A weekend away

For the first time in over two years, Patrick and I left the kids with someone overnight and spent the weekend together. We are so thankful for John and Nikole Mitchell for taking care of our kids for two days. They were so loved on and John and Nikole learned enough to decide to wait awhile before they ventured down the 'lets have a kid' road. :)

Patrick and I went to Seoul to see two of our friends, Anna and Liz, run in a marathon. We went up early and spent the day exploring a little bit of Seoul, ok really the subway. :) Patrick booked us a room at the Grand Hyatt in Itaewon, one of the 'foreigner friendly' parts of town. It is way up on a hill and you can see a beautiful view of Seoul from the room. Of course, we spent most of the weekend thinking or talking about the kids. We went to Toys R Us and picked out birthday presents for the kids. We love that in Korea, all stores provide free shipping. We got our cart full of toys shipped back to Daejeon for FREE! Awesome!

After Toys R Us, we decided to visit a Korean Folk Museum that was in the Lotte Mall where Toys R Us was located since we can't enjoy those kid of places with the kids.

Below is a picture of Korea's interpretation of evolution. We found it quite enjoyable to see evolution from an Asian point of view. Did you know we came from Asian monkeys? Quite an interesting thought. If evolution is true, did different races evolve from different species of monkeys? Another reason to believe in God's amazing handiwork when he created the human race.

At the museum we got to try making traditional paper art. We made little bowls.

After our adventures, we met up with Liz and Anna in Itaewon. This was their 'night before we run serious picture.' Don't they look ready to run?

The next morning we had a delicious buffet breakfast at the hotel's restaurant, The Terrace, that overlooks the city. Beautiful view to enjoy while you eat breakfast.

Then we were off to see Liz and Anna run their half and full marathons, respectively.

Anna begins her full marathon. She was pretty easy to pick out in the mob of Korean runners.

Liz ran her half marathon. I loved watching her run with her tongue out. :)

After they took off, we had a little fun with Kirstin and Julie who also came to watch. They are cheering Patrick on as he is finishing his marathon in record time! Only 18 minutes!!

Apparently we played around a little too long as we tried to meet up with the runners at the halfway point, thinking if we road the subway we would meet them, but we didn't have much luck. We tried and tried and decipher the map that one of the workers at the marathon gave us and couldn't figure out why we couldn't see it in runners. Of course, it could of been that he gave us a map for a marathon in November!!! Oh well, we made it back in time for Anna's finish but missed Liz. Our camera died so we didn't get any pictures at the finish. Liz and Anna did awesome and walked away with a certificate, a competitor's medal and a frozen chicken!
Oh Korea!