Sew Crazy

This skirt started it all.

Last fall, I had a bright idea. I thought that the young woman group in our church should make modest skirts and have a fashion show. It would be fun and give us a purpose in our activities. Without thinking too much about it I planned an activity to choose a simple skirt pattern. While planning the activity, I decided that I better make a skirt myself since I expected the young women to make one. This is when the difficulties began. I didn't have a sewing machine and I don't know how to sew. I looked for a sewing machine at a few local stores and couldn't find one. Finally, Jim's TA at work ordered a machine online. Ironically, it turns out the machine came from The States (I could have ordered it myself). To make the situation more complicated, it was stuck in Customs waiting for us to pay taxes and tariffs. When the machine finally arrived, it was the day before our activity to sew the skirts.
The activity was one of the most stressful days of my life. Remember, I don't know how to sew and there I was trying to sew on a machine I had never used, making a skirt I had never made. During the activity, one of the young women took my iron and pressed it against the wall. I have a nice burn mark on my wall to remind me of this great endeavor to make a modest skirt. Whew.
It took a few days to pick myself up off the ground from this activity. Eventually, I stepped back and asked myself, "how can I make this work?". I asked for help from some women at church that know how to sew. They very graciously agreed to help, me first with my skirt; and then the girls with theirs. About three months later we all had modest skirts that we had made.
Miriam, my eleven year old could not help but get caught in the sewing frenzy. She made herself a skirt while we made ours. She actually finished hers first and then helped that other girls make theirs. She enjoyed sewing so much that she decided to make a skirt for Anna and Margaret for Christmas. She made the tiered skirts for them. Gracie ended up borrowing a Simplicity pattern from a friend who helped her make her skirt. My skirt was a pattern out of a Scandinavian pattern book that I found from another friend. It is called the Gored Summer Skirt.
In the end, I needed tons of help and thanks to some willing expert seamstresses we finished our activity and I learned that Miriam loves sewing. She made it look sew easy.

Daniel Turns Two

Our district Youth Conference was from December 28-30. I was chaperoning the youth at a military retreat center for part of Daniel's birthday and the two days before. Most of the conference, I was cold and tired and eating yucky food. Serving with the youth of my church often makes me think of the youth leaders I had when I was young. They did so much for me and I was pretty much an unthankful youth with tunnel vision. As always, experience is the best teacher of all.
At 3 a.m. on Daniel's birthday, Jim called me at youth conference to tell me that Daniel was throwing up and had terrible diarreah. What a bummer, it was his birthday. As soon as the sun was up, I raced home. Daniel seemed fine but we just mosied around the house for most of the day. It turns out that the night before, Daniel had eaten five (or more--the eye witnesses just aren't sure) oranges. I think that's what made him sick. Hmmm.
Thanks to Miriam (our official ice cream cake maker), Daniel had a cute cake. It was so nice to be home with him and the family. We played games and opened presents. The best part of all was watching him blow out the candles. We had so much fun watching him do this that we just kept lighting them and singing. It made us all feel two again.

Daniel's favorites:

1. Daniel loves t-shirts with "things" on them, like Thomas-the-Tank or a dinosaur growling. I honestly cannot get him to put on a nice striped shirt. He strongly prefers to have something scary or cool on it. When it comes to dressing, he is very independent and likes to pick out his clothes.

2. He says "Mo" instead of "No" and he says this often.

3. He is really good at making sounds. He makes lots of animal sounds and is adding in other sounds like, "vroom". Miriam made him this "Vroom Plate" for his birthday. He loves it and will not eat on anything else.

4. Daniel is constantly messing around with our DVDs and CDs. It makes me crazy. During the holidays, Daniel made sure that I would not be listening to Christmas music. Everytime I would put it on, he would run over to the player and take out the CD. Grrrrr. That made me mad. One of Daniel's favorite DVDs is Max and Ruby and Little Einsteins

5. Daniel loves lining up his toys.

6. Daniel loves puzzles.

7. Daniel loves books. His favorite book is this huge encylopedia-like book about animals. It is called, "Five Hundred Things You Should Know About Animals".

8. Daniel loves Margaret and always wants to be doing or playing with whatever she is playing with (much to Margaret's sorrow). One day they were spatting and Margaret's finger got slammed in the door. Daniel was so sad and hugged her and tried to comfort her. She turned to me and said, "I'm okay, now. Daniel apologized to me". After all the drama, that statement made me smile because I didn't know he knew how to apologize and I didn't know she knew the word for it.

Snow

Christmas Day

My Christmas Day favorites: opening presents, eating breakfast at the Hyatt, and playing "Blindman's Bluff".

Christmas Eve

For the first time since I moved to Seoul, I decided to buy a turkey and cook it. Shortly after I got home from the store, I realized that my turkey was twice as big as my oven. Hmm.

I told my good friend about my dilemma and she said I could use her oven to cook our turkey (she lives on the U.S. Army Base and has a bigger oven) and spend Christmas Eve with their family.

On Christmas Eve while our turkey cooked, we ate American fast food at the food court, went bowling, and to a movie (Tron). It was fun to see all of the hustle and bustle on base. The stores where crammed with last minute shoppers. It reminded me of Christmas Eve in America. I couldn't help but smile. Who knew an army base could be so much fun?

While the kids and Jim were at the movie, I enjoyed cooking with my friend. Later that evening, we all enjoyed dinner and games and a children's nativity for entertainment.

We drove home through the heart of Seoul at about 10:00 p.m. The math and English academy buses were running as usual. The dry cleaner across the street was working at his usual fast and furious pace ironing shirts for local customers. It was a sharp contrast to the festive atmostphere we had witnessed on the U.S. Army Base.

*My friend's husband had spent a day earlier in the week at the Army Base Woodshop making the wooden top game in the above picture. He got the instructions online. The game was really fun, kind of like pinball and bowling rolled into one.

Independent

Daniel decorating a cookie, December 2010.

The Entrepeneur

James is always looking for ways to make money. One day after school, he bustled around the house with crayons, paper and tape. He then grabbed his leftover Halloween candy and was out the door. Next thing I knew, he was on the street selling his candy. This sale proved to be far more successful than his previous sales. We discovered that our neighbors love American chocolate.

"Margaret" in Lowercase Letters