Birthday pictures, belatedly.

Max turned 3 recently! Yay! We had a fun party for her (in our opinion, at least. You'd have to ask someone else who was there what they thought, LOL.)

Hey, it had lots of balloons. And hot dogs. And cupcakes. And if those don't make for a fun party for a 3 year old, I don't know what does.


In fact, it was SO fun, it wore out one little guy. (That or he was just plain bored. His parents wouldn't let him have a hot dog or cupcake. Poor kid.)

Max got a fun scooter (is the right name? I'm drawing a huge blank here...) It took several guys (Elisha included) a bit of time to assemble it. She also got lots of other fun presents from all the fun, great people who came to celebrate with us.

Things I'm thankful for right now

- Plenty of summer clothes for Elisha!
- Dr. Pepper
- food to prepare for meals this week
- my helpful, amazing, thoughtful husband. (Should have said "Gushy alert!" before that, huh?)
- Plenty of summer clothes for Max!
- The cool and refreshing rain.
- Great internet.
- The fact that summer vacation is almost here for Ryan!!!!

The time had come....

...and we knew it.

We knew it when it took longer to comb and bring out the curls in Elisha's hair then it did to brush the rest of us combined. We knew it when he kept getting called a girl by all the Korean grandmothers. All. Of. Them.

And when HE wanted to put on a skirt and wear it around the house??


And he LIKED it?!?!

Well... it was definitely time. Time to cut Elisha's hair. All those beautiful curls. All that blonde happiness. The surfer look.

Gone.

Employing the motherly arts of distraction and bribery...
He's eating a jellybean... can't you tell??

Okay, so, now Blogger won't un-italicize OR un-bold my typing. I'm sorry. I'm not yelling.

Well, that was anti-climatic. Anyway, here he is. New haircut. Awesome Mario and ... Yooshi? diaper. =)
Ha, and now it's working fine. Whatever. He hasn't been called a girl since his haircut. We can see his eyes AND his ears at the same time. He looks like a big boy.

...sniff....sniff...sniff...

Half an hour.

That is how long it took me to upload these two adorable pictures. I tried this the other day, and got nothing. These two finally loaded.... ARGH.

Anti-negativity: a list.

1) Mondays are normally yuck-o. With a capital Y-U-C-K-O. But today was not.

2) I found one of the Krispy Kremes in Korea!!!!!!!!! There were tears of joy.

3) AND there was a TGI Friday's next door to it!!! Squeeeeeeeeee!

4) Had no major meltdowns on the train ride up or back on our little outing today.

5) Both kids took great naps! (Right up there with the Krispy Kremes.)

6) Lovin' the seriously low humidity. Mostly. Great for air-drying clothes. Not so much for my lips.

7) VeggieTales. And my kids' new-found fondness for these talking, singing, dancing vegetables and fruit.

8) Spring. Love the flowers, the colors, the visual happiness everywhere... it's sweet.

Out of the mouths of babes....

All parents know (or will soon find out once their children start talking) that children repeat what they hear. For better or for worse, what comes out of your mouth, goes into their little ears and then out of their mouths. Some cases in point (all from Max, Elisha's vocabulary isn't understandable to the general population yet...):
- Augh, you're KILLING me! (When frustrated.)
- Oh my goodness, there's people EVERYWHERE!

My current favorite:
(Yesterday I was cutting up hot dogs to put in their lunch, and had to put down Elisha, whom I had been holding. He started screaming like the world was over, no one loved him, etc., etc., etc.) Max: "E-sha, come here. It okay, E-sha. Come read Bible story with me. Read Bible story with me, E-sha. That make it all better."

Love it.

She also says insanely cute and encouraging things:
-it's okay, Mommy. You can do it!
- good job, Mommy!
- it's okay, Mommy, it's okay.

Another year has come and gone

My birthday was a few weeks ago. I'm not telling how old I am now. (Okay, probably because half the time I can't remember and have to stop and think about it.) It wasn't the best day ever- I think because I had high expectations of it, and when you have a pre-schooler and a toddler, you really can't have high expectations of anything. Or, at least, you shouldn't.

The day after my birthday was great, although why it was escapes me at this particular moment...

The day BEFORE my birthday, well... it was crazy. I spent the entire day in Seoul, with Elisha, getting my Korean driver's license. 8 trains, one bus, a billion flights of steps, some nice Koreans, and some amazing help from the ladies back at school, I returned home with my license in hand. Exhausted, grimy, and vowing to never climb another flight of steps again. (Hahaha.)

But, even though it was completely and totally nuts, everything went relatively smoothly, I didn't cry at all, and God was definitely in everything. For example: those of you who know my son know that he doesn't like strangers. Heck, half the time he doesn't like anyone who isn't one of his two parents. Anyway, he and I got the Korean driver's license place, jumped through ALL of their hoops, only to find out that he wouldn't be allowed to go into the testing room with me, and didn't I bring a baby-sitter? Ummmmm..... no.

So a very, very, very nice worker who spoke English, came up to watch him. I figured he would scream and scream the entire time I was gone, and be miserable, but there wasn't anything I could do. So the lady took him, and he fussed a bit, but they walked me to the room where the testing was, and then BAM, she produced a sucker for him and he forgot all about me. Not even kidding. I could hear him laughing with her and being all happy. I got done with the test and went back to down to find him playing happily and not caring that I had returned. I cannot tell you HOW thankful I was for that, and for the woman who took some of her lunch break to help me out. Totally God.