"Trick or Treat" Osan

 

Hello there, this is Big Sis and I am going to tell you all about our second and last halloween in Osan. We didn't have a family theme this year so us kids got to be whatever we wanted this year.

M&M really wanted to be a parrot this year so her and mom had a project to make a parrot costume themselves. It turned out really cool.

After little A saw M&M's wings, she really wanted to be a pegasus. So mom made wings and she turned into a magical pegasus.

I had no idea what I wanted to be so we went to the BX and we picked out a spider web poncho, a large decorative spider, and so I became a spider queen. The only thing I had to do was paint spiderwebs on the corner of my eyes. It turned out really cool!

Monster had become obsessed with marvel characters, especially Captain America, so we got him a Captain America costume.

His best friend, Rhett was Mr. Incredible. It was really funny seeing them both so excited that they where both superheroes.

The Elementary school hosted a kids trunk-or-treat party which added to our candy stash. The schools trunk-or-treat was so much fun because all the teachers decorated their cars and dress up really funny. There was a teacher who was Candyland themed and her car was basically the board.

Another teacher brought his family and was Harry Potter themed. It was so cool to see all the funny creativity of all the teachers. There was another Harry Potter car and they were our really good friends, the Campbell's.  They gave us chocolate frogs.

Here are a few more pictures of our favorite cars.  There was a large scary one that had a dragon over the trunk.  There was another car that was decorated as Monsters Inc, and the men had on the hazmat suits.  The last one I really liked was the car decorated with pretty skeletons.

What I love about Osan is that since there are 9 families on each of Hallasan's 13 floors, we get lots and lots of candy. Living on a floor with lots of friend and nice people is the best because we always have a hall pot-luck and I was able to help decorate the 6th floor this year. We had lots of people bring lots of food that was really good and some of the desserts were super creative in being spooky. We had two friends join us for the potluck.  Brysha came and ate and went around with us and so did the Walker family.

After a while, the 6th floor families all put their candy in a wagon. It was really surprising to see how much candy the 6th floor neighbors bought.

Little A and Monster had lots of fun trick-or-treating with their friends.

Mom bought a skeleton costume that looked so cool.  Mom had fun seeing her friends dressed up too!

M&M made a new friend a few days early with a family that just moved in, the Walkers. Their daughter is now best friends with M&M. After eating and having our rules set, me, M&M, and M&M's friend (Claire) set out on our way to go get our candy galore. The elevators were already starting to get really busy so the 3 of us walked the stairs from floor 6 to 13. It was really tiring, but we made it eventually. We treat-or-treated from 13 to 1 in about 25 minutes, and so we went to Jirisan too. We were getting really hot and so we decided to quit half way through Jirisan. We hung out at the park for a while to cool off and then went inside our house to trade, count, and weigh our candy. Our favorite part of our candy process was to weigh our bags. Last year, my bag weigh roughly over 4 pounds along with M&M's bag. This year, my bag weighed 4.5 pounds, M&M's weighed 4 pounds, and Claire's bag weighed almost 5 pounds. It was insane how much it weighed.

After our candy frenzy, we went out to the halls to hang out and eat more food. It was so much fun to have another great trick-or-treating experience in the Osan Air Base family housing towers.

Time to Carve some Pumpkins!

So welcome to a wonderful Rasmussen family tradition: PUMPKIN CARVING! Over the years we have loved being able to go to pumpkin patches and pick out our pumpkins, but being overseas has denied our ability to do so, so the BX had to suffice. Over the weeks prior, I would find fun pumpkin ideas and give them to the girls in their lunches, inspiring them to make their own fun designs for tonight. This year we invited Braysha to join our family and do something that she never had done ever!

Little A decided that her little pumpkin was a convict, and deserved incarceration within another pumpkin; CUTE IDEA RIGHT! We were so proud of her patience and trying to make all the cuts with as much of her own effort as she could. 

Braysha needed some coaching on what to do, but she got the hang of it and it became all pumpkin guts and glory! We used a piece of another pumpkin to make a huge tongue coming out her pumpkin with lots of pumpkin seeds on it!

I selfishly love to do this every year, so I helped M&M make some awesome looking teeth and a wicked looking eye patch!

Heather pulled out all the stops and the literally the "brain" on her pumpkin, making it look like it had undergone a craniotomy. Well done love - excellent surgical skills!

So here's the lineup of finished masterpieces. My favorite was mine though, the one on the left. Now you may look it and it say "but its not carved?" and you wouldn't be wrong. Since I spent the entire night helping to carve eyes and teeth and tongues and cages and brains, I didn't have any time left to carve my own. So I am most proud of that one: the pumpkin that gave their all to the others!

Big Sis was the second to last pumpkin in the line up, with a pumpkin eating a pumpkin: super neat!

-Kevin

A Colorful Korean Fall at the Haeinsa Temple

For my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I serve in the Primary for all the Military congregations in South Korea.  This Sunday, I was needing to go to Daegu to help with the Primary in that area.  We decided that we would make today a family day-trip, and head to the Haeinsa Temple in Gayasan National Park after my visit in Daegu.  We missed the opportunity to see the fall colors of South Korea last year, so we would be able to not only see the national park in the splash of fall colors, but also see the ancient Buddhist Temple. 

As with most driving in South Korea, the directions can be a little off.  I followed Waze to the supposed destination, then we had to rely on the brown signs posted for directions to the temple.  We came to a really neat pavilion with two large Buddha's and a rather large pagoda, we thought that this must be the stop, so we pulled over, put our jackets on and went out to take in the beautiful colors around us.  We had to cross a bridge to get to the site, and it was such a beauty!

We explored the area for a while.  The kids all had fun pointing out the different colors that the tree leaves were changing too.  Until this point, our kids have only lived in warm states that don't have the color changing fall, so this was a new adventure for them.

After looking at Google Maps, Waze, and attempting to read a few signs, we came to the conclusion that this beautiful spot was not the Haeinsa Temple that we were seeking.  So we got back in the car to find it.  We took a few wrong turns, had to show the locals a picture and kept saying "temple?temple?", and not to mention we have mastered the amazing art of mime, we finally found the right place.

The grounds for the Haeinsa Temple is huge!  We first stopped at the Wongyeongwangsabi Monument.  

After loving the sites and colors at the monument we made our way to the Iljumun Gate and walked the beautiful trail to the Bonghwangmun Gate. The Iljumun Gate is considered a sacred place because it was the first gate that every sattya had to pass to become a Buddha. 

The Temple Pavilion was crisp, clean and full of pagodas and worshiping halls.  We even got to see a bell.  Little Monster had it set on his mind that he was going to ring the bell, it was a really good thing we had the hiking backpack, because he was definitely living up to his nickname.

We then made our way towards the back of the temple to the main reason we wanted to come, to see the original Buddha printing blocks in the Tripitaka Koreana. This is the most famous national treasure of the Haeinsa Temple.  It is the most comprehensive and oldest collection of original Buddhist scripture.  There are over 81,000 of these wood blocks.  Photos are not allowed inside and the housing is only open certain hours of the day.  We got there with about 10 minutes to spare, but in Korean fashion, they would not let us enter, they said they were closed.  We were able to peek in and see the inside, but not able to take the time to walk around.  That was probably for the best, since Monster was done and we verbally screaming about it.  They were probably worried our kids would take 2 minutes to destroy a national artifact.  

We took our cue from Monster that it was time to head home.  We took the scenic route to our car and took some last pictures of the oranges, yellows, greens, and reds of the fall around us.  Everyone was glad we made this little detour to the temple and made a fun family day out of it.