The night before.

I hope I get an "A" on my book report that is due in the morning.  I always get nervous the night before a big assignment is due. 

P.S.  And I feel sad, because I'm not sure that this picture even does justice to the work that went into this "book box".  

P.P.S Who comes up with this stuff for elementary school children??  Don't they know they can't make miniature furniture and books on their own?! 

P.P.P.S.  Please tell me you think the printed out head was a brilliant solution to the complaint, "But I don't know how to draw the main character, MOM!"  (and I hope you read that quote in your whiniest voice ever!)

Good night. 

The Party

The Outfits:

The lanterns!







The castle:



The cake:




The favors:



The stations:



Crown making.

Cookie decorating.  (Not pictured, princess coloring.)

Ending with ribbon dancing and music.

Blowing out the candles.

Now they are 5.

Sigh.

Too late to help.

We are in various stages of party prep all over the house, it seems. Somewhere along the line when we were discussing options regarding a "princess party", a vision of a box castle was mentioned. Sometimes I wonder why I mention my visions. My girls now think that a princess party won't even be fun without a giant box castle, even if it is just for decoration, as I've explained.

And because I can't seem to fall asleep amidst so much to do, I decided last night that one solid night of sleep would be important, so I took a sleeping pill. I think it took affect around 7am this morning. Which reminded me of the awesome time I tried to get an epidural, only it was too late, and didn't take affect until AFTER George was born.

Back to castle building, and giant cupcake cake making, and rose barrette finishing, etc., all with the courteous assistance of a sleeping pill.

This, that and the other.

Look who came to Osan this week?! That's Elder Dallin Oaks, of the Quorum of the Twelve and his sweet wife. They were also accompanied by Elder Hallstrom and Elder Choi of the Quorum of the Seventy, and their wives. After speaking at a conference in Seoul on Sunday, the group traveled to Osan on Monday for a tour of the base. Darin gave them a briefing about North Korea, and we were invited to attend lunch afterward. It was wonderful to be in the company of such great people.




And I was proud that when I mentioned my dad to Elder Oaks, he instantly knew him, and connected him to the work being done on the Rome temple. Pretty impressive.

Lately, Jane has been practicing doing her own hair. Here was her effort from the other day....


George's basketball season came to an end. He did a super job fully participating. It was at times hard to decide if that was because of his love of the game, or if it had to do with the $1-per-rebound offer made by his father. I'll let you be the judge. But I think George is pretty rich right now.

And finally, a little before and after of my latest organization project. I wish I were better at this sort of thing. Sadly, things usually have to get as bad as the "before" picture in order for me to realize that it needs to be turned into an "after" picture. I've got more to say about that, and I'm talking about my latest throw pillow over at Made on Maple. So if that's your sort of thing, you'll want to check it out.


Before:

After!

Winter lasts forever...

...but if you try hard enough, there are still a few moments of domestic bliss.


When I saw this scene through the lens of my camera today, that's when I thought I was having a pure moment of domestic bliss. My girls needed lunch. There was some arguing and crying involved. So many options were not acceptable. I was loosing patience, and simultaneously praying for just the right answer that was going to make everything okay, when "Crepes" popped into my mind. When I announced it out loud, all the tears stopped and hot chocolate was added to the menu. Perfect, I thought. I handled that perfectly. I sat them down to a plate full of hot crepes, a bottle of chantilly to do with as they pleased, and admired my piles of beautifully folded laundry. 12:23pm was looking good, chez Les Earnests!

Winter is entirely too long. It just is. I am a girl who loves all four season indiscriminately. I need them all to have complete happiness. But as it turns out, I need only a small dose of winter. Not a very large dose. In February, I need a few days that feel like spring. Even if it disappears and winter comes back, I just need a little something.

Korea can't deliver. The 10-day forecast has nothing above 32 degrees. But there was sunshine today. And the snow has melted, and it hasn't rained for a few days, so the puddles were even dry. That meant at about 3:45pm I could declare it time to go to the play ground.



Henry took his coat off, because it was getting in the way of his game. He's crazy and cool like that, and apparently takes his game really seriously. He asked me to donate my hat because his ears were cold. I told him no, mostly as a joke, but then I wasn't joking, because then my ears would get cold. And then I sat in silence for a bit thinking about how if I were a real mom, I would totally give my cold son the hat right off of my head. Why didn't I give it to him?!




It's weird, we were the only ones there. 23 degrees isn't too cold to be outside. Seriously, just try it. The kids lasted an entire hour. As long as I stood in the direct rays of the sun, I could keep smiling (my face was kind of frozen that way anyway).



Then, when all else fails, go to the flower market. I took the girls on Thursday. There was no other option. Before leaving, again I found myself praying, "let there be tulips, please, please, please".








So now I'm trying that trick again..."let it be spring, please,please, please, please".

TO BE CONTINUED...

I did it!

I cut their hair! It was LONG over due. They didn't even complain. They themselves had grown tired of the tangles and the tears. And I don't think they could look any cuter.

I also created a new dress. More details on that over at MOM.

Other than that, inspired by our cousin Sam, the boys and their dad have been trying to figure out how to make stop-motion-movies. They tell me they'll have one ready to share as soon as I get the tripod exchanged for one that's not broken (tomorrow, I promise!!). It was surprising how quickly they figured it out, and pretty fun to watch.

And, the Major and I busy trying to forget that he applied to University of Virginia (UVA) over a month ago, and it's possible that we'll be hearing back from them in the coming weeks.

We're trying to forget that, and act as if we're just busy with life as usual. But who can pretend to not care about where they are possibly moving to in about four months?! (Or in 131 days in case you are counting down?).

Dear Charlotteville, VA-

Am I going to be calling you home? I'd love to. Let me know.

Thanks.

Annee

Why deviate?!

The one thing Korea could give me that Colorado never could, is the perfect batch of cookies, right out of the oven, EVERY TIME. To all my sisters, or would-be-sisters who live "at altitude", here's a picture of what cookies look like when you live at sea level:


This batch was devoured about 3 seconds out of the oven, by four children who were with me, every step of the way. And it did make me wonder why I would ever deviate from this type of perfection?!

Dear Jane-

This was the funniest thing I saw all day long.

I love you.

Mom

Cookies weren't the only thing I was making.... Big news here today, from now on I'll be posting all my sewing creations on a new blog:

Made on Maple

It's my new creative space that I'm sharing with best friend Liz. It used to be that almost nightly I would send Liz an email with an attachment of either my finished project or my latest work in progress. And in return, she would show me what she was making. Those were the most delightful emails, but we decided we should just be posting those pictures to a blog. Surely there is no shortage of sewing blogs on the internet, but it feels exciting to have one of our very own. If you want to know what I'm making...come on over.

A little bit of everything.

My mother always taught me, if I didn't have anything nice to say, I shouldn't say anything at all.

I hope that explains my silence over the past week or so.

But we did just enjoy a long, four day weekend. And our Monday ended up being really fun, so that's worth remembering.

We gathered with a bunch of families from church, we drove about an hour to a city where a Hyundai car factory was located. We had our "tour guide" arrange for us to have a guided tour of the Hyundai factory. Happily, there was another deluxe sledding hill only about fifteen minutes from the factory, so we sledded first, and then went on the tour. It was a lovely sort of day.











Korea cracks us up with it's controlled sledding hills. But now, I almost forget how to sled any other way. And maybe they are right? Maybe it's best to all line up at the top of a hill, sit down on your sled in your designated "go slot", and wait until the worker blows his whistle to let you know it's safe to go. I mean, what's wrong with that? Somehow I can't really picture it in America. But maybe it's just because no one has introduced it yet. Maybe it's my next great venture in life...

After a bit of sledding, we let the kids go crazy and partake in the few little "rides" that were there.



In case you can't tell, that would be George who picked this bungee jumping type activity, as his "I'm taking a break from sledding for a minute" carnival ride. What a guy! P.S. Henry kept his feet firmly planted on the ground during his "break from sledding".

After re-applying our lip gloss...

...and having a bit of our picnic lunch...


...it was time to move our party over to the Hyundai factory. I am SO glad this stop was put on our tour schedule. Who knew that watching the entire car assembly line from the stamping shop, to the welding shop, to the car parts assembly shop, could be so much fun? Honestly it was exhilarating. To see a car at the very end of the assembly line, actually drive off the assembly line and get parked against the wall with the other finished cars, nearly had me announced that we would be stopping off to buy a new Hyundai on our way home. I'm not sure who was most excited about the car tour, the children or me?! Thanks to our own sweet Jihyun Knudsen for being our girl on-the-scene in Korea, who gets us access to such fantastic opportunities. We're going to miss her, and all the fun excursions she leads us on!

So that's about it, my friends. The rest of my January days are filled with my ladies finding me at various points in the day, to ask where the camera is. In secret hope that it will break (and then I can get a new one!), I give it to them, and they go and take pictures of whatever it is that is entertaining them right at the moment...

(Grandpa, the cat is what Ruby spent her $5 from you on. She loves it.)

When George isn't busy talking to me, or someone else in this house, and he momentarily doesn't know what he should do, I tell him to read. Then he tells me he doesn't like to read. And then five seconds later, I'll find him, READING. In case you haven't heard about it, "audible.com" might change your life. It's changing George's, and it surely has changed mine. For George he can now "read" the books that he thought were too difficult. He follows along as the book is read to him. For me, it means multi-tasking while "reading"! It's the most amazing thing. I thought books and reading were gone for me for this period of time. But now I read while sewing and that's nearly a miracle.


And to wrap it all up, I give you Beauty and the Bee. I recently ordered these little yellow shoes, and yellow striped shirt, because I LOVE this shade of yellow right now. I would dress the whole family in it, if everyone would let me dress them. As soon as the box arrived, Ruby volunteered to try everything on for me. About five seconds later she was running down the hall to her room to look for her wings. Once those were found, she was running to the craft paper and rummaging for scissors. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me she was going to be a bee. The shoes and the shirt combined together had her buzzing around our house all afternoon long, asking me 2004 times, "What do bees eat?"








It was a buzzing good time! And that's the way we're rolling this January.

How'm I doing?!

Grandpa Z. came to town!! George turned 8 and was going to get baptized. That's a big deal in our world, so George wanted it properly noted. He started Skpying Grandpa Z. some many months ago asking him if he'd come out for it. And true to his word, on January 7th, two days before the baptism, Grandpa appeared at our doorstep (if only it had been that easy)!




Just in time for Grandpa's arrival, the temperatures dropped down to like 7 degrees. But something had to be done, Grandpa was here! So on Friday after only a half day of school, the kids were rescued from their classrooms and we braved the elements and found ourselves at our favorite sledding hill.





Then Saturday rolled around with it's three basketball games, and the baptism! We were running to and fro literally all day long.







George played a piano piece that he had been practicing all week long. My dad and I both gave talks, and there were more people there than I ever would have guessed would show up at 4pm on a FREEZING Saturday afternoon. I was moved several times throughout the whole experience.

One, with the fact that my dad was there.

Two, with the fact that so many came to show their love and support of our family.

Three, with how wonderful of an experience it has been for our family to live way over here in Korea for these past couple of years.

Four, with how mature and grown up George was taking in the whole event.

And Five, that it was perfect. I wouldn't have changed anything (oh yeah, except for how crowded the tiny room was that we were using. We could have moved to a bigger room had we known that so many would show up!). It was so lovely, so wonderful, the Spirit was so strong and I was so proud of George.

And that sums it up for the most part. We came home from the baptism, dumped our stuff off and headed out the door AGAIN to see "The Princess and the Frog". Then Sunday came and went in a blink. And finally Monday where Grandpa sprung the kids from school once again to go bowling! Who ever heard of such shenanigans all taking place during school hours?!

On Monday night as everyone was going to bed, each kid expressed how quickly the past five days went by with grandpa in town, and how sad they were they he had to leave. Ruby asked him more than once if he would miss his plane. I guess they are all feeling the affects of living so very far away!

But, my friends, we are rapidly approaching our time when our Korean experience will be mentioned in the past tense. It's remarkable. And just when I thought January and February might drag by, January is nearly half over, and February is showing no signs of taking it's time.

I had three goals for this day of "life getting back to normal". One was to run! I have no more excuses! I must be consistent from here on out if I'm going to be ready to hit a marathon anytime this late spring or early summer.

Secondly, I had to get these shoes listed on Ebay.



Darin bought them a few months ago, and they didn't fit! They've been sitting around for quite a while now. Do you need a pair of brand new, brown leather Danskos? If so, go check out our auction...I'm even offering FREE SHIPPING! I feel our 1900 square foot apartment shrinking by the day. It's time to clear things out!


And finally, it was to get the blog updated again. So much happens so fast, I am surely going to be forgetting the details!


So that's not too bad for my first day back into a "normal" routine. I hope the rest of the week can be equally productive! I've got big, big ideas (but what's new?!)




P.S. Are you admiring the table runner that the Danskos are sitting on?! I sure have been. As soon as the Christmas sewing season ended, I was able to get to a few of my own projects that have been sitting around far too long. The table runner was one:



My "Krazy About Korea" quilt was another:

front.

back.

And the "RubyJane Dress" that has been floating around in my mind forever, was the third:

Original design, by ME. Sewn and created by, ME. Nothing so amazing as seeing my originally designed and created dress being worn by:

Jane.

Too bad her eyes closed. Some moments you never get back! Now onto the RubyJane Dress #2! It could be huge...maybe less poofy sleeves....maybe a pocket...maybe a different length...or a ruffle. I'm loosing sleep over it. Probably should just bring it to life!

over-and-out.