Happy Birthday Kate!

There's a special Korean tradition for a child's first birthday--kids are offered a variety of items to see which one they pick up first. The item chosen is supposed to reveal the child's path in life, or innermost character, or something.

Here's the table as we laid it out:



bowl of food The traditional item is a bowl of rice, but we used Unburied Treasure (the Trader Joe's version of the snack called Pirate's Booty), which is one of Kate's very favorite things in the whole world.

piece of string representing long life

mechanical pencil representing a scholarly interest (or perhaps a mechanical one)

Prismacolor art sticks representing an artistic bent

money representing financial aptitude

Doggies book representing... err... books. Or dogs, maybe.

And here's what happened:


She went for the food! I read afterwards that the bowl of rice is supposed to symbolize wealth. Perhaps choosing Unburied Treasure means that she'll be a pirate.

Kate at 52 weeks

We came home on a Monday, so we did our photo shoot at the airport. Here Kate amuses herself while waiting to board the plane. (Coming back was more fun, since we had Doug with us!)






I'm not sure what she's yelling about in that one picture. I guess she saw something exciting.

Christmas

The rest of my family left right after the wedding. We spent Christmas in Harriman with Doug's sister Melody and her family. It was nice to be able to relax for a while, after a very busy few days.





Kate was intrigued by all the lights and decorations. She was also rather overwhelmed by having four active cousins around. (She looks a bit stunned in some of these pictures.)





We went to church with Mark and Melody's family Sunday morning, and then came home and opened presents. Here Kate watches the proceedings from the safety of Daddy's lap.

Kate got to open a couple of presents too (but needed a little help!)



A toy phone (from the cousins), and a book (from Mom and Dad). Wow!



Doggies: A Counting and Barking Book by Sandra Boynton. I saw it at the library and thought Kate would enjoy it. She does. (The howling page is a favorite.)





Our first Christmas as a family of three!

Wedding Pictures

Here they are! Some of them, anyway. Doesn't seem like much, for the amount of time I've been working on them.

It was a lovely day (much warmer than we'd expected) and Kyle and Barb were both radiant and photogenic.















I got a star filter right before the wedding and had to try it out on some of these. It's a neat effect, though you do end up with light beams in odd places sometimes.

MamaBug and her husband came out and helped with pictures, both at the temple and the reception. Thanks a bunch!

Blog tag

I just realized that I ended two posts in a row with "Whew!" That pretty much sums up the way things have been around here. We've been recovering, getting into a new schedule for Doug's classes, and I've been trying to get through all these photos. Still working on that. I should have some up very soon.

In the meantime, I've been tagged by Becky and Amy with this 4x4 question thing. So here goes:

4 JOBS I'VE HAD IN MY LIFE

My very first job was at Taco Bell, for a few months one summer. I still carry a few unpleasant memories from that.

I did data entry for AT&T one summer. I think this was the only actual nine to five, Monday to Friday job that I've ever had.

I was a cashier at a Dominion grocery store in St. John's, Newfoundland for a year and a half. It wasn't much fun at times, but it put me in a position to do some drawing and painting jobs that I probably never would have done otherwise.

And my best job ever--working on the pruning crew at BYU. We got to be outside, got to work parts of campus that some people never even see, got to help put up Christmas lights, and got to get up at O-dark-stupid to shovel snow. Wheee! (Actually I only had to do that a couple of times, so it was still fun. Heh.)

4 MOVIES I'D WATCH OVER AND OVER

Much Ado About Nothing
The Princess Bride
Sense and Sensibility
Monsters, Inc.

4 PLACES I HAVE LIVED

Fairborn, Ohio
Provo, Utah
Chonan, South Korea
St. John's, Newfoundland

4 TV SHOWS I LOVE TO WATCH

Firefly (I got Doug the DVD set for his birthday. We find them very re-watchable.)
Stargate SG-1 (We don't have cable so we go over to Scott's house to watch this.)
Highlander, the series (not on anymore, but I loved it.)
Farscape (ditto)

4 PLACES I'VE BEEN ON VACATION

Mammoth Cave
Wisconson Dells
Bonavista, Newfoundland
Sunchon, South Korea

4 WEBSITES I VISIT DAILY

Two Peas in a Bucket
The message boards at The Straight Dope (not quite every day)
My netscape email
google

4 OF MY FAVORITE FOODS

A really good orange
cheese
focaccia
My very favorite meal is a good kimchi jjigae bek pan. It is to swoon over.

4 PLACES I'D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW

Bruno's Italian restaurant in St. John's, Newfoundland (it's not Bruno's anymore, but the restaurant is still there).
Powell's Books in Portland
at a park feeding the ducks and squirrels
in bed reading

4 BLOGGERS I AM TAGGING

April
Carin
Mary
Teresa

Travel, interrupted

This is Doug (and Kate) at the bus station with all our stuff. Traveling with a baby makes everything more complicated. Our friend Scott was going to drive us to the airport, but his car died so we took the bus.

The night before we left for Utah, Doug discovered that his driver's license was missing. He thought the other identification he had with him would be enough to get him through airport security, but, as it turned out, it wasn't. (We had other things at home that would have worked, but we didn't bring them with us.) So Kate and I went on the plane and Doug came the next day. We had brief moments of stress and panic but everything worked out okay. Whew!