Holiday Blues

Today is the last day of school before the Christmas break and I am feeling blah. I miss home. This will be the first year I have ever been away from home for Christmas. Poor Jason has been away on more than one occasion, and he has been by himself, so I know I should not complain. We have set up our tree and it is surrounded by an obscene amount of presents, but it just does not feel like Christmas here. I miss my parents. I miss driving around looking at lights. I miss the yearly fight my mom and I have trying to make everything perfect.

Traditionally we have dinner at my parents house on the 23rd with my Grandmother and extended family. This year some friends and I have all decided to get together and have a big dinner together. That should be pretty fun.

Ski Resort

I took way to many pictures to post right now. I will try to get more on here soon.

This past weekend we had the opportunity to go to the Korean Alps with some other military families. The Muju Ski Resort was only a two hour bus ride away, but it was totally different than Daegu. The entire place was designed like an Austrian Ski Village. We all had such a wonderful time day and night sledding. Marley loved the snow and was so sad to leave it. She told us she wanted to go back to "snowman." I have to say the views were breathtaking, the food was first rate (we got steak and lobster dinners), and the company was perfect. We really had a wonderful family vacation and we cannot wait to get to go back again.

Pictures with Santa

Marley was absolutely petrified of Santa and these pictures were taken after 10 minutes of calming her down. You cannot really tell, but yes those are REAL tears streaming down her face. I know that I was supposed to feel sorry for her and comfort her, but I was too embarrassed to even admit I gave birth to her. Apparently I will not be getting any pictures with Santa any time soon. The upside to this story is that I did not spend the better part of a day waiting in line at Northpark for the good Santa only to have this happen!

AWWWWW

Wish that this could have been my Christmas card picture, but it just did not show enough of their faces.

Happy 3rd Birthday Marley!!

Today is Friday and the boys are out playing golf in the rain. Marley and I have been cleaning the house and organizing all the groceries that I have already bought for our Thanksgiving Day feast. Because of the time difference we are so sad that our family will be deprived of the traditional Cowboy game. Some friends here are putting together a football game out in the field near where we live for all the dads and their friends. This will keep them out of our hair while we finish up all the cooking.

In addition to all the Thanksgiving plans, we are gearing up for Marley's 3rd birthday. I cannot believe that she is getting so big already. She is so excited and has demanded a Diego cake. I am fully aware that Diego is meant for boys, but she does not care. She told me that I get to have a princess cake and she wants Diego. I tried for two months to change her mind and finally conceded defeat. I ordered the Diego cake yesterday.

Since Marley's birthday falls the day before Thanksgiving, I am going to have to tweak my normal three days of cooking. On the other hand, she will have tons of new presents to occupy her and keep her out of my kitchen.

Bennigans

On Sunday my friend Leslie and I decided we would escape our families for a while. We tried to go to the fabric market, but they were closed. We tried to go to the ribbon and flower markets, but they were closed. At this point we were driving around Daegu trying to find someplace to go, because there was NO WAY IN HELL we were heading home. Eventually we found E-Mart (Korean equivalent to Target) and checked out what all they had. By now it was time for lunch. Hmmmmmm.......where to eat??? We decided to go downtown and eat some American food at Bennigans. After climbing the two flights of steep stairs we reach the doors and are greeted by two very sweet Korean young women. We follow one to our table and Leslie starts cracking up laughing. When she caught her breath she finally says to me, "did they just say "Welcome Americans?'" Once I finished crying from laughing I told her that they had said, "Welcome to Bennigans." Now we are both rolling on the floor. Eventually we calm down and pick up our menus. In the right hand corner of each of our menus, in big white letters, are the words "Foreigners Menu." Wow, I have never been the foreigner at a restaurant before! Everything about Bennigans was the exact same as it is in the States. Leslie and I both ordered the Monti Cristo and each of us ended up taking half home to our husbands. It was so nice to have a little piece of home for a little while. While we waited for our change, I figured I better go to the restroom since we had a long walk back to the car. I don't know why this shocked me, but there was a bidet (toilet that squirts you with water). It had a heated seat and buttons so you could control the angle of the water spray. It was crazy! Had I been able to get over my phobia of germs I might have given it a try, but there was no way since it was a public toilet. The really sad thing is that this is not even the strangest toilet I have seen in Korea. Some places just have a hole in the ground for you to use (Americans call these "squatty potties"). I prefer to just hold it until I get home.