

see ya in another few weeks. unless something breaks before then.

slacker (again)

i just haven't had the energy to get on here & impress everyone with my scintilating wit & biting sarcasm. several things have happened in the lives of people i'm close to that have sucked up all my time, thought processes & energy. i feel like i'm needed in two places at once for different people and different reasons and i can't figure out how to spread myself between that, the family and school.

i feel as if the world is imploding around me and thank Heaven that mine seems to be, at the moment, shakily stable. and then i feel guilty because what right do i have to have a stable world in the face of all this other pain and need?

i think my girls will be ok. one seems to have a plan that is exciting her more and more each day. the other will cope, as she always does. strong, that one is. and i think there is someone in her life who can draw her out of herself like no one else ever has been able to.

but that won't stop me from worrying about them both. and wanting to sacrifice myself-my sleep, my sanity, my fantastic story-telling skills-to try to plan anything, everything, all things to make their worlds right again. i can't take back what has gone before. i so desperately want to pick up the pieces, turn back time, re-erect the towers that fell but i can't. for one, i can't even hold her hand or rub her back or let her sleep like i so desperately want to. it is driving me MAD.

B-i love you. i hurt for you. i'm glad G is there to do all the things i wish i could.
G-i hate that this happened to you. i'll be mad if you want me to. barring that, i'll be available for therapy whenever you need.

and for other people who will remain nameless for various reasons...i hope things can straighten out. i don't know that there is much else i can say.

awesome!

how can anyone say that God doesn't exist in the face of things like this?

watch them all...in order...it's an hour of your day you won't mind missing. and much more worthwhile than some of the mindless mess on tv. (and, yes, i'm guilty of way too much mindless mess consumption myself-no denigration here!)

**thanks to S from Thursday night Bible study for sharing!