Kennedy's Birthday

On Wednesday, we celebrated Kennedy's 8th birthday. Wednesdays are our busiest day of the week, and this was no exception!

I baked cupcakes for her class on Tuesday. Then, Eric let her pick out Halloween frosting at the international market (taboo since our school doesn't celebrate Halloween!). It turned out that buying frosting was much cheaper than making my own, so I wasn't complaining. Kennedy helped me decorate the cupcakes, of course.

On Wednesdays, I take them to school, so that Eric can play basketball with his friends. So, I drove to school at 7:15, then again at 8:45, and then later at 4:15. Good thing it's close!

She got to share cupcakes with her class during their 15 minute snack time in the morning. They sang "Happy Birthday" to her in 4 different languages--English, Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish. After my short stint in her classroom, I headed to the cafeteria where I spent about 45 minutes catching up with former students, which was a lot of fun.

After school on Wednesdays, they have swimming, so I met them at school to save a little time, and then we walked into Itaewon to have dinner at the restaurant of her choice. This year it was Outback. We're not really sure where that one came from since I think the kids had only been to Outback once in their lives!

Dinner was good, and a nice change of pace, especially since I've been cooking every night these days. We still haven't been to most of my favorite restaurants this fall!

She had decided that she wanted to have dessert at Outback, so I had given away the extra cupcakes earlier in the day (after saving one for Cade, of course). We were a bit surprised when she said that she was just too full to order dessert (enter mom guilt here, as my mind starts to racing as to how we're going to sing and do the whole "birthday" thing without a dessert!).

Eric convinced her to pick up a cookie from Ben's Cookies (so delicious!), since it was on the way back to school, anyway. Then she could wait a bit and get some walking in before she had dessert. She happily agreed.

Wouldn't you know it? Ben's Cookies was closed. As we stood outside, waiting for the boys to come get us in the car, we did some brainstorming. She quickly came up with heading just a little further to the nearest Starbucks to check out their selection. It didn't take her long to choose the chocolate muffin, and no, she had no problem finishing it!

We made it home and then raced (a bit) through the cupcakes and gifts before finally getting the kids to bed an hour late. The one thing that she really wanted this year was the rainbow loom and bands to make bracelets. I would imagine that we're a little late to this party (as we are to most things these days), but she has been having fun producing bracelets en masse in the past week.

We told her last year that she was going to get this year off from having a big birthday party. Obviously, I'm so relieved, since I didn't know at the time that I would be 36 weeks pregnant for her birthday! She had a great attitude about it, and she is very understanding of the fact that this year it's her brother's turn for a party. So, we had one night of celebration, and I think she was pretty happy with it!

Playing Catch Up

Things have been busy around here, as usual. At the moment, I'm feeling that there are so many things that must get done and that cannot get done in the time that I have to do them, that I may as well not even get started. So, here I sit. Blogging.

As I mentioned, we spent the weekend at our staff retreat. It's one of those things that sounds great in theory. And it is great for about a day. That one day in the middle where we don't have a three hour bus ride.

The preparation for it is always more than I would like it to be. We have to pack towels, sheets, and about a million other things for just two days away at the beach. So, we end up with two big suitcases for just the four of us. Ridiculous.

(I think this is my favorite picture from this hike. Our view of Mt. Baker as we hiked up Sauk Mt. You just have to remember to turn around to catch this one!)

Then we get there and all is good. The beach is beautiful. The company is good. The food is decent. The bugs are miserable. The sand is everywhere. The showers are public. And then I wonder whether or not it is worth it. All of the packing. All of the laundry. All of the lack of sleep. All of the catching up.

The thing is that I know it's worth it for the kids. They love the beach, the water, the time they get to spend with friends. The relationships they build and strengthen. I want to be one of those people that can just go with the flow and handle it all. I want to be able to do it for them, but I'm not very good at it.

 

 



I stress when we get home and we don't have any groceries. We have more laundry than can be done in a single week without a dryer. I have grading and lesson planning to do. I have dinners to plan and lunches to pack. I have an apartment to clean and moldy bathrooms. I have babysitters to arrange and open house to prepare for. Life to live, I suppose.

I guess it's a good thing that I make myself take these trips for them. Otherwise, those daily chores may come to define me, and I pray that they don't.

I may live to regret this whole "being honest" thing. I'm really not trying to complain, but something that has bothered me lately is the fact that with this world of social media comes a fallacy. We have the ability to only put our best foot forward. To only show the world the good parts of our lives. I don't want this blog to just be a representation of the best of our lives here in Korea.

The more I look back over old posts (there are ridiculous reasons why we do this--trying to figure out when something happened, what the weather was like, etc.), the more I realize that this is going to be how our kids learn about these years. And I don't want it to be glorified. I want it to be real.

These are the last of the pictures from our hike up Sauk Mountain. It's no surprise that I haven't had time yet to edit pictures for our retreat this past weekend. This little trip actually had its own stories to tell, but I think some stories are better left untold. We hiked up to watch the sunset, but ironically our best view of the sunset was at the base of the mountain after the clouds cleared. Best laid plans!

Hummus 101

So, hummus has been a staple in our house for years now. We love that big container that you can pick up at Costco for about five bucks. My kids have been dipping their carrot sticks in it from a very young age. But that all changed when we moved to Korea.

First of all, Costco does not carry my beloved hummus--or any hummus--yet. I have faith that they will. Secondly, garbanzo beans are hard to come by. And if you do find them, you know, it's about four dollars for a small can. Ouch.

So we've been getting our hummus fix from one of the local Turkish restaurants. Not that I'm complaining. It is probably my favorite restaurant in all of Seoul. Pita, chicken, and hummus? You can't go wrong!

But, recently I heard that you can buy cheap dry chickpeas from one of the local international markets, so I set off in search of the store and the beans. I was able to get a 5 kg bag for less than four dollars! Very exciting! My next task was to try my hand at homemade hummus.

I quickly realized that I was going to have make my own tahini to start which was an experience. Then I realized that my blender is pretty weak and making two pounds of chickpeas (after soaking for 15 hours and boiling for 3 hours) was going to take quite a while in multiple batches. But, after about a 3 hour operation (not including the boiling), I finally had some beautiful, creamy homemade hummus. I adapted this recipe to work for me.

And nothing for dinner at 5:30 on Sunday night except hummus. So, I rummaged through the fridge, took a couple of chicken breasts out of the freezer, sent Eric to the nearby bakery to pick up some delicious pitas, and by 6:30 we were having our own Mediterranean feast. Yum! (Now if only I knew what I threw into that skillet so that I could re-create it!)

Iced Coffee & Homemade Vanilla Coffee Creamer

Alright. It's hot here. And I have been guilty of reverting back to my convenient instant coffee packets. Because they're easy to turn into iced coffee. But, I've been embarrassed about it too many times lately. People at school keep asking me how I make it. And I tell them the truth, but I hate to do it. So, it was time for a change. To be fair, I'd been planning to do this for a while now, I just haven't had the time!

So, the other day, Cade and I walked into town. We got my coffee beans ground at Starbucks, I got the french press back out. And I got to work on my homemade iced coffee. I brewed it double strength with hot water, so that I could add cold water to it to cool it off. Then I filled my cup with ice cubes and added the...errr...lukewarm coffee.

Then came the fun part...I made my own vanilla coffee creamer! I got the recipe from Pinterest, of course, but you can find it right here. It's basically equal parts milk and sweetened condensed milk and then vanilla extract or vanilla syrup to taste. I mixed mine in a leftover pasta sauce jar, and I didn't make her full recipe because I'm not home to make my coffee every day, and I didn't want it to go bad (it's only good as long as your milk is good).

With the remaining coffee, I filled my ice cube trays, so that tomorrow I will coffee cubes. That should prevent it from getting too watered down as it warms up. I also decided to make another pot of coffee to keep cold in the refrigerator just to have on hand. I am SO excited about this! The best part is that I can keep my jar of creamer in the 'fridge at school and no one will ever touch it. Who wants alfredo sauce in their coffee?!

And then there was one...

Today is my first day home with just one. All day. My first thought this morning was that I can't believe how long it has been since Cade and I were hanging out, just the two of us, while Kennedy was in preschool. My second thought was Wow! this is going to be different!

First of all, when Kennedy was in preschool in the States, my schedule was...err...a little erratic, I guess. Some days I would drop him off at daycare at the same time I dropped her off and go to work. Some days we would drop her off and then do some shopping: Starbucks, Target, Costco. My favorite places to spend money! Some days, he and I would meet someone for breakfast before we picked her up. One of my favorite memories is one morning when we had an impromptu breakfast with my dad and my brother. None of those things are going to happen this year!

But, we're still having fun! This morning we laid in bed and read one book after another for nearly an hour before we got up to have breakfast. Nothing like a lazy morning!

 Then we made a race track out of masking tape on his bedroom floor.

I even took him out to lunch at his favorite restaurant as a special treat (Kennedy has gotten a lot of special treats this week!).

Then I pulled a little "suzy homemaker" that you'll hear about soon. And now, he's playing quietly in his room while I should be working. But I'm blogging. I've got lessons to plan and quizzes to write, so I'd better get back to work!

Cupcakes anyone?

I honestly don't know what inspired the face, but the kids loved putting the cupcake wrappers in!

The domesticity continues...last night after getting home from work, I decided to throw together a batch of chocolate cupcakes for this evening's Lost gathering. It's the twins' birthday next weekend and we've done a pretty good job of making sure everyone's birthdays get recognized on Wednesday nights (except Eric's!) in order to provide a little home away from home. I knew I wasn't going to have time tonight to pick up a cake after my workout, so I figured I'd better buck up and try the whole baking from scratch thing again. Thankfully, I had picked up some unsweetened cocoa powder when I ran into it somewhere along the way in the past few months, and the powdered sugar I picked up on my trip to Baking Alley...now I'm going to have to track these things down again!

Thankfully this time, I had the hand mixer, so while I missed my Kitchen Aid, it was so much easier to make these cupcakes than it was to bake Eric's birthday cake! And, I may have made the best cream cheese frosting I've ever had. It is delicious! I'm kind of embarrassed that I've never really baked from scratch before. It's really not that difficult.

Countdown to visas!

Today was a productive day! We finally sent off our visa paperwork to NICS. It was scary because it included originals of a lot of important documents, not to mention 11(!) passport pictures for each of us (x$4 per picture). That envelope is worth a lot of time and money to us!! What a relief to have that done, though. Now, we wait...it will take the Korean government about 4 weeks to get back to us with our certificate numbers, and then we can go to the Korean Consulate in Seattle to get our visas stamped into our passports.
I also accepted the middle school substitute position that will allow me to job share and stay home with Cade two days a week. I've been busy putting ads on Craigslist for a babysitter in Seoul and responding to emails and ads. We'll see how that goes...
All of that, in addition to cleaning the whole house (again!) and baking cookies with the kids. Just when I'm starting to get the hang of this domestic housewife, I'm going to start working more again! Can't wait!