Saying Goodbye

Our neighbors the Kim family are moving. We are sad! They moved in when Andy was just five months old, and we've enjoyed having them in the complex.



I made them this little book for a going-away present. I've made four photo books now, all printed at different places.  I got this one done at WHCC.



It was a quick job.  I didn't think I had enough time to design the pages scrapbook-style, so I just arranged the photos on a black background.  I had some that included other kids from the complex, and some that were just our kids--memories of things we've done together over two years.






I didn't see an option to choose endpapers.  They came black.  (That's one thing that I like better about sharedink--they have lots of endpaper choices.)  The printing isn't quite photo quality but it's very good.  It did seem to print a little cooler than the colors on my monitor.  I'll have to remember that.

I had the book less than a week after placing the order.  Very quick!  I was impressed.  The Kims loved it. 



The girls brought over some kim bap for us. After I convinced Kate that there was nothing in there she didn't like (except the cucumber, which I picked out for her) she agreed to try it. She said, "This is good! I want to make this some time!" Andy wouldn't even look at it. (This was surprising--Kate's usually the picky one.)

We will miss our friends! Kate will especially miss having Glory and Hanuri around to play with.

last day of preschool (with hat)

Kate's been going to preschool three days a week at her friend Lilly's house. Our neighbor Sky joined them, too. For their last day of school they had a little presentation for the parents.



Kate and Sky perform a finger play they learned. (Lilly didn't want to get in the picture.)



They had the girls decorate paper hats for the occasion. Kate, in her own inimitable style, added horns to her hat. She's such a crack-up.



I love this picture. We were calling her our little Viking Dutch girl. (Yes, there's no historical evidence that Vikings wore horned helmets. Shhhh.)



Afterward we all went out back to see the chickens. Great fun.



I'm still in denial about Kate starting Kindergarten this fall. How can she have gotten so big already?

Our house stinks. Let's go to McDonald's.

After our apartment was run into on Friday they got the wall rebuilt, and on Monday the painter guy came in to finish up the details. He mentioned that when he sprayed the texture on the wallboard it was going to be really fumey, so we might want to leave the house for a while. So I asked Hyun Ju if we could go over to her house, which we did, and then we decided to take the kids to McDonald's for lunch.



I had my camera with me, and I was surprised by how nice the light was in the play area.



Andy and Hyun Ju. I've been referring to Hyun Ju as Andy's 이모 ("ee-mo"), which literally means "mother's sister" but is generally used for mother's female friend. (The same way we might call a close family friend Aunt or Uncle even if they aren't actually related.) She told me that she's never been one to ooh and ahh over babies, but she loves Andy.



Sky climbs a pipe.



Kate on the shoe shelf.



Andy's at that stage where he wants to push everything.




Sky is just one month older than Kate. They'll both be starting kindergarten this fall (but not at the same school).

Our house is all back together now! Yay!

침례식

Our neighbor Hyun Ju (정현주) and her older daughter Glory were baptized this last Saturday. They've been attending church for a few months and taking the discussions with the missionaries, and decided to get baptized. Our neighbor Catherine (also Korean) gave the talk on baptism, and Hyun Ju asked me (!!!) to give the talk on the Gift of the Holy Ghost. In Korean. Whew. I probably wouldn't have been up for it a few months ago, but I have been getting a lot of Korean practice lately. It was a little choppy but it went okay. And it was just cool to be able to do something like that again. I was happy to be asked.

I was hoping that we could all go, but Doug's mom came up from Klamath Falls that weekend, so Doug and Kate went to the Seattle aquarium with Grandma while Andy and I went to the baptism. (The aquarium is cool, but there was no way I was going to miss the baptism!)



Hyun Ju's husband works on Sunday and hasn't been to church, but he was able to come to the baptism and I think it was a good experience. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming. (That red blur in the bottom corner is somebody stepping in front of the camera, but this was the best shot I got for people's expressions.)



Mom and girls. Sky's too young to get baptized, she just happens to be wearing a white dress. (With ladybugs on it.)

I found out that I had Sky's Korean name wrong. (For a whole year now.) I thought her name was 하늘이, but it's really 하누리. (Which sounds almost the same.) The confusion stems from the fact that her English name is Sky, and 하늘 does mean Sky. I guess I'll have to go back and change my previous entries.

After the baptism we had watermelon (yum!) and 콩떡 (bean rice cake) and everyone stood around in the hall visiting. There were quite a lot of people who came. The members are great. I've been up to the Korean branch (for church) four times now and really enjoyed it. (I'll enjoy it more when Andy's old enough to go to nursery--just one more month!)

Rolling in Dough

Yes, I'm still here! Just very distractible. As usual.

We had Glory and Sky over for a pretzel making party this last Thursday. I had mentioned it a few weeks before--"Hey, we should all get together and make pretzels!" and Glory kept asking about it, so we finally got ourselves organized. Pretzels happened!

(recipe here)



Kate had been to her first gymnastics class at the YMCA that morning. Hence the hair.



Getting the dough rolled out can be harder than it looks!



Andy enjoys having visitors.



Some of the finished product. Yum!



Hyun Ju (Glory and Sky's mom) was going to come too, but someone came over right then to fix her computer, so she had to go back home. She came over at the end and had a pretzel, and said, "These are better than the ones you buy at the mall!"

A couple of days after that, Doug and Kate made homemade noodles. I was working on something else, and Doug offered to scrape together something for lunch. He did a carbonara kind of thing with pancetta, and we ate it with porkchops and broccoli. (This is not the sort of thing that I come up with when I "scrape something together." Doug is very resourceful.)



Kate gets to help turn the crank. Fun!

Saturday Night Fiddler

A beautiful spring evening hanging out with the neighbors:



Doug fiddles, Andy endures getting passed around, Glory listens, Sky dances (and gets her pronouns mixed up), Kate appears right at the end to mug for the camera.

An Influx of Isopods (or, Kate and her 37 little friends)

(Warning: this post contains creepy-crawlies. If you do not like creepy-crawlies, feel free to not read this post.)

Roly-polies. Pillbugs. Sowbugs. Woodlice. Small terrestrial crustaceans. In Newfoundland they call them carpenters.

We have them.



(Illustration by Kate. See the rolled-up one?)

Last week I took Kate and Andy out for a walk around the bike path. Kate picked up a roly-poly that she found crawling across the road. She brought it home and named it Turtle.

Poor Turtle did not make it through the night. (Let us pause for a moment of silence....) So I went looking online and found some information, and this cute video, about how to keep pillbugs. It looked like it would be pretty interesting, and not difficult.

A couple of days after that we went out around the bike path again, and asked our neighbors Glory and Sky (담이와 하누리) to go with us. They packed along some Choco Pies and 귤 (little oranges) and we had a little picnic. We had some fun turning over rocks and looking at worms and things, and then we found some rotting wood that was full of pillbugs. Pillbug heaven. We put some of the wood in a plastic bag that I had brought along to put our garbage in, and brought it home.



We put the pillbugs and their wood in a little tub we've had sitting on our back porch. It used to have a flower in it, and now has a lot of dirt, dead leaves, a bit of moss, and something else coming up volunteer. A good home for pillbugs! Doug went out and picked up a spray bottle so we can keep things damp. (But not too damp.)



Kate drew some pictures to tape around the tub so the pillbugs would have something to look at. She's been having fun watching them and picking them up and naming them things like Daisy and Pug Bill. (It eventually dawned on me that Pug Bill is an anagram of pillbug.) Most of the ones we found are the non-rolling variety, but we do have a few rollers, too. We've been giving them little bits of fruit and corn. So far they seem to be doing okay!



Kate expounds upon pillbugs. (I have no idea if there are really 37--I have not counted them.)

I learned how to say pillbug in Korean. They're called 쥐며느리 (chui myeo neu ri), which means "mouse's daughter-in-law."

I tried getting some pictures with my macro lens. This is not easy. They keep moving.



It's interesting to see how their armor plates fit together, and the shape and texture. They are pretty cool little critters.

Chalk Neighbors

Sidewalk chalk with the Kim girls! (This shot sort-of-indirectly-inspired by Color Me Katie.)

Our sidewalk chalk was worn down to teeny-tiny nubbins (and then we used up the nubbins) so we picked up a new set at Target. It turns out our neighbors have the same set!



우리 옆집 얘들 담이 와 하누리.



(This was actually last week, but I had to get permission to post the pictures of the girls.)

Today we went out and drew some more. Andy got ahold of a piece of chalk, and he was making some marks on my drawing, then toddling over to Glory's drawing and making some marks on hers, back and forth, back and forth. It was so cute.



Waiting for Spring!