More Water Park Fun

Samuel finally got a chance to get in the water last time we went up to Splish n' Splash and he loved it!

Our sweet boy is also cutting 6 teeth at once right now so it won't be long and he's going to have a full toothy grin!

He loved getting to splash in the water with his big brother and sisters.

We had a visit from Santa while we were there too! The restaurant next door was doing a "Christmas in July" thing so he came over to say hi for a bit. The kids thought he was the funniest looking Santa they'd ever seen...he was wearing shorts and was much skinnier and tanner than usual! LOL! Joy even told me that she 'noticed this Santa had big muscles cause his suit sleeves were really tight!' Joshua then told her, 'It's because he's the Army Santa and he has to have big muscles like a soldier.'  :)

This is Joshua's favorite thing to do here now! He is a brave boy and loves the fast slide! Peter goes down first and then catches Joshua when he comes flying down and he'll do it over and over for hours!

The Splish n' Splash is only open till Labor Day so we'll be enjoying it at least a few more times before then. It is so awesome having it right here on post...we're getting kinda spoiled having so many fun things to do so close.  :)

Back to AK Plaza Roof

It has been a long time since I posted! But we have still been enjoying our great adventure here in Korea.
We've been busy...Over the last couple of weeks we've done several new things and we also made our way back to AK Plaza and finally got to the roof...it was open this time!

There were beautiful gardens and fountains on on the roof and interesting sculptures and art as well as tables and chairs and paths to walk on. We enjoyed peering out the safety glass and seeing the crowded city of Pyeongtaek below.

The kids' favorite part were the giant metal duck sculptures. The biggest one actually has a doorway at the back side and you can go in and sit on benches! That prompted lots of giggles.  :)

Here is Faith and Daddy riding on a duck. :p

We went with our friends that have a little boy Lukas. They liked these silly sculptures too. Notice the pretty ivy all along the fence in the background....yeah, it's fake. Only in Korea! :)

We got a family picture up there too...with the beautiful fake ivy in the back. :)

We did go back into AK Plaza and walked around a bit and had dinner at a different restaurant we had not yet been too....no accidental squid this time around. The kids had their picture taken another 10 or 15 times as we walked through and are beginning to get tired of all the attention their blonde hair is getting them (as you can see from their faces in the picture below) and definitely are tired of people touching it!

I guess it's tough being that cute! :) Most of the time they are good sports about it and don't seem to mind all that much, but some days after the 20th person has tried to pet them, they get really annoyed! I think I would too.

So Many Options!

We have been enjoying all the fun things there are to do here for the Army families on post...and most of it for FREE!!  In addition to the several parks and playgrounds to choose from on just about every block...

There is also mini golf! And it's free...so if the kids only make it 4 holes...who cares? We play and head home whenever we want to.  :)  Daddy helped everyone while Mommy took pictures. 

Joy lasted a lot longer than the other kids!

Joshua enjoyed hitting it for awhile...

But then he decided throwing it in the water and watching it sail away would be much more fun!

The first time was an accident, it rolled in. Of course Peter being the big 'kid' that he is thought it would be a great game for us all to play. So the remainder of our time on the course, we sailed our golf balls down the rocky streams and into the fountains and under the bridges...

Pretty much everywhere, except for the course itself! The kids had a blast and were thrilled when we went back later in the week with friends. 

We also have an amazing water park on post! We finally went and checked it out this week and it was SO much fun!

Here is a little glimpse of the park. We pretty much stayed in the kiddy area and in the shallower of the 3 other pools. But it is even larger than what I got pictures of. 

The kids loved this big sea monster slide and the animals around that sprayed water on them.

Even Faith liked coming out of the sea monster's mouth on the little slide. 

There was so much for the kids to do. There were wheels that they could turn to make more or less water come out of the sprayers, buckets on pulleys to dump on each other, mounted water guns, sprinklers everywhere, slides and the perfect depth pool all around the play area for little people!

They have tons of lifeguards on duty too that are above and all around the water watching. It was actually very comforting, I counted 10 when we were there that day....pretty impressive to me. And they were right on any kids attempting to do anything they weren't suppose to, it was great!

Faith hates posing for family pictures or any kind of group shot. It's very rare that we can get her to cooperate for this sort of a thing. Usually, if I get a good one it's because it wasn't planned! So here she is crying, but at least it's a shot of 3 of the kids with Daddy at the same time. :) I'll take what I can get.

Even at the pool the Korean kids were loving Joshua....the funny blonde boy.  :) They laugh and get so excited watching him (and his sisters too). My kids definitely stand out amongst all the black haired kids here. 

Our bathing beauty Joy  :) Mommy and Samuel spent most of the time in the shade, but we had fun too!

It clicked!

Joshua has known his letter sounds this whole last year and recently has really been trying to put them together to read things but up until today it hadn't really clicked. This afternoon during quiet time he brought me the foam letters and asked me to make a word with him. He wanted to spell cat...so we did, and then he wanted to try and sound it out. It just went from there and before I knew it 15 min and several words later he was reading all of the two and three letter words I was putting out there! I got the tale end of it on video. 

I'm so excited and so proud of him! A whole new world was unlocked for him today as he figured it out....now if only my beginning reader books were here. They won't be until the end of August. :( We'll have to make another trip to the library soon so I can find some for him. Yay for Joshua! 

Another Week

Another week is gone! Time seems to be going quickly these days. On Wednesday we got the missing crate from our first shipment and in it was mostly kitchen stuff. As the movers brought in the boxes I was a little worried at the sight of some of them...

I had lots of help unpacking...And we only broke one plate!  :)  There is still so much stuff that we don't have yet. The 2nd shipment of house hold goods which is the big one, will not be here until the end of August. I'm really looking forward to getting that one but it feels like forever before it will be here. 

The kids and I saw our mail man for the first time this week and this is what he was driving! At first I thought it was a pizza delivery guy...but his red box is full of mail. The kids thought it was really cool that our mail man rides a motorcycle!

The kids have been practicing hard eating with chopsticks and miss Joy has just about mastered it!

Joshua is getting pretty good too! Though most of the time he pokes his stick through whatever he's eating....so rice isn't quite happening yet but he's trying. :)

We made our first trip to the Army clinic this week...   :( Samuel got a booboo. I know I shouldn't be putting this up because now everyone will know what a terrible mother I am. He fell off my bed. It was awful. He cut his nose and it bled a lot. We took him in and had him checked to make sure it wasn't worse than we could see and they said he was fine and gave us some medicine to put on it a couple of times a day. They cleaned him up and that was the worst part...he did not like them touching his hurt nose. I cried along with him. He's moving pretty good now so he's not allowed on our bed anymore unless one of us is sitting right next to him. He can get to the edge real quick! He'll be chasing his siblings in no time.  :)

He loves to play ball with his brother and sisters. The kids were thrilled to get their gym mat in the shipment this week and I was so happy to have a soft place for Samuel to play. The hard wood floors are pretty, but not so nice for little people to sit and play comfortably on. So he got a little bumped and bruised but he was playing and smiling the same day...and I continued to beat myself up for being unattentive and letting him get hurt. :( Thankfully Peter came home right before it happened....I was SO happy he was here to help me.

Korean Folk Village in Suwon

Every month here there are 1 or 2 organized field trips that are planned for families to attend that take us adventuring somewhere. Today the group took us to a Korean Folk Village in Suwon. It was a little over an hour bus ride to get there.

When we got there, most of the families split up and went their own ways to explore or with friends. 

There was a lot to see, it was a hot day and it was all outside!

Here is the entrance to the village...

Kimchi Pots....they are everywhere over here. Koreans love their Kimchi.

We wandererd through the village for awhile looking at the different shops and watching the workers make things. It was very interesting and there was much more to see than we even had time to do. We didn't make it into all the different huts and houses but we did go in quite a few. The kids really loved watching the bamboo guy. He was splitting up these huge bamboo poles into thin strips very quickly. he was making baskets and weaving other things as well. 

Here is inside one of the pottery shops. We got to watch them pounding and shaping the clay too. I love pottery so this was one of my favorites to see. None of their pottery had much color to it though, it was all very neutral brown colors or black. 

We got to go into the different huts/houses that they lived in and see how different they each were depending on their status in the village. All of them seemed very small inside though, and very simple, hardly any furniture. 

Here is the giant kiln they used to fire all the pottery. 

Peter walked the kids up the hill between the two big kilns to check them out. 

After walking through the village for awhile, we met back up with the group to see a few shows. There were these marching band, dancing guys that had long ribbons atttached to the tops of their hats and they would do tricks with them. Depending on which way they turned their heads the ribbons would spin and twirl around. 

There were a ton of Korean school children there with us as well. These rock seats were REALLY uncomfortable!! They all look pretty flat and smooth, but they are not!

After the dancing guys we saw another show of guys doing tricks on horses. 

 

The kids loved watching the horses. They moved up a little bit ahead of us and stood by this tree to get a better look.

The Koreans are always taking pictures of our kids or wanting their picture taken with them. I realized after I took the above picture that this guy in the hat below was taking pictures of them as well!

We then went to another stage area and watch a tight rope walker. He was pretty impressive! He walked up and down and across it several times, skipping and jumping and doing tricks. He had a microphone and was talking, and I think cracking jokes, because all the Koreans there were laughing at what he was saying but of couse we couldn't understand much of it yet! It was still really cool to watch though. 

The last show we saw was a traditional wedding ceremony but we didn't stay for the whole thing. The kiddos were not that interested and there was a lot more still to see. 

This is the Bride and Groom kneeling, facing eachother and she has an attendant on either side of her.

We left the wedding and walked through some beautiful gardens on our way to lunch. 

There were several of these 'napping huts' all over the village and there were actually people sleeping in them! There was a little sign infront of each asking to 'Please remove shoes before using the nap hut"!

In the lunch area there was a small section of American style picnic tables and the rest of the area had Korean style tables...

Every time we see these Joy tells me how perfect they would be for her and her dolls to have a tea party at. She thinks they are just her size.  :)

We ate lunch then headed to the play ground. The kids really enjoyed the standing swings.

Daddy played with the three big kids on the teeter totter too!

While walking we saw this beautiful waterfall...(the pictures never show them like they are in person!)

Then we found where we could walk across the top of it on this cool rock path...

The kids were very excited about this part of the adventure!

We had heard there was a 'Kids Area' somewhere in the village but hadn't seen it yet. When we did find it we had no idea it was going to be so huge!

The first thing the kids wanted to do was ride this giant animals. What we didn't realize until after we stuck the Won coin in was that they actually moved! The kids got to DRIVE them around!

They were THRILLED to say the least!

Even Faith drove one! They went slowly, but still, they were moving and the kids actually had to steer them to avoid running things over. It was very cool!

We took the train around the park next...

I thought this was hilarious! Several times in this part of the village in the kids area, we saw "Made in the USA" on different rides. The train had this on it...

Peter and Bree...and sleepy Samuel :)

Peter took the big kids on lots of rides...For our Missouri friends, this place was very reminiscent of Silver Dollar City...Joshua kept asking if that's where we were!

Notice anything missing in this picture below? The whole park was like this....These kids are all running around with NO PARENTS!! There were hardly any adults in the whole park except for a few that worked there. It is so weird to me, but it's like that everywhere over here. The children have so much freedom to go off by themselves. Even kids as young as Joy just hop on the city bus by themselves.

It was a fun day and we were all really tired when we met back at the bus. I can't wait for next month's field trip!