The day has come...

Let's see who won!!!

Here you go, the winner is Sarah Knight.  We met fifteen years ago when we were freshmen at BYU! 

Sarah said...
So I hope it's not Wednesday in Korea and I missed the cut off! I am so envious of your (and Liz's) sewing talents. You rock! I hope you enjoy your next AF adventure. I love being an AF wife. Anyway, we should celebrate our age! Can you believe how long ago we were in Helamen Halls? All I worried about was Jeremy and should've spent more time hanging out with you awesome girls! It was fun though. I think about all that's happened since then and just have to celebrate life and all it's happenings. Best of luck with your move.

The best part about this contest was reading all the things people have in their lives to celebrate.  It was so happy to read all the comments, that honestly, I wish I had a banner to give away to everyone. I really do.  

Sarah, send me your address ASAP, so this banner can have a Korean post mark (annee_earnest@hotmail.com).

Thanks everyone for playing along.   

301!!!

cel * e * brate:

-verb 
1.  to observe (a day) or commemorate (an event) with ceremonies or festivities.

But I also liked definition number seven as well:

7.  to have or participate in a party, drinking spree ( of coke zero nightly!), or uninhibited good time.  

We here at the Earnest house are most definitely feeling the need to celebrate.  As I've contemplated the 300th post for some time now, the only thing that sounded appropriate to express how I felt was, "celebrate", or "celebration".  As I mulled it over throughout the weekend, it has done nothing but cheer me and encourage me.  The list of things we have to celebrate is lengthy, and grows longer by the day. 

Top of the list right now:

 
Ruby sleeping with her mouth closed!  This is huge.  This is part of what motivated the surgery (that and the fact that the tonsils were so big they were fusing together!).  She had had a rough night/morning and by 2pm she was past spent.  I helped her find her way to her bed and tried to make her as comfortable as possible.  When I came back a half hour later, I had to take the picture to document the success of it all.  I haven't seen her breathing with her mouth closed, in I don't know how long!  Recovery is torturous, but good health is worth celebrating!!  Cheers to Ruby.   

Our stuff is gone.  Our  SIXTH move is well underway.  And to top it all off, the offspring are thriving, happy and well adjusted.  They are optimistically counting down the remaining 14 days in Korea.  They look to the future and our new "home" with courage and strength.  There is very little complaining that it is our sixth move in twelve years!  Only a wee bit of complaining that there is NOTHING to do now.  Hang on there little offspring, enjoy the calm before the storm!  Hats off to move number 6!!

June 2008

To celebrate how far we've come in Korea, how much we've learned,  how much the kids have grown, how different we are now than we were when we came, I want to give away a "CELEBRATE" banner.  This one to be exact:

 

If you don't have one already, you really should.  There are so very many reasons one might want to hang a "celebrate" banner up in their home.  I know I've left mine up for almost 4 months straight, because every time I went to take it down, I thought of a new reason to leave it up.  

So there you go, my gift to you!!  All you have to do it leave a comment.  Just say "hi", or tell me what you are celebrating right now.  I don't really care what you say in the comment.  Whether I know you, or not, it's all the same to me.  Don't be shy, it's time to CELEBRATE!!!

Let's see how many comments we can get.  I say I'll give the banner away on Wednesday, May 19th.  We'll take all the comments from this post, stick them in a bowl, and let one of the lucky little Earnests pull out a winner.  It should be fun, just the way life is.  

To sum it all up, the blog has helped me over the years look back and appreciate all that we have, all the places we've been, the times I'd forget if I hadn't written them down.  So I celebrate the blog!  

Okay, that's it.  Let's see who I get to mail this banner off to...

A disclaimer...

Did I say come back "tomorrow" for something special??  I think I meant come back on Monday (wink, wink).  How about we take the weekend off?  I will rename it "A Blog post Almost everyday in the Month of May."  That sounds more suited to me anyway.  

Our little patient continues to require a lot of attention.  But really, it's the housing dilemma that has me losing sleep at night!  

On Monday I declare that the patient will be jollier, and the housing crisis will be over.  I really do have something I want to give away!!  My first every blog giveaway.  In case you hate blog giveaways, I'm just saying, I think the odds are going to be pretty good for you on this one, so just play along :)  Besides, you're going to want to win.  

Happy Weekend. 

It's official.

First, Ruby no longer has tonsils or adenoids.  And secondly, she is really and truly the sweetest patient you will ever have the pleasure to meet.  One time, when she was somewhere between consciousness and the hazy world created by painkillers, a sweet nurse asked her for the 47th time if she would like any ice chips.  To which my little daughter, with her eyes closed responded, "No thank you, I'm fine." 

I'm just wondering, when I'm in the hazy world created by painkillers, do I remember my p's and q's? 

And then tonight, after we finally made it home, had her showered and I was laying down with her to make sure she had a comfortable night of sleep, she leaned over to me and said,

"Sometimes mom, if my throat is hurting, I just try to ignore it". 

I nearly lost my composure in that moment.  She is so sweet and pure.  I'm actually humbled to be in her presence. 

The night before her surgery, I told her she got to choose the dinner, because it would be the last night in a while that she could eat whatever she wanted.  I was sure she would pick spaghetti with meatballs, because it's her favorite meal.  But she walked over to me and whipered in my ear that she would like to have scrambled eggs, and egg sandwhiches, because she knew the brothers didn't like spaghetti, but they love egg sandwhiches. 

In her prayer tonight, as she was going to bed, she said:

"Please bless all the people in all the world who have to get their tonsils removed.  Bless them that they will be okay, and that they will get better quickly, and that their throat won't hurt them too much."

I might be forgetting, but I don't think she asked once that she'd be okay, or that her throat wouldn't hurt. 

Sometimes I worry about people in this world who are so good and so kind, deep down in their marrow, because I fear that it is those people who will get used and trampled over, as life goes on.  But I realize with my own daughther, that whether she gets trampled or not, her joy genuinely comes from thinking of others before herself.  And if that is how she is going to navigate her time on this Earth, I will view it as one of the gifts she came delivered here with, from God. 

That's why it's official, she's the sweetest, kindest, truest patient one has ever had the chance to care for.  She's going to recover just fine from this surgery.  In fact, we're going to have to remind her repeatedly that she is not "all better" yet.  Because she is going to wake up tomorrow, just like she did today, trying to make it a great day for everyone around her. 

P.S.  Come back tomorrow!!  It's the 300th post.  I'll try to make it a good one.  

P.P.S. Now I need to go wipe the tears out of my eyes, and remember to offer a huge prayer of thanksgiving.

Remembering October 2007

Here's Jane the day after her tonsil/adenoid surgery:

Clearly, good times lay ahead for all of us! 

The whole family will rally around Ruby tomorrow.  Since we have no car, we'll be doing some family bonding on the bus up to the hospital in Seoul.  If part of my excitement over moving to Korea two years ago was for the adventures we would have together as a family, I'm pretty sure tomorrow won't be disappointing! 

Feel free to send any prayers and happy thoughts our way. 

third time's a charm

Ruby's getting her tonsils out on Thursday, and probably her adenoids too.  George had this procedure done when he was 2.  Jane had it done when she was almost 3.  And now Ruby at the ripe old age of 5 will join their ranks.  We've been through it many times before, but still, as Thursday gets closer, we're all starting to get a bit more nervous.

Tonight as I was putting her to bed, she said, "Mom, does it hurt to get your tonsils out?"

I told her it wouldn't hurt because she would be asleep, and wouldn't feel anything.  But that when she wakes up, it will hurt for a few days.  Jane was the one most affected by the news.  She was nearly in tears and said, "I do not want to watch!!"

Believe me Jane, I don't either.  When Jane came out of her surgery, I got so woozy that they had me lay down on the rolling bed with Jane for fear that I was about to become the patient.  I was so relieved to hear Ruby say that she wanted Dad to come with her to the hospital.  Good choice Ruby!  Of course, I will be there too, but Dad will most definately have to be the bravest one in the room.

You would have skipped a day too, if you were me.

May 9&10 have passed by in a blur.

Two happy things about Mother's Day 2010.

1.  Darin let me sleep in until 9am.  He got up way earlier, shut the door behind him, and prevented all children from interrupting my morning sleeping hours.  That's why I love him so!  And when I woke up at 9am it was to the smell of blueberry pancakes with walnuts, just as I had mentioned the night before.  So he listens after all.

2.  We had friends over for dinner.  Which meant dinner was really good, dessert was dessert worthy, and we even played a game.

One really bad thing about Mother's Day 2010:

1.  It was the day before our movers arrived.

And though in the military they do try to go out of their way to make moving easier, moving is still a tremendous amount of work.  And overseas moves have added complications and considerations.  So as soon as our dinner guest left, Darin and I still had about six hours of work ahead of us before the movers would be knocking on our door.

And sure enough, when we opened the door at 7:45am to send the boys off to school, here's what we saw down the hallway.  There is no messing around with Korean movers.

The way we are moving this time, is that the bulk of our household goods need to depart first, since they will take a full two months to reach the States.  And we can hold out up to 1000 pounds (but not more!), of "stuff", but no furniture, that we can use to live with until we leave here (the kids and I) on June 1st.  That's what the six hours of work mostly was for me last night, trying to figure out what each person would need for their life to remain happy until we see our home put back together again, sometime in July.  It was as mentally exhausting as it was physically.  I hope I got it right... 

Jane's prayer at bedtime tonight had the words "North Carolina" in it about 25 times (and her prayer was only about 45 seconds long).  She blessed that everything would arrive safely.  That we would all fly there safely.  That our car would get there safely.  Etc.  This is a lot for a little head to worry about.  I'm so proud of the way they all handle it, and take it in stride.

Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon I panicked that I would sorely miss the yellow butterfly end table that I never bought.  The Major is getting so smart in his old age.  Rather than sit and listen to me talk about it all week long (and maybe all summer long if I hadn't gotten it), he walked me right over to the furniture guy and hooked me up: 

I owned it for five minutes before somebody was wrapping it, padding it, and building a box for it.  That was the funniest part of my day today.  I think I'll love it.  But I'm posting the picture here, in case I wake up tomorrow and forget that I bought a piece of furniture today, you know. 

Packing our boxes into the crates.  It's hard to describe how strange it felt that it was our moving truck getting loaded up today.  At Osan, you see moving trucks getting loaded up almost everyday.  You pass by and ponder a moment what that means to that family, etc.  Today it was us.  We took a moment, the Major and I, sitting on the bench watching it all get loaded, to think about what it means to us.  The future is full of possibilities and opportunities, just waiting for us to show up.  It's exciting. 

This picture sums it all up for us:

From Osan- To Chapel Hill.

Here we go.

And finally, at the end of the day when we ran down the list of options where to take the family to dine, nothing sounded quite as good as frozen chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, soup, if you felt like it, and omelets.  When I pointed out the lack of a table, only moments later a solution was stuck upon.  Four happy kids ate dinner at home. 

It was a happy day in Osan.




P.S.

Dear Greenish Couch-

You did not make the final moving cut.  You have only three weeks left with us in your life.  And then, RIP green couch, you will die in Korea.  Don't take it personally.  Somebody in Korea is going to find you one night, on the side of the street somewhere, and feel like Christmas came early.  I think it's best for everyone if we end this relationship here.  Thanks for all your years of dedicated service.  I think every single one of the children has thrown up on you.

Love you always,
Annee

Where oh where will we live?!

If I have to spend another day scouring the internet for new rental properties in Chapel Hill, I'm going to lose my mind.  Currently all our evening hours are spent making calls, looking at Google Maps, watching virtual tours, and getting directions to Target  UNC from any given property.

Maybe we're at least zeroing in on a few neighborhoods, and definitely eliminated others.  I guess that's progress I should be happy about.

Want to know some other progress I'm really happy about?  We were at a dinner party tonight.  Once the dinner was over, and the adult after dinner conversation began, our kids started to get bored.  We offered to let Henry walk his little sisters home and put them to bed, and we'd be home in a little bit.  Sure that the chore of putting his little sister to bed would outweigh his desire to relax and veg out on the couch, we were surprised when he jumped at the opportunity to prove his babysitting competence.  And sure enough, when we walked in an hour later, the girls were fast asleep, in pajamas no less, and he was sitting on the couch watching, "Top Chef Masters".    The most beautiful part of the arrangement was how equally happy we all were in that very moment.  Henry really is one of our greatest blessings!  I feel like we're seeing the light at the end of a very long tunnel.

 

About today...

Finally my procrastinators radar is being alerted to the fact that the movers are showing up at my house Monday morning.  I'll be honest, a bit of panic set in today.  It prompted me to do crazy things like clean out my storage bin.  Locate all our luggage.  Find the girls summer clothes, put them in the drawers and remove all things winter from their room.

When Darin got home from work, he was so excited that I was cleaning and organizing ( he dreams of coming home to find me reorganizing a drawer or cleaning out a closet), he couldn't help but join in the fun.  He thought together we could clean the boys rooms too.  In the end, we had these many bags of clothes located in the kids drawers and closets, that were unwearable: 

That's so lame.  Why we don't clean things out sooner, is a real mystery.  Think of all the new clothes I would have had room for!

In the middle of all the cleaning, I did take the little ladies out to a potluck picnic.  A potluck picnic is a really good idea, that way you can eat fruit, even if you didn't bring any.

The ladies also celebrated the arrival of their Saltwater sandals in the mail yesterday, by planning their school outfits around them.  For Jane, this meant she had to be all pink!

But really, watching them wear them for the past two days, nearly has me convinced that I should be wearing them too. 

Back home, an outfit change was in order.  Obviously, the pink outfit had been worn for several hours!  The only part I was objecting to in the new look, was the tank top tucked into the knit shorts.  When I tried to tell Jane it wasn't that good of a look, she told me how wrong I was.  It could be a really long summer if we're going to be fighting over tucked or un-tucked, all summer long! 

Oh well, for our first full day sans-car, I am grateful for beautiful weather, friends at the park, new sandals, and newly organized drawers and closets!

See you tomorrow. 

In honor of Mother's Day this week...

10 on Tuesday:

What I learned from my mother (how can I limit it to just 10?!):

1.  To have Faith.

2.  That life is better if you are willing to forgive. 

3.  To dedicate your life to your family is a worthy and lofty pursuit. 

4.  The value of education. And the joy that comes along with curiosity.  

5.  She taught me how to sew!

6.  To be sympathetic, and non-judgmental.  You just don't know what's inside another person.  She always said, "only God knows".  She is right.

7.  That you were a wife before you were a mother, and not to forget how important it is to be a great wife.

8.  To face my fears, because I watched her facing hers.  

9.  To be flexible.  Not in terms of doing the splits.  That, she never could teach me.  But from her I learned that plans B, C, or even D can work too.  There are many so many solutions to any given problem.  

10.  To honor my roots.

And the lists continues to grow...

Liz left today. That's sad.

After a six day "Made on Maple" Korean Convention, Liz had to leave today.  After dropping her off stoically at the bus stop, it took me about five minutes to think about how long I've known Liz (15 years), how important she is in my life (very), how much fun I have being with her (tremendous amount), how much we can get done together (you would be jealous), before I started crying.  Six days simply wasn't long enough.  But then again, no length of time would probably be long enough.  I miss her all the time.  Thanks Balena Family for sharing my best friend with me for a week.  I guess this means the next MOM convention probably needs to be in the Bay Area!

In true Markos/Zackrison (our maiden names) style, we didn't want to waste a single minute of our six days together.  Since her flight wasn't leaving until 6pm, and there was the Filial Piety Hwaesong Marathon (say that six times fast) today, I signed us up!  Liz agree to carry the camera throughout the entire event.

 There was a 5K, 10K, and half-marathon, with about 20,000 participants in total.  Why I can't consider running any of the shorter distances is a blog post for another time...

The start line:

The group massage before the starting gun went off.  This is not a joke.  The Koreans took this completely seriously (except for the old guy behind me who I'm assuming felt it indecent to rub the shoulders of an unknown woman). 

The spray bottle guy.  He went around spraying everybody with some unknown substance at the start of the race.  I thought it might be sunscreen, but can't be sure, and felt that it was very strange that he could just spray me without my consent.

The guys who mostly ran with us.  And cheered us on, and told us to run whenever they saw us (mostly me) trying to walk up those darn hills. 

Liz, who claimed she hadn't trained for the race, proved to me once again why she's been my running idol for the past 15 years.  Out of nowhere, her long distance endurance shone through as she was dragging me up hill after hill, all with a smile on her face.  I would hate her if I didn't love her so much.

One bad part was that aid stations weren't very plentiful, and it was the hottest day of the year, to-date.  From afar off we could see this aid station coming, and were anticipating the cool drink of water, only to be greeted by tables of wet sponges.  Liz may, or may not have opted to drink the water straight from the sponge.  She's die hard like that. 

The scenery, most of the race.

Except when we ran past the city dump? 

There really isn't anything like a race to cement a friendship, and make memories that will carry us through the next 15 years.

And, I'm so glad that I get to check another thing off of my list:

• Run a Korea Long Distance Race.

Check.

Bye Liz.  Thanks for coming.

Everyday in May!!

May is going to be huge.  First of all, Liz is here.  Hers was a trip a long time in the making.  And with only one last day together, Darin has commented more than once that our house is a little like a sweatshop right now.  I'm fine with that.  One only has their best friend, and best sewing friend, in town for a very limited time.  We are trying to optimize every minute.  But, we will pause to run a half-marathon tomorrow, so that's kind of funny.

Secondly, May is going to be our last whole month in Korea, we're leaving June 1st!  I have a lot to say about that.  

And thirdly, we will hit our 300th post during May, and I'm thinking of making that something special.  For all of those reasons, and so many more, I'm going to have a blog post a day, everyday in May, STARTING TODAY!  

It's going to be huge.  

Come back tomorrow.  

XO,

Annee

Spring Break was awesome, etc.

Here are a few things I learned on Spring Break 2010:

1.  Wear sunglasses in your pictures.  It's more likely you'll look like a movie star that way.  Who doesn't want to look more like a movie star?

 2.  Korea can be shockingly beautiful.

3.  I feel the same way about my kids sometimes:

4.  I really love sleeping in a bed.  Although, if you have to sleep on the floor, heating them is an excellent idea.

 Master Bedroom at the hotel.

Living room.

Kitchen.

5.  Traveling with a huge group of fun friends is an excellent idea, especially when your hotel is sparse. 

6.  Just accept the fact that if you try to hike a mountain on a really cold day in April, you will likely have to give in to the tantrum over the fury animal hat.  Don't think less of yourself, or your strength, or your powers as a parent if you do.  Just focus on the fact that you took that frown and turned it upside down.  Go ahead and pat yourself on the back for that moment of weakness.  

7.  Fish markets are simultaneously disgusting and fascinating.  Mostly disgusting.

8.  I should always travel with Darin.  He takes great pictures.  Next up is my report about my girls-only trip to China.  I promise to include all five of the photos that I took while I was there.  

That's it!  That's all I learned during Spring Break 2010.