Zachary and the Super Marion Brothers turn 4!

October is a busy month! My little man is not little any longer and has embarked into the preschool years of life. Zachary chose a Mario and Luigi birthday part to coincide with his Wii fetish. Here is my little Luigi all dressed up for his big day.

The spread- popcorn and cake. A Mario cake and mushroom cupcakes.

Mario and Luigi hats sitting on a brick cube made from the ELC blocks. The first clue to our scavenger hunt for Princess Peach is on the brick.

This is probably my favorite cake I have ever made.

We played a variety of games. We went on a scavenger hunt for Princess Peach. Bowser had capture her and hidden her away for us to find. The kids had a great time time following the clues. We had Yoshi's egg hunt. The eggs were filled with gold coins. I made coin boxes for the kids to keep their goodies in.

I also made a pinata to look like a chomp chomp. Zachary was too afraid and didn't even hit it even though he had been looking forward to it all week.

Zachary and his friendsOpening presents with little sister by his side playing with all the leftover eggs in the basket.

Happy Birthday Zachary! We love you!

Shelby Grace turns 1!!

I can't believe her big day has come and gone. Our little girl is growing up so fast. Our little 'ladybug' had a buzzing good time at her party.

Her two outfits for the day- her ladybug attire and her traditional Korean hanbok.

It is Korean tradition for a one year old to pick an object from a group placed before her that will tell of her future. The objects include:
string- longevity
book- knowledge
apple (or another food item)- never go without food
paintbrush- artist
money- wealth
pencil- intelligence

microphone (for the modern day)- fame

Shelby Grace chose the apple....

then the paintbrush. No starving artist here!

The ladybug themed spread

Traditional Korean duk cake with her name spelled in Korean.

Her traditional American cake with her name spelled in English :).

Happy Birthday to me!

Delicious ladybugs

For more pictures go to
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=126845&id=729352306&l=00cec96f2f

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!

Pass the guacamole please!

Shelby Grace is taking after mama with the addiction to avocados and guacamole. I think if we let her she could eat a whole avocado in one sitting. This particular day she ate a half of one before we cut her off.

This video is from about a month ago of her eating guacamole. I guess the avocado doesn't fall far from the tree!

The Korean Countdown

Zachary lost his voice and we loved the way he sounded and we wanted to get him on video. He has learned to count in Korean so he is showing off at the same time. We are also raising the class clown. Watch out teachers down the road, you've got a silly one coming your way!

A little bit of September

My little girl is getting so big!

Big brother and little sister

Look I can eat with a spoon!

Our friend Sarah had her gallbladder removed so she came to stay with us for the weekend. I got to play beauty parlor. :)

Everybody Stand Up!

We may not have been at school for a week but Shelby Grace learned a new trick while we were stuck at home. She can stand up on her own now! Each day she is getting stronger and can even squat and come back up. She already gets into plenty of trouble crawling around. Who knows what life will be like when she's walking. We just know that we will be in big trouble all too soon!

Please look past the crying boy in time out in the background. :)

Yeah for me!

Fish are friends, not food!

Zachary's fish tank has some new occupants. It's been without fish for about 6-8 months but yet he still turns the light on every night to sleep. While we were 'quarantined' we snuck out to HomePlus and Zachary got 7 new fish. We only asked for 5 but the store gave us a couple extra. He picked out 4 blue neon tetra fish and 3 tetra fish that are brown without the blue stripe.


My favorite part of his new fish are the names he gave them. They signify his 3 year old world. The names come from his favorite games on the Wii (Super Mario Galaxy, Lego Star Wars), his new favorite movie to watch (Go, Diego, Go), and his favorite thing to eat in Korea (kim or seaweed and rice).

Blue fish
1- Luke Skywalker (He's never seen the movies- how did he figure out he was the cool guy?)
2- Han Solo
3- Luigi
4- Diego

Brown fish-
1- Mario (He's the teeny tiny fish that we didn't realize we had until a couple days later.)
2- Kim
3- Rice

Welcome to our family little fish!

Pictures of Quarantine

Things to do when you are stuck in the house.

Quarantined

Because of the swine flu infecting our school, we have had a surprise week long vacation 7 days into school in which we can't go anywhere. We've been sneaking out a little bit here and there but not for real long periods of time. We have been trying to figure out things to keep the kids busy. Some are successful, some are not.

• Wii- Of course successful- just have to limit the stressfulness
  
• New scissors for Zachary- exciting and successful until we start cutting things that are not paper
• Cutting and gluing construction paper- successful
• Painting with Korean water colors- unsuccessful- but not necessarily due to Zachary's non desire to participate, Korean water colors just stink
• Building a tent in the living room- unsuccessful- except for the fact that Zachary used the broken clothespin and drove all around the the outside of the tent but didn't go inside. Daddy did have a good 2 hour nap inside the tent so at least it go used
• Making a straw necklace- unsuccessful- Zachary strung about 3 pieces on the string then decided to wrap the string around another straw and make a gun
• Dancing to the Wiggy Wiggy Wiggles- extremely successful- need to do it more often
• Computer buttons for Shelby Grace- successful but not our choice of baby entertainment
• New Go, Diego, Go movies downloaded from iTunes- successful
• Playdough- successful- but of course not Shelby Grace friendly
• Bought a new stacking toy for Shelby Grace- unsuccessful- but Zachary really likes it!
• Shelby Grace follows mommy and daddy around the apartment- in the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedroom...anywhere- successful for her but drives us wild after awhile.
• Trip to Familie apartment's playground- successful- could of stayed long and need to go again
• Pop up caterpillar tunnel- successful
• Carrying a plastic golf ball in your mouth- successful for Shelby Grace but not necessarily safe
  

Here is how we get out our wiggles during the day. We do this song at the ELC and the kids love it so much we have to do it numerous times a day. Check out Shelby Grace's moves in the video. Be forewarned that it might kind of loud so turn down your volume at the beginning to be safe.

This video depicts what we feel like 4 days into being quarantined. We are going crazy with 3 more to go!

Chats with Zach- Episode 16

It's been a long time since we've had an episode of Chats with Zach but that doesn't mean we have been without days of laughter due to Zachary's creative remarks. If only I can remember everything he says each day, then I could write a whole book. Here a few recent Zachary chats.
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This year I have moved down the Early Learning Center to be Zachary and Shelby Grace's teacher. He doesn't quite understand the concept that I am there for good and asks every day. "Are you going to be my teacher today?"
On the first day of school, he went in with me early in the morning to help get some things ready. I was having quite a frustrating morning with the computers and copier at school. I was not being the best example and verbally showing my frustration. Zachary served me a big piece of humble pie when he looked at me and said, 'Mommy, you know you can ask God to help you." Thanks for the reminder son, it was just what I needed.
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Our church meets on our school campus so the nursery meets in the Early Learning Center each week. Someone else was in charge of the nursery this week so Patrick and I dropped the kids off and went to church. At lunch we were talking to Zachary about what he did at church. We were talking about how mommy was not his teacher today.
Mommy- "Did you have fun without me at school?"
Zachary (with confused look on his face)- "No. I played with Seth and Sara."
Mommy- "But did you have fun without me?"
Zachary (still confused)- "But Outme wasn't there!"
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Zachary and I were walking up to school the other day and he was holding my hand. We have a special family 'secret' where we give each other three squeezes either on the hand to knee or wherever to mean "I love you." As we were walking, I squeezed Zachary's hand to say "I love you." He told me to do it again with different words. Not knowing how in the world he would read my mind, I complied with him and gave him 5 squeezes thinking I was saying "You are a cool kid." I asked him what I said to him. He thought for a minute and said,
"May I be excused please?
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One day we were practicing counting and Zachary wanted to keep going very high. We were very impressed that once we got him over the next 10 hump (like, 40, 50, 60, etc) he could continue with the number pattern until he had to change tens again. We made it all the way to 100. We were praising him for the good job and he said, "Wow, that is more than 12!"
Next math lesson, number concepts :).

Our Adopted Grandmothers

The Ladies class at church has adopted my children as their TCK's to pray for. By far, my kids are the luckiest in the world. I know without a shadow of a doubt that they pray for my family every day and they definitely spoil them rotten. Before we left, they had a party for the kids. It was a fun afternoon. Shelby Grace and Zachary did a great job showing off for them and entertaining them by being the center of attention.

Shelby Grace has finally found a 'blanket' to attach to but they are not blankets but washcloths. My child is strange.

Playing with Ms. Margaret

Zachary created this game us everyone to play- balancing a plate on your head and walking across the room. The ladies loved it and joined in too.

Go Mrs. Jackie!

Whoops! You didn't make it as far as me says Zachary.

Go Ms. Margaret!

I love how Zachary had to walk beside each lady to help her out. :)

Present time! My kids are spoiled!

Thank you ladies for loving on my kids and prayign for us each day. We love you all very much and miss you dearly. See you next summer!