Happy New Years Eve

Happy New Years!!  This year, we brought in the New Years at 8:00 PM. Our friends, the Jones, invited a few friends for an early New Years party, since we all have kids. We got together and had some amazing food, played games and enjoyed each other's company.

Since the NY Ball doesn't drop for another 13 hours, we had to improvise and use a kid's New Years countdown on Netflix.  The parents had set up a balloon drop for the kids.  They had taped trash bags on the ceiling and filled it with balloons.  After the kids counted down with King Julian from the movie Madagascar, the balloons all fell on the kids.

And, of course, I enjoyed my New Years kiss!

By this time, Little Monster and Little A were super tied.  We took them home and got them to bed.  M&M and Big Sis, on the other hand, wanted to stay up all the way to midnight.  So, the four of us stayed up watching movies and playing games until midnight.

Garden of the Morning Calm

One of Korea's treasures is the Garden of the Morning Calm.  It is a beautiful botanical garden.  During the Cherry Blossom season, is is blossoming with the most gorgeous colors of flowers.  During the winter season, they cover everything with Christmas lights and have light shows.  Since everyone lives in apartments here, there aren't any Christmas lights.  Usually during Christmas time, we take the kids for a drive around our neighborhood and enjoy the lights from all the houses.

Since we couldn't do that this year, we decided to drive to the Garden on the Morning Calm and see the lights there.  Boy am I glad we did this!  The Gardens were so beautiful.  The only downside was that it was freezing.  Super super cold.  Everyone was pretty much triple layered with clothes.  We even had a huge blanket on little Monster.  Pretty much all you could see of him was his eyes.

We arrived at the garden early, around 5:00.  I was told the lights turned on at 5:00 and it's less crowded.  I also wanted to be able to take pictures where you could see the lights and see us in the picture.

You can see for yourself, that is was gorgeous.  I am going to apologize ahead of time, because there will probably be a TON of pictures.

M&M and Big Sis's most favorite part was this huge open field where they strung blue lights to make it look like an ocean.  There must have been tens of thousands of lights on this section.  Sure enough, there was a boat and two dolphins jumping out in full light glory.

And of course, in full Korean fashion, there was a light tunnel.  Everywhere we go, we always see light tunnels.  But, I am so glad, because they are beautiful.

When the sun set and it was dark, the Koreans started to pour in.  There were so many people we could barely walk.  Lines for pictures started to form, and there were no longer views for my kids to see because they are small and people were all around them blocking their views.  We decided this was a good time to leave.  We ended up leaving around 6:15.  I am so glad we got there early.  It was nice to enjoy the lights without so many people and to be able to get some great pictures.  All the kids exclaimed that this was amazing and begged to go back.

Petite France

Since Kevin had a few days off during Christmas Break, we decided to take advantage of this time and do some more exploring in Korea.  We found this place called Petite France that was out by a lake and mountain side that was supposed to be a quaint little town representing a small French town.  We loaded sack lunches, hats, gloves, and coats into the car and went out for an adventure.

It was funny, right away, to see the sign on the building, it was written in English and Korean.  The town really did look as cute as people said it would.

Inside the, well, I guess it would be an amusement park of a small degree, there were performances and puppet shows and demonstrations.  There were also beautiful paths around the property to overlook the lake and see the mountainside.

Along the paths, we found a covered walkway that was covered with lights and was super pretty.  Of course, I had to get a picture.

We found out that the reason this town was build where it was, is because the lake and mountainside it was built on, looks exactly like a real town in France.  There was a building that had pictures showing Petite France as compared to a real town in France.

Petite France would not be complete without its own Eiffel Tower. M&M was so excited when she saw the Eiffel Tower.  I'm not sure why, but she LOVES the Eiffel Tower.

There were a few building, kind of like mini museums, where we could see old French furniture, and art work, and musical instruments.  There were four houses that were decorated like a duke and a duchess home.

We enjoyed the art gallery.  The kids especially liked the furniture that was in the art gallery.

There was also a model room.  It had model railroads and model cars.  Little Monster especially loved this room.  He kept trying to go over the railing to grab the cars.  I'm pretty sure we would have been kicked out if he had succeeded.

One thing about Koreans, which I am sure I have already said, is that they love blonde kids.  I was walking with Little Monster outside and a group a Korean women saw him and they all were picking him up and passing him around.  Each of them were taking selfies with him and cooing all over him.  After taking selfies, they started taking mini-group photo sessions with him.  Monster was just looking at me like, "what on earth are these strangers doing"?  I'm pretty sure his min photo shoot lasted a good 15 minutes.  He was defiantly a big hit and a super star today.

Christmas in Korea!

This Christmas was a simple Christmas for us. With knowing that everything we buy, we have to find a place for it in this tiny government apartment, and knowing that we have to move everything in about a year and a half, we didn't have a huge Christmas.

A few years ago, we started a tradition where our kids only get four gifts to open from us.  The kids will get something they want, something they need, something to wear and something to read.  I love seeing their Christmas lists.  They divide a paper into four and write at the top of each section, "want", "need", "wear", "read".  Of course, Santa always gets them their want gift, the other three are from mom and dad.

As they open their gifts they get so excited and exclaim, "this is my read", "this is my wear"!

It has really brought the focus away from gifts and comparing what they got to their siblings.  It makes it easier for me when I buy gifts for them too.  The kids are never disappointed at Christmas, because they always know they will get four gifts.  Of course, they usually end up with much more because they get gifts from Grandma and Grandpa, and Krista and her family sent gifts too.  And Nana sent gifts.

 Little Monster had a great Christmas!  This was the first Christmas where he began to understand that under the wrappings were something fun.  I also found, at a garage sale, a motorized Tow- Mater Car.  Little Monster loves the movie Disney's Cars.  It was fun to see him get so excited about the car, and somehow he right away knew to push the button to make it move.  So cute!

Merry Christmas Eve Korea!

When you are in the military, your neighbors and church friends become your family.  Especially during holidays.  Our special family during Christmas Eve was the Rust and Weller Family.  We all got together at the Rust house.  We sang Christmas carols, while Tyler Rust played the songs on the piano.

We also enjoyed hot chocolate and Christmas baked goodies as we all talked and enjoyed each other's company.

When we got home, the kids all opened their Christmas pajamas.  We decided to go all matchy-matchy this year, which we have never done.

We did a short Christmas program as a family, then put out the cookies and milk for Santa.  The kids excitedly went off to bed early in hopes that Santa would find us in Korea tonight.

Mirinae Holy Site (미리내 성지)

A family from our church set up a Christmas walk at a local Catholic Church in Anseong, Gyeonggi-do.  The church has the life of Christ chiseled into stone tablets all around the property.  The detail of the sculptures was astounding and beautiful!  There were plaques under all the stones with descriptions, but everything was written in Korean, so the couple that invited all of us to attend with them, had found scriptures and hymns to go along with each sculpture.  It was a very sacred and spiritual morning.  We solemnly went from sculpture to sculpture listening and viewing the life of Christ.  Below are some pictures of the beautiful stones!

At then end of the life of Christ walk, we ended at the church.  We were able to go in and see the beautiful stained glass.  The church was a beautiful church.

We were welcomed by the little Korean nuns.  They even graciously took a picture with us.

Later I learned that this beautiful Holy Site was a place where the Korean Catholics came, in secret, to worship to avoid persecution during the late Joseon Dynasty. The church itself is a memorial to a priest who was executed at the age of 26 and was forbidden a funeral.  The memorial is surrounded by 15 sculptures that we were able to behold.

Gwangmyeong Cave

It's Christmas Break, so we decided to find something around Korea to do today.  I did a little searching and heard about a cave that was about an hour away called the Gwangmyeong Cave, so that was our adventure for today.

When we arrived at the place that Waze deemed was the appropriate location, I was a little confused. No where in sight was a cave, all we saw was a huge factory that was painted bright pink with big fluffy white clouds.  All around the grounds of the factory were super random sculptures and what appeared to be larger then life works of 3-D art.  We were limited on our time, since Little A had Taekwondo at 3:00, so we didn't have time to see the art around the Pink Factory.  We will have to save that for another day. 

I didn't see a cave anywhere.  Luckily, most signs in Korea are in Korean and English, so we followed the arrows to the cave.  After walking up a million stairs and down a long street, we finally arrived at the mouth of a cave!

When we entered the cave, we were immediately surrounded by thousands of multicolor lights!  As you walked down the throat of the cave, beautiful changing lights were on every surface area of the arched walls.  The lights would change from solid colors, to neon colors, then to multi colors, back to solid colors.  

The Korean workers/ guides would hurry us along if we stopped to look at something or to admire something.  They were always shooing us out of the different rooms.  Or they would not let us move straight if we were going to miss a side cave.  

One such side cave was a mini aquarium.  This is seriously Korea at it's finest!  If one word could describe South Korea, it would be "random".  Who would think- hmmm, let's combine a cave, aquarium, concert room, later show, art sculpture, history museum, and wine cafe into one...  

Back to the first act of randomness- a mini aquarium.  There were so many neat fish to behold.  There was a large open tank along one wall, and a bunch of small tanks built into the wall.  We saw so many different fish.  The fish that won the most favorite award, was a goldfish- looking fish, that had gigantic air bubbles for cheeks.  The kids kept going back to that tank just to get a giggle.

The second act of randomness, was the wishing ornaments.  It reminded me of the locks on the N. Seoul Tower.  A little vendor had a stand where you could buy a Korean Luck ornament and tie it to the cave for a wish.  It was only about 3000 won, so we bought our wish.  As I was getting ready to tie it onto the cave wall, Big Sis snatches it and very secretively hides it in her pocket and asks if we can take it home and put it on our tree instead.  I said I didn't know if it would bring us bad luck, but since we paid for it, I didn't see an issue.  So we took a vote and all the kids wanted to keep the wish and take it home.  So, the semi-stolen cave wish made it's way to our home and Christmas tree.

The third act of randomness was a scene from Lord of the Rings.  In one section of the cave, Golem and a huge Dragon were made and displayed.  The kids thought the dragon was the coolest thing!  

The fourth Randomness that we encountered was an indoor garden.  Inside this cave was a huge section that was a mini botanical garden.  The plants were green, lush, thriving and beautiful.  I'm not exactly sure how this came about, but it was neat seeing green life so far below the surface.

The last two acts of randomness, were the mini History Museum and the Wine Restaurant.  The best part about the wine restaurant was that we had a ton of small kids.  Remember how I said the guides/ workers would shoo us along and hurry us if we stopped in the wrong location?  The Wine Restaurant was one of those instances.  The guide stood in our way and gestured that we needed to go down the cave to the right.  We figured that was the only way, so down we went.  We thought we were missing an exit, but after finding nothing, we went back the way we came, only to find the same guide with a smile and now showing us down another tunnel.  

I am so happy about the Korean Randomness!  I loved the cave and all the unexpected that it produced.  The kids also loved the cave.  When we left the cave we had about 10 minutes before we had to leave, so we sat down and ate our sack lunches.  Around the outside of the cave were more statues and art structures.  We took a few minutes to look around at all the art work around the cave. Here are a few of them: