Extremely Annoying

We've lived here over 100 days now and this still frustrates me so much....

Have you ever seen more ridiculous hours for THE ONLY grocery store on post? For a one car family and someone who likes to get up and go when she has errands to run, not opening until 11:00 just doesn't work for me. The kids are always fresh and the best behaving in the morning, not at lunch time when the store finally opens, that is, if I have the car. If I don't have the car, by the time Peter comes home from work and we eat dinner...the store is closed. Or if it isn't closed yet, it will be before I get my shopping done! And of course it's always Wednesday when I need to run real quick and pick something up that we're missing. You'd think I'd be use to this by now but it's just so inconvenient!

100 days in Korea and 100+ days to Celebrate

Today marks our 100th day in Korea. I can't believe it's been that long already. The days really do fly by fast when you're having fun! Of course it hasn't all been fun, but at least entertaining for most of the time. We are learning to accept and deal with the things that originally frustrated us about living here. We've grown and changed some as a family and though we've learned a lot of things about this new culture and country, sadly, our vocabulary of Korean is not as vast as I had expected it to be by this point! That is a goal for our next 100 days. We've realize that 'Charades' is an acceptable means of communication all over the world and seems to be understood by everyone! LOL!... and also that the local Korean people are quite comical if you watch them for any amount of time and we find them to be some of the most friendly, trusting and generous people we've ever met.

Now for the second milestone... Last spring, Faith Elaina was diagnosed with an immunoglobulin deficiency after being constantly sick from about 18 months old on. Nothing severe, but lots of colds that hung around for weeks and eventually turned into infections one right after the other. They changed antibiotics several times because she was taking it so often and they feared it wasn't working anymore and that is why she would never be well more than a week. Finally, after a few blood tests we realized that her antibody levels were extremely low and also thankfully, that there wasn't anything else wrong with her! Often times low antibody levels are a sign of Leukemia or other serious disease so this was the best possible outcome with her having these very low levels. The doctors told us that some people are just born with low levels for no apparent reason. They said that she was just going to get sick more often and her sicknesses could turn into infections much easier than other people that had high antibody levels and could fight them off. Her immunoglobulin levels would make her more susceptible to other diseases as she got older and there was little we could do other than try our best to keep her healthy. He said children can sometimes continue to get more until they are age 6 but it will not be much of a change from age 2 to age 6. We took lots of recommended precautions and made changes in the house to keep germs and irritants away from her. Then I did a lot of reading on my own about natural immune boosting foods and vitamins and such that would improve her nutrition and...I prayed. I prayed a lot. It was hard to see my little girl so sick all the time. She was sick so often that I don't think she knew what it was like to be well. Being sick was just normal for her and she went about her day as cheerfully as she could like any other toddler. Before we moved, I think the longest span of time she went without being sick or on antibiotics was 2 weeks. But today we are celebrating because us being in Korea for 100 days also marks Faith Elaina being well....not even so much as a sniffle... for over 100 days!!

The last time she was sick was a week before we left the U.S. I remember it clearly because I was worried about flying with her when she wasn't feeling good. Praise God I didn't have to, that trip was horrific enough! (If you haven't heard about it, you can read about it here.) 
I know that lots of our friends and family have kept her in their prayers also.

Thank you for continuing to think of her, we appreciate your prayers so much! I don't know if this amazing streak of being free of sickness has to do with the great power of our prayers or the changes we've made in our home and her diet, or maybe its all of it. But I do know without a doubt that God is in control of it all and I owe Him all my thanks for the last 100+ healthy days for all of us. What a blessing that has been! And a HUGE answer to my prayers! I was so worried about bringing her to a foreign country with new germs and viruses...just the long airplane ride alone had me anxious about her health. But God is good and has protected her so far.

There's been such a change in her personality too because of it. She was a happy, sweet girl before but you just can't help being fussy and whiney when your nose is running and your ears ache and you can't sleep cause you're coughing all night. For me, who was and still is with her pretty much round the clock when she's awake...there is a HUGE difference! Not feeling good really changes my mood, so I don't know why I didn't expect this change in her as more and more time passed and she was still feeling great! She is truly a delight and has a new spunk and perkiness about her! 

She sleeps great and has had so much more energy to play!

 I know that eventually she'll get sick again at some point, just like we are all bound to sooner or later, but for now, we are celebrating!

Too Many Dishes!

We went adventuring today, which was lots of fun, but it's too late to post all about that so it will have to wait until tomorrow. Part of our adventure though was going out to eat and once again I could not believe the number of dishes that were on the table. We went out with friends and total there were 10 of us eating, 6 of those being little kids and at one point I counted 41, yes FORTY ONE dishes on the table! We only ordered TWO meals. Each of them were big enough to feed a family so that's all we got but Korean meals come with TONS of side dishes and seasoning and dips. We enjoyed watching the Dad's cook our food right in the middle of our tables and it ended up being very yummy...we were all really hungry by this point in our day. It's not only these kinds of places where you cook your food right in front of you that you get so many dishes, it's this way at all the Korean restaurants we've tried! Even the places where we each ordered our own meal, we still got anywhere from 4-10 dishes each...it's crazy! And certainly different from America and our 'all in one' dish meals that are often popular! LOL!

I got brave and tried one of the sides which was seaweed soup. It wasn't bad and not really at all what I expected, it went down pretty easy and wasn't chewy, it was soft. The best way I can think of to describe it is that it tasted like the ocean smells. It was.... interesting.

Silly Pics and Fun Times This Week

We had lots of fun with our magnifying glasses this week! The kids took some silly pictures that I promised them I'd put up to show all the Grandma's and Grandpas. So here they are...

We used our magnifying glasses for a new game I printed out and made this week.  The big sheet has tiny pictures on it and they used their magnifying glasses to look through them and match them with the big pictures. I'm not sure where this one came from, a friend sent it to me, but there are other magnifying games at www.biblestoryprintables.com also. :)

I made a few different pages of themes like transportation, animals and food and all the kids took turns with each page. 

Even SuperGirl could do this one!

They continued inspecting everything in the house and noticing all sorts of new details they didn't realize were there. We went outside to explore our 'backyard' too and I posted about some of the things we saw over on my other blog...click here

Another fun thing we did this week (several times because it was a hit!) was have an 'Alphabet Hunt'. Another great idea from www.teachmama.blogspot.com

I hid the alphabet all over the living room then had the kids come and search for letters. I told them that the only rules were, when you found a letter you had to call out it's name and letter sound if you knew if and place it in the middle of the floor in our alphabet line in the place they thought it would go, before they went and found another letter. It was a frenzy 10 minutes of fun and the kids did so great figuring out if the letters came at the beginning or the end of the alphabet and they got them all in order without help. Of course, this was a little easy for WonderWoman, but she enjoyed it anyway! SuperGirl loved getting to play something with the big kids and she knew every letter that she found!

They were hidden all over! Some were easy and others more difficult so they really had to look. CaptainAmerica and WonderWoman were really good about leaving the easy ones for SuperGirl.

We played it 4 or 5 times the first day, and they've asked to play it everyday since! Somehow, it's still fun for them each time but I'm running out of hiding places! We're going to have to do it in another room next time. I love it when I can sneak in a little learning in our fun.  :)

Exploring Our 'Backyard'

I'm really missing having our own backyard to play in but we are still trying to get outside everyday for a bit while the sun is still shining. This week after our indoor magnifying fun for school time (you can see their silly pics if you click here) we headed outside to see what their was to see.
Right now there are peppers everywhere drying outside. Someone had some drying out on our shared patio this week and we had to go take a closer look...

The local people have these and other foods out drying all over the place. Sometimes, even in the middle of the road! And I guess we're all just suppose to drive around it. I don't think anyone would even consider putting their garden of foods out to dry in the middle of the street in America, but here, it's totally normal! I'm not sure what else that is out drying in the road with the peppers but we see a lot of it too. 

There are tons of dragonflies around right now also. And some of them are really big! They are very fast though so it's exciting when one stops close enough and low enough for us to get a good look at. We were pretty lucky this week and the kids got to see some up close.

We haven't figured out what these berries are yet, but they are all over our trees our in the yard and around the playground. We've seen the Korean children collecting them after they've fallen on the ground but I'm not sure if it's good to eat. We haven't tried it, but they are interesting to look at. They are kind of speckled like a strawberry but round and a bit fuzzy....hmm. I'm going to try and ask one of the Korean ladies next time I see one that I know speaks english.

Exploring our 'backyard' here is definitely different than our backyard in the states. It's not as comfortable as having our own, but it sure offers some neat new experiences.

This Will Never Get Old...

I don't think seeing the helicopters on post will ever get old. Every time we see them, the kids get so excited! No matter how many times we see them, even if it's several times in one day, they still want to stop and watch them. There are several flying all day long here and often you can hear them before you see them so the kids are always looking up and searching for them.

What's even cooler is that the kids can now tell the difference between the Apache, Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters and instead of saying, "I see a helicopter!" they shout, "I see a Chinook!"  :)

M.P. Dogs

This week we had the opportunity to go see a presentation that the M.P.'s were putting on with their police dogs. Joy and Joshua really enjoyed it and Faith.....screamed her head off before we even walked in. So she and I sat out in the hall and I watched from the doorway.  :(
Joy and Joshua got to go in and sit with friends and they loved seeing the dogs do tricks and watching how they search through things and help the M.P.'s.

After the presentation the kids got to go pet the dogs and ask questions.

I tried several times to get Faith to go in with me but she refused. She told me it wasn't the dogs she was afraid of but the lion....

I tried everything I could think of to convince her it was just a guy in a suit...like dress up or a costume...but nothing was going to make her move as long as the lion mascot was in sight. It was very frustrating! But still worth it for the other kids to get to go and see.  :)