Week 1: Resolution

I'm 6 days into my Project 52 (365?) and so far I'm keeping up. Good thing, right? It's only the first week! Though I will say that while I took over 300 pictures in the first 3 days, last night I had just finished putting Kennedy to bed when I realized that the only picture I'd taken all day was with my iPhone in the subway station. I will say that I am certain that I will be okay with that in the future because at least I'd taken a picture.

Last night, though, I decided to take advantage of the fact that both kids got up out of bed to go to the bathroom and Kennedy thought she needed to help Cade pick out his sticker for his "potty chart". (On a side note, Cade has had two pretty good days on the toilet! Yay!)

As I said, my goal is to pick my best picture from each day of the week (if I have one from each day!) and then my from those, I'll pick the best one of the week. This week's theme is Resolution and I can promise you that not each of the days reflects the theme, but my ultimate pick for the week should reflect the theme.

This will (more than likely) be pictures you've already seen in the past week since I do tend to post my favorites, and I will link the picture to the past post, so all you have to do is click on it if you haven't ready the whole story yet.

So I apologize if you get tired of seeing them. And if you find that you want to skip these posts or delete them from your inbox, my feelings won't be hurt. It's really just a way for me to track my own growth.

This one is new though...come back tomorrow to hear all about our trip to the National Museum of Korea.

The following is my favorite picture for this week! I love the look on Cade's face, the fact that you can just barely make out Kennedy running behind him, the lights in the corner, and the fact that (though you know it's impossible) it looks like he's looking at her. I think it reflects my Resolution to take more pictures of my family this year and to put more effort into finding the creative perspective.

If you'd like to see more others' work on Project 52, check out the links:

& www.styleberryblog.com 

Finger painting & Noraebang

Yesterday was a lazy day. I feel like it's important to have those on break so that we feel rested at the end. I can't believe we only have 4 days left! I can't complain because this is the longest Christmas break I've ever had. In my whole life. Three whole weeks with no responsibility whatsoever (to my job...still a lot of familial responsibility of course...like cooking, cleaning, laundry...hmm...maybe I am excited to go back to work!).

The kids had been asking every day since Christmas if they could do some finger painting, and since we weren't planning an outing for the day, I figured it would be the perfect day for it. Since I knew that Cade would end up with paint on his face! I think he's working on the cause and effect here.

I got to out to dinner with a group of the YISS moms last night, too.

I had to get to Soonchunyang Hospital by myself, which was a little stressful for me. The last time I was there was that first week of school when we got a tour. I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I couldn't have even told you what direction I needed to be headed in. It's a little scary for me to get in a taxi and have no idea in what direction I should be headed. Because, of course, I don't have an accent the taxi driver can understand. He could think I'm talking about somewhere entirely different (so many places seem to have similar names here), so it's imperative that you have a vague idea where you're going. Thankfully, I'd gotten just enough information from Eric and one of the moms that I vaguely knew where I was headed and ended up right where I needed to be (even taking the shortest route to get there!).

The restaurant was really good (just a slight Korean take on the American fare) and was decorated with lots of Seattle paraphernalia which was a lot fun. It felt just like home. Even if the Huskies did have kind of an embarrassing game last week.

After dinner, I had my first experience with noraebang! Noraebang is the Korean version of karaoke. We walked into this place that looked a little like a hotel lobby. We got a room for an hour because we weren't sure how long we would be up for it. So, you take your shoes off (of course), they give you some sweet Korean slippers, and they lead you back to a room that has couches, a coffee table, two TVs, two microphones, two tambourines, and a little round stage.

Unlike karaoke in the States, you're not singing in front of a ton of people you don't know (well, they can hear you through the doors...trust me...it's loud!), you're just in a room with your group. Then you search through the book for the song you want and you get started! Two people held mikes and sang, but we all sang along with them on every song. It was a great time and we had no problem filling two hours! I think my favorite song that I sang with the mike (and yes, I seemed to have it a lot!) was Gangsta's Paradise...oh the memories! We ended up leaving about 11:00 which is pretty late for a bunch of moms with young kids.

It'll probably be another year before I go back, but I'm looking forward to it already! Maybe by then, I will be better with my camera in dim light because these pictures are not very impressive!

Times Square, Seoul Style

Yesterday, we made the trip to Times Square. Before we left for Seoul Tower the other day, I told Eric that would be the easiest trip of our week. Everything else required multiple subway transfers, bus rides, etc. So after our completely unsuccessful trip to Seoul Tower, everything else looked a lot easier.

A couple of weeks ago, one of our friends showed me an easy way to take our little 03 neighborhood bus to get to lines 1 and 3 on the subway. Now that there are fewer transfers involved, everything seems a little closer. We were pretty excited when we discovered that Times Square is only 5 stops away on line 1. A pretty short trip, really.

So, we hopped aboard at Namyeong Station and the kids really enjoyed the ride! This portion of the line is all above ground and when we started to cross the river, Cade yelled, "It's the Han River! Mommy, we're going over the Han River!" It was pretty cute to see how excited he got about it!

Then, we arrived at the station. I'd read that we needed to go out Exit 3, so I thought this was going to be a piece of cake. No problem! Well, it turned out that Yeongdungpo Station is one of those huge subway stations. It's pretty much a mall in and of itself. Can you imagine buying your socks, bras, and underwear in the subway station? Me either, but people must do it because there is one stand after another through many of the subway stations. (We did buy Eric a pair of gloves in one the other day!)

have I mentioned it's cold here?!

Well, we went out exit 3 and didn't find a huge TV screen, any bright neon lights, or any other signs that we might have arrived at Times Square. It was cold, so we went back inside. We wandered around Lotte Mart (also connected to the subway station) while I tried to figure out if we were at the wrong station again.

Then I went back out into the station to wander around and see if I could orient myself. Finally, I decided I would give up and give in to the requests for Krispy Kreme so that the trip wouldn't be a total loss. While the kids inhaled their donuts, I decided to give it one more try by getting on the Times Square website. I finally had a better idea of what I should be looking for and was ready to head back outside.

By the time we got back outside, it was really snowing and the kids were so excited about the snow flying into their faces! We walked about half a block when we saw the sign! It was not exactly what I was looking for, but we had found it and the adventure was not a loss--we found a great place to take pictures, too!

I love that you can tell how excited she is even without seeing her face!

Times Square here in Seoul is really just a big mall. Not the most exciting thing in the world when the clothes and the shoes don't fit you. When you don't really want to spend a ton of money on things to decorate your house (by the way--did I tell you we finally hung pictures on the walls? So exciting!). When you're not hungry because you just went to Krispy Kreme for a snack. And when you aren't sure that you want to spend the money to sit through a movie with Korean subtitles.

I love the sweet expression on his face!

Eric did get me coffee at one of the five Starbucks we walked by before we headed back home. We found the underground path back to the subway station on the way back (through tons more shops), but the kids were disappointed we weren't walking in the snow. When we somehow missed our bus after getting off the subway (it stopped further down than we'd expected and the driver wasn't watching when we tried to wave to him), Kennedy was certain we needed to catch a taxi rather than waiting outside in the snow for the next bus. It sounded like a pretty good idea to us, too.

I don't know if we need to go back, but we had fun and now we can say that we've been to Korea's Times Square!

Entered in my favorite photo of January 2012 at thepapermama.com. 

Not Me Monday: Seoul Tower

My mood did not perk up just a little bit this afternoon when my husband reminded me that the events of today would be perfect for Not Me Monday!




First off, we have not been really lazy about getting out of the house and seeing the many, many things there are to see here in Seoul. We have not whined about how cold it is outside and decided that it is just not worth it to get all bundled up and go outside! So, the last time Eric said that he needed more notice and we could not just get up and go to Seoul Tower, I put it on the calendar! Yesterday was that day!

the tower is behind the cable car that you can barely see!

We did not look up how to get to Seoul Tower in one of the tourist books we have on the shelf. After 7 months, we know how to get everywhere of importance here! Then, I did not decide that I already knew the best way, so we just hopped on the bus that stops closest to our apartment. We did not get off the bus at Exit 4 of what I did not mistake for Myeongdong station. We did not explore the area looking for the glass elevator before I checked to see whether or not we were outside of Myeongdong station. Upon realizing that we were not outside Myeongdong station, we did not decide that we knew the fastest way to  Myeongdong station and head out in what was not the right direction. We did not end up walking around an entire (huge) city block (or 2) before eventually running into Myeongdong station (It was most certainly not by accident. I knew exactly where we were going.) We did not decide to follow the sign we saw which did not take us directly to the elevator. We did not finally spy the elevator just yards away from one of the closest bus stops at which we could have gotten off.

Because it was so cold and our children were so whiney, we did not decide that we would march up to that elevator in spite of how tired we were. We did not climb those 75 stairs up to the top when we discovered that the elevator is closed on Mondays (we would never head somewhere on a day when it might be closed!). And, we did not decide that we were not going to take the last step of actually buying the tickets and riding the cable car up to Seoul Tower because it was not really cloudy and hazy out. We did not decide that now that we know how easy it is to get there (literally ONE bus stop away from our house!), that we can go any day that the weather is clear (well, except maybe Monday). Maybe next time it will look a little more like this....

Nope, we did not do any of these things. We stayed in our sweats in our nice, warm apartment because we would never traipse around the city with our two kids in tow when it is 25 degrees outside.

Panang Curry with Beef

I just have to tell you about the new meal that I tried tonight because it was so delicious! I don't make a lot of Thai food myself. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just because it's so good at the restaurant!

Recently, though, I've been inspired by Pinterest...which I guess is good because otherwise it would a royal waste of time. Seriously. I spend way too much time on it. I'll just give you the recipe here, so you don't have to worry about wasting your time on Pinterest!

In the case of the Panang Curry, though, Pinterest really came through for me. I pinned it, one of my friends at school saw the pin, and said she'd just recently picked some up. She said she'd bring it to me (because she was also bringing something else). This is the friend who took me to Baking Alley. I'm seriously indebted to her!

So, I'd been planning to make it for a few days now and finally got around to it tonight. It was so good and so easy.

And everyone enjoyed it (well, at least Kennedy tried it)! Especially Cade the Carnivore!