Baby Incentive

All of us are enjoying having hard floors except for poor baby Samuel. He does not like to crawl on them and will keep himself positioned just so on the edge of a blanket or the gym mat so that no part of him has to touch the cold, hard floor. He won't crawl on it, so his area to move around is pretty small. Because of this, he doesn't really even TRY to crawl and then of course their is the sibling factor...why move when you have 3 little people bringing you everything to play with your heart could desire?
But we recently discovered there is one thing that Samuel WILL move for...or to GET to rather. He LOVES the MacBook. (smart boy)  :)
So I decide to do an experiment and see if we gave Samuel some 'baby incentive' if he would try to start moving. I wasn't going to make him crawl on the hard floor though, that doesn't feel good on baby knees, so I put his blanket on the ground. At the other end of it I placed the forbidden computer...the kids are not suppose to touch the computer in our house unless they have permission to be on it and Mom or Dad sets it up for them to play a game, type, etc.  So Samuel instantly had an audience because they all wanted to see if I'd actually let him play with it! LOL!
It took him a minute to get going. He kept looking at me, then at the computer and you could see him thinking about weather it was worth it to try to get to it or not!

He was SO happy that I didn't take it away...

And that I even let him touch it.  :)

Then I did something really mean and I moved it to the other side of the blanket and made him do it again.

He moved MUCH quicker this time!

I've never seen him go so fast! It was nice to see that he actually CAN crawl, he just chooses not to because apparently there isn't anything interesting enough laying around to motivate him to move. Hmm....I think he has a bit of his Uncle Stephen's personality.  :) LOL! (for those of you who know Stephen)

And then I was really mean and moved it again. This was his reaction...

He was not very happy with me. And after seeing him look so crushed, I couldn't move it again. So I somehow convinced him to crawl to it again and this time I let him play and push the keys for a few minutes. Though I don't think he expected to actually get it this time. He moved a little slower, communicating to me that he didn't trust me...maybe this isn't a good game to play with him! What am I teaching my children?!

He was very excited when I didn't take it away this time and enjoyed banging on the keys for awhile. He eventually lost interest when his cheering section dispersed and went on to play other things...such an Adams!

Pyeongtaek Lake

I haven't been very quick about posting about our recent adventures and then Peter gets impatient and wants to share them with everyone and just ends up posting them on Facebook! But I still like to write about them, so I'm going to put them up here anyway.

One of our favorite things to do is a family is to go for walks and play at new lakes and parks. So since being here we've been on the hunt for them, looking for nice places to go walking that are nearby. We were so spoiled in Missouri with the many, many beautiful parks and fun places to walk and play outside...we miss it so much!
Anyway, we finally found one the other day and decided to go check it out. Here is our city sign...I think it's interesting that it is in English letters and not the Korean character. We've found that a lot of store names are that way too...?? I don't know if it has just recently been constructed or if their just happens to be construction going on in front of it right now.

The lake was very pretty and breezy which was wonderful relief from the intense heat we have been continuing to have.

The kids loved the boats that looked like swans out there!

There was a really nice boardwalk that stretched most of the way around. The kids enjoyed getting to run for awhile. 

We wore them out letting them run all over this big ship deck, up and down the stairs.

There was a fountain out in the lake and we enjoyed watching the wind surfers too.

We then walked across the street to the Art Park and saw lots of neat sculptures and let the kids run through the fountain for awhile. (It was hot enough that we figured they'd dry off most of the way before we got back to the car...and they did!)

We found a pretty waterfall too!

We LOVE exploring new places, and this ended up being another very fun day for the Adamses!

New Camera!

We finally got our new camera that we ordered back in July and I LOVE it! We decided to go with the Sony NEX series and are very happy with our purchase.  :)  Some of you have probably already seen some of these pictures that were posted on Facebook, but I thought I'd add a few of them up here too because I know not all the family is on FB. So here are a few favorite shots from the new camera...

I tested it out while I followed Faith around...the best shots always seem to be unplanned. I love getting pics of the kids while they are playing!

She doesn't normally like getting her picture taken, but I was just snapping them quick as she was playing and we were talking.

I think they turned out pretty cute! Now I'm even more addicted to taking pictures than before!

I love the sisters shots...

Too precious! I think these may need to be framed in their room.  :)

Driving in Korea

I got my Korean drivers license a couple of weeks ago but have yet to drive anywhere except to post and back which is just a few blocks away. If we go anywhere off post, Peter drives. I'm fine driving around on post. It's just like driving in the States, maybe even better since there are M.P's all over the place, most people actually seem to drive very safely and don't go over the speed limit. Oh, the speed limit... I'll tell you about that later....
So, the written test I had to take to get my license is not that much different from the one in the U.S. Most of the rules of the road are the same, though there are a few different signs and things you need to know. There's a problem though....NONE of the Korean drivers know the rules of the road...or they just don't care! I wonder if some of the people on the road really have their licenses or if they just decided one day to jump behind the wheel! It...is...TERRIFYING!! And I got pictures to prove it.... :) While I was buckled up safely in the passenger seat of course, I didn't try and take these while I was driving, LOL!

In Korea, the red lights are just a 'suggestion'...or so they seem to be. The test I took on the rules of the said no such thing, but you wouldn't know it from watching the drivers all around you. Here we sit at a red light and watch not one, but two different vehicles run the red light. Here is the first one....

And here is the second one, who almost wasn't as lucky!...

There was almost an accident right in front of our eyes! This is just a couple of blocks from our house, we were not even in a busy part of the city. See?! It truly is terrifying to drive here!

After our car arrived in country, we promptly went out and bought a new GPS so we could figure out our way around this new city of ours. Unfortunately it seemed impossible to find Korean maps for the GPS we already had in the U.S. and there was only one to choose from over here that was in English. It's pretty fancy and has come in quite handy. It has cool features that our U.S. GPS doesn't have...but guess what? This one won't work in the U.S., only over here. This is kind of ridiculous. I wonder what our collection of GPS's will look like after 20 years moving around in the Army! LOL!
So anyway, here's our new toy....

She (the voice of the GPS), sounds quite friendly and introduced us to many new things on the road. The first day we used the GPS we were in Seoul picking up our car. On our way through the city, we'd been driving only about 5 minutes and she shouts..."WARNING! You are about to enter....THE DANGER ZONE!" We quickly realized that she meant...the dreaded BUS LANE. You see, once you cross the blue lines, (which you sometimes have to do to turn right), you are then in their territory...Remember I told you about the '20 Bus'? They OWN the road, move out of the way or they WILL run you over! So the GPS was right in calling it, "The Danger Zone".  :)

The speed limits here have taken some getting use to. And did you notice our traffic lights are sideways...

The "80" doesn't mean 80 miles per hour, it's 80 kilometers. It's kind of frustrating because that's only about 50 miles per hour and to those of us coming from the States, that is REALLY slow for the freeway. But I guess that is a good thing since everyone here drives rather crazy!
All this to say, that I do have my license now, but I won't be willingly driving out and about exploring Korea by myself anytime soon. That's okay though, because it's much more fun when all of us go anyway!

The Party!

Joy's birthday started on Wednesday and ended on Saturday this year! She didn't mind one bit having it drag on for four days! :)
On her actual birthday we went swimming at a friend's house in their pool on their roof! The kids had a blast.

Then we went out to dinner....

When we got home, we gave her one present and told her the rest she had to wait until her birthday party on Saturday.

She was THRILLED with it!

She got her first American Girl doll, something she's wanted for a very long time!

She got lots of birthday love from her brother and sister...

The next two days she had fun getting mail from family and Skyping with grandparents while she opened her gifts from them.

THEN....Friday, little more than 24 hours before her party, our household goods showed up! We were so excited to get it all, but we had our work cut out for us to get unpacked, organized and cleaned up before the party....oh, and I still had a cake to make!

This is just a tiny bit of the pile. Once they brought it all in, this pile was 3 and 4 boxes high all the way across the room!....I think we forgot how much stuff we brought with us. :) It was very nice to be able to just unpack and not have to worry about carrying it in from the truck, the moving company did that for us!

We didn't sleep much that night, but we managed to get most of it done and the house ready enough for the party. I finished the cake in time too! This year she requested "A Frog Princess" on her cake that resembles the frog from the movie "Princess and the Frog". After many, many attempts sketching frogs on paper, I finally got it (and ran out of time) and drew this one on the cake. I think it turned out pretty cute.

Joy was happy, so that's all that mattered!

We had her party after dinner so here they all are waiting for the party guests to arrive...

Our house was full of new friends and we all had a fun time!

She was spoiled with more presents and play time with the kids. We had our 4 kids, plus 4 more girls and 5 more boys and all of their parents.... it was packed in our little living room....just how I like it.  :)

After it was all done she put on her new matching jammies with her doll and told me "This was the BEST birthday EVER!!" (Yay! That's what a Mommy likes to hear!)

Our big 6 year old now...

P.S....After having several people keep telling me they didn't know how to post comments on my blog I finally figured out that I had some setting checked that didn't allow it unless you had a blog of your own....I changed it! So now anyone should be able comment. Thanks for reading about our adventures! It's so fun to get to share with all our family and friends this way no matter how far apart we all live. Isn't technology wonderful? :)