We MISS You!

We miss everyone back home in the States SO much! I haven't posted in awhile because we haven't been out and about seeing much of anything new lately. Our car has been acting up and we just haven't been confident enough to drive it very far so we've been staying close to home. Our days have been very full and busy with school and work but we are enjoying some nice fall weather recently. I thought I'd post just to say hi and we miss you! But I can't post without pics so here are few recent ones of the kids having fun on the playground. They each wanted to take turns going down the slide with Samuel....so he's in every one.  :) 

Anyway, our car died again today. Thankfully on post, not in the middle of a Korean street and I only had Joy with me so it was easy to hop in a cab just the two of us to get home. But the van is stuck there until tomorrow. Hopefully they'll know how to fix it this time. We'll see. We'd sure appreciate the prayers though if you think of us! Our car is 'foreign' to them, so last time they kept if for 4 days and gave it back and said "We don't know what's wrong." But it was starting and drivable so we took it back. That only lasted 3 weeks and here we are again so maybe this time whatever the problem is will be a little more obvious. That's about it for an update for now! No worries, we're still smiling and having fun even through the car troubles! But we really do miss everyone.  :)

Our Baby is One!

Our Baby Boy turned ONE this week! He's not walking yet, but he sure wants to, and enjoys doing it with help. 

 Samuel enjoyed some crisp fall weather this week and got a hair cut right before his big day.

 He loves to be out on the playground now, but gets frustrated that he can't go run after the kids yet.

It is always a big deal in our house to get to choose your birthday theme and decide what kind of cake you want. Since Samuel isn't big enough to tell us yet, his brother and sisters decided on a farm cake for him. :)

After getting really frustrated trying to make animals out of icing, I gave up and just printed some, cut them out and stuck them on the cake! LOL! It's kind of cheating, but I just couldn't make a frosting cow for nothing! Peter's commentary over my shoulder didn't help either!

 Samuel Clark was not sure what to think of this big group of friends singing to him! He was quite serious through the whole cake experience.

 I was sad that day thinking about celebrating his 1st birthday with no family around, especially the grandparents, but Peter saved the day and filled our house with friends at the last minute and made this Mama much happier! :) It was so nice to be surrounded by our friends who have really become our Korea family while we're here. We are so blessed to have them! Here are a few of them singing to Samuel on his special day...

Samuel was so funny with his first taste of cake. He wasn't sure what to do with it at first...

 He poked at it for awhile with all the kids around him chanting, "Eat it! Eat it!"

 He finally went for it, all at once!

 Once he discovered that he liked it, then the shoveling began!

He had fun opening his presents with a lot of help from the other kids!

My sweet friend Carrie took some pics and shared them with me since I was busy with the birthday boy and I didn't get many with my camera.

He got a little overwhelmed at the party so we saved some of his presents until later when it was just us in the house. He had figured it out by that point and thoroughly enjoyed tearing all the paper!

 These are my favorites! I love the pictures of him 'reading' his special book from  G. & G. Churchill. I can't wait to give it to him when he's old enough to read all about the other Samuel Adams.  :)

And now I'll end this post with an answer to not 1, but 11 emails and messages I got from friends and a few family members that were "waiting for our announcement" this week! With each of the other kids, during the week of their first birthdays we announced that we were expecting the next addition to our family. But for those of you waiting for the announcement....Samuel will not be getting a sibling for his birthday so there is no announcement. I was shocked at how many people were thinking of that this week when Samuel turned one. It was very sweet of so many of you that said you'd be disappointed if Samuel was the end of this branch of the Adams clan. You made us all feel very loved!  :) Thank you for all the birthday wishes for him, he had a very fun and special day!

A Cool Trick

The lower case letters 'b' and 'd' I've found to be often mixed up by my little ones when they are reading. I've known of the trick for years making 'b's and 'd's with your hands but this week I learned and even more fun way to remember which is which without having to stop in the middle of reading and look at your hands...

 A mom friend taught it to me and apparently it's from an educational kids show, but I'm not sure which one, she couldn't remember. The words go, "Liiiiiiiiine, circle is the letter 'b'! Ciiiiiiirrrcle, line is the letter 'd'!" She didn't know what the tune was suppose to be but she started singing it to the 'Green Acres' tune and it worked! So we decided that must be it! :) The kids love ANYTHING put to a song, so they picked this up right away! We practiced drawing circles and lines in the right order, sticking them together to make b's and d's and laughed while we sang it over and over that day. Now they sing it all the time and it makes me smile knowing they'll probably never again forget which one is a 'b' and which one is a 'd'.  :)

Labels! and Labels! and ABC'S!

You've probably noticed the words on everything in the background of some of the pictures this week. That's because we had fun one day going label nutty in the house! The kids thought it was great fun.

 We all tried sounding out the words and I helped with the tricky ones. When someone figured out what the word was, they got to go put it on whatever the word said.

"WindOOOOOOw!"

 Faith was silly and only wanted to sit in the labeled chair! She thought it was pretty cool that she could 'read' the words and kept telling us what everything said. It ended up being another tricky game to get the kids comfortable with letters, words and reading in a really fun way! Even Faith has been chanting "W-A-L-L, wall! W-A-L-L wall!" and many other words around the house with the other kids.

We had more fun with our alphabet cards this week too.  I wrote the alphabet on some wooden clothespins and let Joy and Joshua start by alphabetizing them on the ribbon we hung. 

They did a great job and finished so much faster than when we first started alphabetizing!

Next it was Faith's turn to put the letters up on their matching pin. Pinching the clothes pins was a bit of a challenge for her, but a good fine motor workout for tiny fingers! We said the letter sounds as we put them up too. Here she is with her 'F'...she's been excited about finding 'F's since we've talked about her name letters so much this week. 

 The big kids helped with a few...

The next time we played we did it "SPEEDY" and the big kids alphabetized and hung them all up as fast as they could! More sneaky learning fun.  :)

She's A Color Master, Comedian and now "The Assistant"

SuperGirl is a 'Color Master' these days and is quite proud about not mixing them up anymore. So this week I got out some of our 'Brown Bear' games and we played them and celebrated how fast she can do the all now without any help! This one she's matching the 'Brown Bear' characters to their shadows and telling me the color and animal name of each one and chanting the "...What do you see?" from the book. 

 Another day we broke out the heads and tails 'Brown Bear' puzzles to match. This time though she said to me, "This  is going to be SO EASY Mom!" and she's right, it was way easier for her compared to just a couple of months ago, there's no hesitation anymore. :)

 She was very excited that the green frog was the exact green as her shirt!

After matching all the heads and tails correctly, then she did this... 

I told her, "You're so silly! Those don't go together!" and she said, "Yeah Mom, it's a 'cat-frog' and a fish-bird...etc.!" She was full of giggles and that caught CaptainAmerica's interest. He thought her new animal creations were quite clever and wanted in on the fun. So they continued to mix them up and make new combinations for quite awhile.  :) Much longer than I thought this particular game would last!

And now she's been dubbed, "The Assistant" by her big sister. You know how much of a performer Joy is and how she LOVES to put on shows...well Faith Elaina has decided she's wanting some of the spotlight these days and recently began putting on 'shows' like her sister has done for years. I finally suggested that they try and do something TOGETHER instead of fighting over the 'stage' and Joy said, "That's a great idea, you can  be my assistant!" I wasn't sure how Faith would like this new role but she was as excited as could be listening to her sister gush..."I'll teach you everything I know, my Assistant!" Then I was in fits of giggles myself watching it all play out. :)

In the end, they cooperated beautifully and put on a wonderful performance for myself and their brothers, who, were not quite as impressed as I was! LOL!