Saturday, March 30, 2019

Little A Jr. Black Belt Test


Welcome to a moment that took two years to get too. While being in Korea, Little A had the chance to learn taekwondo, but not just a martial art, but a martial art from two 8th degree blackbelts. That's right, two eighth degree black belts, Master Kahn on the left, and Master Moon on the right, who also happen to the VP and President of the Taekwondo association of South Korea (like the whole country). So Korea has their own national Taekwondo competition team, literally the best in the world, and their trainers teach here on base at Osan, to kids as young as 3.

Little A has tested so many times over the last 2 years, sometime even monthly, and with twice weekly practices she has progressed in her confidence and form to reach this special day: Jr Black Belt. Under the stipulations of associated, she is allowed to only progress to this rank below twelve, where at that point she can finally test for Black Belt.


We went to the competition center, where well over 350 kids were testing for their higher level belts. They all came and practiced, and then 12 at a time they competed together for the same high level. Little A was very nervous, but excited because she understood want it meant to get to this point: hard work, a lot of memorizing and practice. She was ready!



So the competition was an all day event. You can imagine competition teams from all over, and despite the volume of students, in typical Korean style they did an amazing job being on schedule. These were the testing members for this round from Osan. 


So Little A had to memorize multiple forms of the test, and then they would randomly pull two of them from a hat which would be the two forms for that day. They were then given chances to practice, and then as a group they would compete together performing those two forms, in addition to some individual moves they had to do. She did so good, and she passed!


The next week at her class, she was allowed to test for the final form, as well as break her boards and finalize her exam. This is a more private setting, with all of her classmates being able to cheer her on when she was able to show them all her moves. Then she got her very special black belt, which as you see if a mixture of read and black with her own name sewn in Korean!




Taekwondo has taught her so much: self confidence, discipline, memorization skills, respect, hard work, progressive success; invaluable lessons for anyone to learn. We are so proud of her!


-Kevin

Friday, March 29, 2019

Friday Boy's School

A few months ago, my little Monster started getting stranger and separation anxiety.  He refused to go to anyone but me.  Even people he knew, he started crying when I left him.  He was even giving Kevin a hard time, always crying for "mommy".  It was getting super bad.  There was one friend he would always play with, Rhett.  Monster loves Rhett and will play at Rhett's house.  One day, I had this miraculous heaven sent idea, start a rotating Boys School Co-op.  I called up my friends, Corianne, Heather, and Cherry and asked if they would want to start a Friday Boy's School.  Everyone loved the idea and we started the very next Friday.



I had the first day, since Monster wouldn't go to anyone else's house.  We sang songs, played games, ate a snack, blew bubbles and played.  He was a little shy at first and didn't like sharing his toys, but in the end, he was happy.



Since our first Friday Boy's School, each and every boy looks forward to Friday and loves playing with each other.  These little boys have become the best of friends.  It is so fun seeing Monster light up when I tell him it is Friday.  He knows what happens on Fridays!
We rotate houses, and this has been an answered prayer.  Because of Friday Boys School, Monster quickly got over his fear of separating from me.  He loves going to his friend's houses and now cries when it is time to leave.


Sometimes we have good air quality, so they boys love going to the playground together.  I don't know who loves boy school more, me or Monster.


Friday, March 22, 2019

Little Monster's Super Hero Birthday


Welcome the newest Avenger: Little Monster! Our little dude turned three, and with his discovery that he deserves to be a super hero, he decided that he needed to conquer the work with friends via a Super Hero party! Welcome Captain America!


Little monster is crazy: and having three girls before him, he has always been a surprise hoot. He has been having a weekly boy school, which at rotating homes he gets a chance to be buddies with a lot of other little guys from church. Its been an amazing time (not to mention the benefit of a once weekly freedom session for Heather), but his pool of friends has grown so much.

As if Heather hasn't pulled out all the stops before, she pulled this to a new level! Creating the super hero stations where people could decorate their favorite super hero book marks, followed by the super hero matching game, where they had to match the super hero cards all of the floor! This definitely kept the kids moving. Little monster did the best at making his two favorite characters: Iron Man and Captain America.



So Heather dressed up at bat woman, and coordinate the game of the century for this little super hero: the super hero versus villain shoot out! Using NERF guns to shoot down bad guys, the kids had the best time trying to get the villains!





So Heather and Brianne Walker helped design and cut out the city buildings, which were a such cool thing to see. and Big Sis was amazing in helping Heather to and keep 12 crazy kiddos in line.






After shooting bad guys, the last challenge was the Hulk Smash and Bash! After lining up cones on the ground, each of the kids put on one of little monsters fluffy hulk hands, and had to run the cones like football practice, and then hulk smash a cup! Yep, training day was in full swing! Monster had the best birthday by finally being who he always been: A superhero!



-Kevin

Monday, March 11, 2019

Singapore: Sentosa Island

We spent an incredible day in Singapore at Sentosa Island. It was one of our favorite days in Singapore.  This day was filled with seeing the Merlion, walking through the mall, going to the aquarium, sliding down the Luge, and viewing the Crane Show. It was so awesome! Sentosa has this incredible free metro rail that has four stops along Sentosa so you can easily enjoy all of the activities Sentosa has to offer.  We ended up getting off at all the stops to enjoy all the separate activities.


Waterfront Station:
This Station is where we originally started.  Our Grab driver dropped us off here at the Resorts World Sentosa.


Our first designation was the S.E.A. Aquarium. We didn't have any further plans because we didn't know what Sentosa had to offer.  We originally were just going to stay in the hotel room because we were all in a bit of a crabby mood.  We finally realized staying in a hotel room was making us worse, so we all got ready and decided to see the Aquarium.

When we walked out into Resort World, all crabbiness left and we were left with aww and smiles.  We could all tell immediately that this day just made a turn for awesomeness.  We were greeted by amazing sculptures, beautiful landscape and a huge water fountain.  We made a stop at one of the many restaurants for lunch, then made our way down to the S.E.A. Aquarium.  On our way to the aquarium we passed by Universal Studios.  There was a huge candy store right next to Universal Studios, so we stopped and had a sweet treat.



Big Sis is going to take over to tell you all about the S.E.A. Aquarium:
Hi there, this is Big Sis and I'm going to tell y'all all about our experience at the Singapore Aquarium. The aquarium was huge and had so many different animals to see.



It was a little walk to get in but we made it and the first tank was a walk through tunnel underneath the shark tank. There were at least five different species in the tank and the setup is incredible because some how they managed to get a huge shipwreck into the tank. After having fun seeing all the crazy teeth on these sharks, we went on to see more.


The next tank was a huge gallery of fish. There were hundreds of different kinds of fish in there. It was also super cool because they had giant tuna fish put in there along with four types of stingrays. We also walked past a tank with colorful fish and super beautiful and colorful coral.  It was so colorful, it looked like it was glowing.



After enjoying a long time at the huge tank, we moved onto the minor tanks.  It was such a wide variety from tiny little poisonous frogs to the largest species of deep sea crabs that were at least 5 feet long. It was so cool seeing all the river fish and sharks, the thousands of changing colored moon jellies, the hundreds of neon bioluminescent coral and fish, and the most disgusting ocean eels ever. They were so gross, ugly, and huge.



We also saw a tank were there were a fish called elephant fish. They had the nose of an elephant trunk, just really small sized, the body of a sharks fish, and the size of a large tuna. There was also a really hugely fish that had a body of a normal fish but its mouth was, no joke, a birds beak. It was the exact same shaped, size, and everything. It was the most hideous fish ever. After looking at the craziest fish in the world, we continued to go onwards and we soon found the dolphins. Little A totally freaked out every time see saw one and shouted "A DOLPIN! LOOK! RIGHT THERE!" Sadly, the dolphins didn't come that close to our glass because the best view of the dolphins was the viewing window you had to pay to go into. So after looking around for a while we moved onto the last tank which was a mini version of a coral reef with coral, fish, sharks, stingrays, the whole package. It was so beautiful to see the mysteries version of Gods very wonderful creations, including the most weirdest ones.

Imbiah Station:
After the Aquarium, we decided to walk around and explore Resort World more and walked around the cute paths until we found our way to Imbiah Station.


At Imbiah Station we found the famous Sentosa Sign.  There were so many people gathered around the sign.  Everyone was taking pictures with one or two of the letters.  We really wanted a picture with the entire sign.  It took a while, but at the most perfect moment, we all ran to a different letter, Kevin told everyone to back up and he quickly shot an awesome picture of us with the entire sign, and he successfully had just our family in it.  Don't let the picture fool you, there were a million people, we just got lucky!



After our picture perfect moment, we walked a few more steps and saw the Sentosa Merlion.  This is the only Merlion we were able to see in Singapore, because the one in downtown Singapore that squirts water from it's mouth, is currently under construction.  The entire thing is covered and surrounded by a gate, so even the hope of catching a glimpse is impossible.  It was about this time that the sky opened up to a raging war between the lightning and the thunder.  Huge dark clouds were being blown in and a big storm with them.  One super neat thing about Sentosa, is that the entire thing is pretty much covered.  We were able to walk around a little bit longer.  We tried to go to Beach Station to go on the Skyline Luge, but due to lightning, it was closed.  We were told that it will re-open once the storm passed over.



We had already paid for the Luge using Klook, so we decided to wait out the storm at the VivoCity mall at the Sentosa Station.  We got on the Metro Express and made our way to Sentosa Station.

Sentosa Station:
When we got to Sentosa Station, the rain was really coming down.  We were so grateful for all the coverings to protect us from the rain.  We walked into the mall and were amazed at the size of the mall.  It had every store we would ever want to shop at.  We were excited to find a Carl's Jr. in the mall, and enjoyed a delicious dinner. But seeing the Cold Stone was like a dream come true.  We definitely all got some ice cream there.


The mall had a cute outdoor playground in the middle of the mall.  It stopped raining while we were eating, so we let the kids play for a while.



With the weather blown over, we wanted to take our luck to the Luge and hope it was open.  The kids were only disappointed to leave the playground until we told them we were on our way to the luge.  We walked out and found a cute moving walkway that connected Sentosa Station to Imbiah Station, since we were OK on time, and the pathway was beautiful, we decided to take the moving walk-way.


Beach Station:
We got to the Beach Station and were excited to see that the Luge was open. M&M is going to tell you all about the Luge:


This is M&M here and I am going to tell you about the Luge. The Luge was a place where you could choose two trails to go down on carts. The carts were these little carts that were really close to the ground that had handles that controlled it. If you pulled the lever a little ways towards you, you would go forwards. If you pulled it all the way towards you, you would stop. If you didn't touch the lever at all, it would go all the way forward and make it on a brake so you could get in/out of the cart. Everyone had a ticket that had four dots on it. Two of the dots let you go on the skyline ride that took you to the trails where you could ride the carts down. The other two let you go on the trail with the carts and ride them down. When we were on the skyline ride, it had an amazing view! Were were almost able to see everything. We only saw the city only a little bit, but we saw a whole lot of Ocean.



The weather was really nice because it was getting close to night time. We were able to ride it up all the way and go into the carts. The instructors told us the rules and how we use the carts. After we were done, we set off. Mom really wanted to go on the Jungle Trail, so that was the first trial that we went on. It felt amazing having the wind sipping into your face after very hot day. The trail had twists and turns all around it. some turns were super sharp and it was fun turning down a hill going super fast!



We got down after about five minutes and released the Jungle trail was the shortest trail. We had two dots left, so we were only able to take one more skyline ride to take us up, and one dot to go down the last trial. We wanted to go on the longest trail, so we asked an instructor what the longest trail was and she said it was the Dragon Trail. So we hopped on the Skyline ride and got into the carts. Mom wanted to take pictures, so she speeded ahead while we waited. After about three minutes we started to go. Mom was waiting for us at the place where it showed us the way to the different trails. Mom took some pictures and we zoomed off towards the Dragon Trail.



The dragon trail was so long and twisty. It was amazing!!! We got down in about seven minutes from the start to the end. It was truly an amazing experience going down the amazing trails and seeing the view from the Skyline ride.

At the end of the day, we went back to the Imbiah Station for the Crain Dance Show.  It was a free and amazing pyrotechnics and water light show.  These huge mechanically birds moved and danced to music.  It was an amazing night and a great way to end an amazing day.