1 year update

Okay... so I think it's about time I did the 1 year update on Ellie. Ha ha. She turned 1 on November 30th, and we had a nice birthday party for her with family and friends on December 4th. It was nice to have everyone there, and a lot of people helped out with the food so it didn't take too much work to prepare for it. I made Bulgogi and teriyaki chicken, and my friend Moa brought shrimp noodle salad, Kyra brought broccoli salad, Joe's mom brought the cake, and my mom's friends two Sister Kim's made potato pancakes and red bean bread. Joe, Chloe, and Dan helped me make a balloon arch to decorate the birthday table with, and we also had a slideshow going in the background of pictures of her growing up and also of her 1-year pictures I had a chance to take

All in all, we had a great party with great company. Well, now moving on to how she's doing.

She's a chatter box. She can say a few words already. Her favorite word is 밥 (Bop), which means food. She can also say 물 (moole), meaning water, but she actually says it more like "boo." She can sometimes say 엄마 (mom) and Daddy. She also likes to try to follow and repeat what we say, especially what Alden says. She can also sign "all done," "more," "please," "I love you," "hello," "yes," and "no." She loves to point at things, and she can really express what she wants and she doesn't want. She loves to eat, and she poops like four times a day too. I don't know why she's not bigger. Ha ha ha. She loves to smile at people, and she knows how to act "cute" so that everyone goes "aw......." with a slight head tilt and a smile.

She's very competitive, and she doesn't like to lose to her brother. She also get very jealous (i think typical of a girl), and if Al acts like a baby and cuddles up to me, she crawls over, yells at him, and tries to push him off. (She's pretty good with other kids though). She loves babies, and whenever she sees babies, she point at them and likes to get close and touch thier faces/heads. Unlike Al, she never took to a binky, but she loves her blankets. She doesn't just have one blanket she likes, but she loves a particular fabric type (the receiving blankets). I guess I used to carry around a blanket too when I was little (something I had no idea i did) but my parents keep saying she looks like me and also takes after me.

She's also very smart. When I teach her a sign language, she remembers to use it only after a couple times, and she remembers how to use a toy after we try playing with it once. She also loves it when Alden plays games (wii or nintendo), and one day, I discovered her pointing and shaking the wii remote AT the TV. Ha ha. We also have the super nintendo upstairs next to the TV, and when she wants to play, she turns on the TV, grabs the controller, and sits down facing the TV and starts pushing the buttons. So far, she hasn't figured out how to turn on the Super Nintendo yet, but I've also seen her with her hand on the "on" button, so it probably wouldn't be too long before she figures that out... Ha ha. My guess is she's gonna be better at games than Al is by the time she's Al's age. She also loves the laptop and anything electronic (cell phones, etc.). We're planning to teach her how to program later (it'd make a good stay home mom job).

She's has a very mild personality. We love putting her to bed. When she seems tired, we just ask her if she's tired and if she wants to go to sleep. She just nods her head, and after brushing her teeth and changing her, we just put her in her bed with her blanket, say good night, and leave the room. Then she just lies there and puts herself to sleep. When she wakes up, she rarely cries (only when she is woken up), and she just sits in her bed and waits for us to come and get her.

We just love our baby girl, and can't wait for her to develop more fun skills and personality.

Happy Halloween!

This year for Halloween, i wanted us to have a Super Mario theme. I started planning and preparing for it more than a month early, visiting the DI and internet blogs for ideas. Slowly, i put the costumes together, and i'm proud to say that it turned out really well, and we got a lot of compliments!

Mario: I bought Joe and Al's overalls from the DI. I made the yellow buttons out of felt. I also bought Al's red shirt from the DI, and Joe wore a red shirt that he already had. I bought a couple of red caps from the DI that I modified to make it look like Mario's, and I also got them some white gloves from Walmart.

Princess Peach: For Ellie's costume, I found the perfect pink dress from the DI. I found a pink shirt for myself from the DI and also some light and dark pink fabric that I used to make my skirt and the additions to Ellie's dress. I bought my wig and our tiaras. For Ellie's wig, the wasn't any baby size wig, so I bought a Bratz hair doll and cut up her hair and glued it to a baby size beanie with a hot glue. Ellie's wig took the longest to make, about 3 hours.

Thursday before Halloween, our ward had a Halloween Party, so that's where we showed off our costumes for the first time. We had really yummy chili and cornbread for dinner, and Alden got to hang out with his babysitters and join some activities that the youth prepared for the primary. After. The ward party, Joe's friend Invited us to another party at her gallery just two doors down from T-Splines. We went and enjoyed her paintings (she's incredibly talented).

On Friday, Joe's high a hook friend Austin and his wife Jlisa invited us to a group date they prepared called the Amazing Race. It was a scavenger hunt type of date with lots of driving involved, and one of the rules was that you cannot contact anyone for help, and you can only access google on your phone! Anyway, long story short, we had to give up early because, it turns out, we were the only ones without smartphones, and they didn't expect anyone to NOT have a smartphone... Joe's dad was babysitting for us, so we went to Nielson's custard to have our own date night.

On Saturday, we slept in, and Joe's mom and I had lunch, went to the playground, and went to tjmaxx while Joe fixed the lights in our car with his dad (we got pulled over the night before, because we were missing the left brake light, left blinker light, and the license plate light to to mention the left headlight that the officer didn't catch). We went and visited Joe's grandparents too but the kids were too cranky is we had to leave early.

We had a relaxing day Sunday, and on Monday, I took the kids to Thanksgiving Point Farmland with my friend Lara, her husband, and her kids, Yumi and Yuri. Yumi is Al's age, and they always play really well together. We got to see lots if farm animals, and even feed some sheep, goats, and llama some leaves. Alden also got on a pony, and he really enjoyed being on the horse. We also went on a "wagon" ride, except a tractor was pulling the wagon, and the horses were tied to the back of the wagon... Lara and Michael bought us a really nice lunch, and Alden and Yumi really had fun playing together and eating lunch. They wer eating spaghetti noodles, and we're competing to see who could make the noodles disappear into their mouths faster. Ha ha. We decided to go trick-or-treating together later. Yumi went home, and I wanted to go to the mall where they were supposed to have Halloween activities, I thought Al would fall asleep in the carm but he stayed wide awake, so we went to the Provo Towne Centre. They weren't supposed to start the trick-or-treating until 5, but they had small activities like coloring and candies and stuff. But it wasn't too exciting, so we went and played at the playground for a minute. I was gonna head home around 4:30 so Al could get at least an hour of sleep before heading out again with Yumi, but I also noticed that some of the stores had already started handing out candy. So we went around to several stores and stayed there until 5. Alden did a really good job, walking up to the store person and saying, "trick-or-treat!" he was really getting into it, and he kept saying, "more candy!"

After we got ready, Yumi came over with her sister and mom (they go to the Korean ward, so they didn't really have a neiborhood to go to), so we went and visited the families in our ward. Yumi got a little scared of some of the decorations, but Al kept saying, "Halloween not scared!" he really enjoyed going out with Yumi, and Ellie even got some candy! (although we had to go through and take about half of the candy out and send them off with Joe to work the next day since they had peanut warnings).

It was a good Halloween, and I had fun getting the costumes ready. I don't know what next year will bring yet, but I think i'll have fun again on a new project!

Jamie's Football Game

Yesterday, we went to see Jamie's football game. We were actually planning to go last week, but Alden got sick and was throwing up, so we couldn't make it. For lunch, we met up with our friends Moa and Yohan at 장수장 (Korean restaurant in Salt Lake) for lunch. The food was soooooo good (Joe said it was the best Korean food he'd had since Korea), and everyone, including Al and even Ellie, ate a LOT.

Then we dropped by the distribution center and the DI in Bountiful. After that, we picked up Joe's mom and drove up to Ogden. We got there close to the end of first quarter. Jamie was playing on the special team, so we didn't get to see him play that much, but I was able to take some close-up pictures of Jamie using my super 250mm lens.

Ellie and Alden were being so good, and they were clapping and cheering with us. :) Mom bought us ICEEs, and that got Alden through the first half of the game. During half time, we met up with Joe's dad, Faye, and Jon, who were sitting across the field in the family section (we had general admissions so we couldn't sit with them). Alden discovered the track field and the shotput field, and he was running around and making sand (rock) castles. He got really bored during the second half, so Joe took him down back to the shotput field. He ran and ran and ran around with new friends he made (other kids who didn't really care for football but were there because of their parents. lol), and he even tried long jumping with big kids.

Weber State ended up losing, but we had a fun time, and we were glad that we could make it out to Jamie's game. :D

Al and I making a sand castle. [I made my shirt last week (Joe's as well) by cutting up white fabric and hot gluing it to the shirt. I used iron-on for Alden's shirt.] As we were leaving to go to the bathroom, he kept telling Joe, "Don't break the mountain! Don't break the mountain!"

Ellie visiting with Dad and Faye

Ellie fell asleep on Joe's shoulders... lol. As we headed back to our seats, everyone stared, pointed, and said, "Look. Aw... The baby's asleep..."

Happy Birthday Alden!

Alden is now "Kree."  We had a week-long celebration, and I'm sure he enjoyed being able to say that it's HIS birthday. (He gets to blow out candles on other people's birthdays. lol)  His birthday was on a Monday this year, so we decided to have separate parties up in Bountiful and down in Provo so people wouldn't have to travel long distances. On Saturday, while Joe went to the priesthood session, the kids and I hung out with Joe's mom. We went to McDonald's to celebrate then went to Walmart. We bought some clothes for the kids and some cupcakes and a birthday cake. After Joe got back, we lit some candles on the transformers cupcakes (and of course, he picked out yellow candles to blow out).

He picked out YELLOW candles to blow out

Ellie was sad it wasn't her birthday

Blowing out candles..

Oops.. He got too close and almost burned off his eyebrows!

Yummy icing!

On Sunday, we went to Joe's grandparents' to watch the morning session with them. We spent some time together having lunch and looking through old mission pictures, then went over to Joe's dad's house to watch the afternoon session. Joe and I both fell asleep during the session, and Dad, Faye, and Jon watched the kids for us (thank you!). Jamie and Sam, and Tom, Laura, and Sophie, and grandma and grandpa came over later so we could celebrate Jamie's engagement and Al's birthday. We watched the video of Jamie's engagement, and sang Happy Birthday to Al. This time, we had a bigger transformers cake and Joe almost dropped it on my lap trying to angle it better for a picture!! Dad and Faye got Alden a "monkey pajamas (Alden asked for it)" and Tom and Laura got Al a cool cape and a mask with an "A" sewn on the back. :)  Sophie and Al played very nicely and enjoyed their time together as always!

Monday was just like any other day. Even though it was Al's birthday, we didn't really do anything special since his party was on Saturday. Well, he seemed like he was started to get sick, so I did spoil him by letting him eat whatever he wanted (consisted of juice, crackers, plain macaroni noodles, and popsicles) and played the wii together. In fact, he got to play as much game as he wanted the whole week because he really was sick, and we wanted him to get better by Saturday when we were scheduled to go to the Kangaroo Zoo for his party. He got to play a lot of Super Mario Bros. and he got really really good at it. lol.

Alden got these as a birthday present!

For his birthday, I wanted to try making a red mushroom and 1-up mushroom cupcakes. I had never tried using fondant before, so this was an adventure. I stayed up until 3 in the morning, kneading fondant and adding food coloring to the fondant....

Starting Saturday morning at 9 until about 2 pm, I finished making the cupcakes and made the "star" cookies for the party. I also had a round cake made from left over cake mix, so I made a mario world cake with pipes and a block with coins (Joe's idea). It took a loooooooong time to bake everything, but I think it turned out okay. (And thank goodness, Joe had the energy and will power to do all the clean up after I made all the mess in the kitchen. I don't think I could've done it.)

I made the shirt he is wearing (half of mario overalls)

At 3, we played some super nintendo mario world to celebrate the birthday theme, and then sang a song and blew out candles and opened presents. Then we headed to the Kangaroo Zoo. It's basically a warehouse full of bouncy houses, and the kids (Kelly, Anna, Ben, Alden, & Sophie) just LOVED it. They found this round bouncy house with a mushroom looking thing in the middle and spent almost an hour just jumping on and off the mushroom!

Anyway... All in all, it turned out to be a great birthday, and I think I'm going to try making those sugar cookies again (they tasted pretty good, kinda like those danish cookies you get during the Christmas season). :D

Latest on the Kids

My blog posting has been very scarce lately, and I apologize. I have no excuse but to say that I've been lazy and mostly been on the iPad for my internet needs. It's very inconvenient to post on the iPad, plus I don't have any pictures on there..... :P
Anyway, Ellie has hit her 9 month mark, and Alden is turning 3 pretty soon. It's probably about time I wrote a little about their developments.

Ellie is just a fun-loving baby who laughs easily and loves her brother. She has started to crawl now, and she loves to climb up (or at least attempt to) the slide backwards. She loves to pull herself up, although she cannot crawl yet. She loves to "talk" and will talk back to you if you talk to her. She loves to show affection, and she will stroke Alden's cheeks, and sometimes go to extreme and pull his hair and pinch his face too. She will laugh and whatever and anything that Alden does. She also loves to eat, and always surprises me with eating a very large amount of food (sometimes more than Al, and almost as much as me). Her favorite food is probably plain rice, and she likes it more than bread. She can clap and stick her tongue out, and also smack her lips and click her tongue. She LOVES to dance, and dances to whatever music that's on. She sleeps through the night (almost every night), and will sleep for an average of 12 hours straight. She also loves to get into Alden's things (books and toys), and always wants to do whatever he is doing (sometimes Al gets frustrated, but he's really good with her and patient). She's been putting everything that comes in her way into her mouth, and does a pretty good job of vaccuming the floor (just kidding). She knows how to melt her daddy's heart, and a lot of times Joe is late to work because she stares into his eyes and "talks" to him. (Once she cried as he left the room, and he stayed 15 minutes extra even though he was already late to work.) Yesterday, my mom put her on a little riding thingy that looks like a car, and she was pushing herself forward!

Alden is a very good-natured kid, and yes, he is a kid now! He does so well with his little sister, and very protective and loving. I can even take a potty break and put him in charge of the baby. Whenever the baby cries, he says, "울지마 (don't cry), baby!" and "괜찮아 (It's okay)." And if he sees her putting stuff in her mouth or getting into things she's not supposed to, he pulls her hand out and says, "안돼요 (You can't)." He loves to play with her and entertain her, and a lot of times, he will do things to make her laugh, like jump or run or dance. He also likes to crawl beside her to keep her company (he taught her how to crawl by showing her how and saying, "Like this!"). They love to wrestle. A lot of times, Alden will stare at the baby and all of sudden say, "Baby's cute! And pretty too!" He loves to stroke her cheeks or pinch her cheeks, and also give her kisses and hugs. He is also very good at sharing his toys with her, and brings toys to her when she seems bored or unhappy. (He says, "Here, baby.")
As far as his reading skills go, I haven't had much time to teach him new words, but here and there, he will pick up new words, and recognize it in a book we read before going to bed. He's vocabulary has increased exponentially, both in English and Korean. He is speaking a lot more in Korean now, and that makes me very, very happy. I was worreid that he wouldn't learn Korean, but he says the most random things in Korean and surprise me now and then. We've been enjoying going to the park in the summer, and he has a few favorites (yellow slide, park slide, red slide, tree slide, train slide, etc. - different names for different playgrounds he goes to). He loves to make new friends at the playground and is very social. (He's always asking me to go to the playground to see his "friends.")  He also loves to take baths in my mom's room. Her tub is so big that it fits two floaties, so it's more like swimming. Al and Ellie sit in the floaties and play with toys. :)

Ouch!

We've been really enjoying going to the park lately. Alden LOVES the playgrounds at the parks (we have so many to choose from in Provo/Orem area), and he LOVES meeting new friends there. We went to a new park today (Scera Park in Orem), and 3 minutes into playing (he had gone on the slide like once), he was running and lost his step. As he fell, he flew forward, and where he landed was a metal bar that was supposed to be a step up to another slide. He hit his face really hard on the bar, and he immediately started crying and bleeding. He was bleeding pretty bad, and the face was swelling up quickly, so I told him we needed to go home to put ice on his face. He was crying so hard, but not because it hurt, but because he didn't want to go home... I kept offering him different things like ice cream, ice chips, nintendo, tv, etc., but he just refused to go home. He wanted to play more. Poor thing. I had to just pick him up and force him into the car to bring him back home. I put an ice pack on it for 15 minutes and gave him a popsicle. He had some tylenol, and I think it helped with the pain. I'm so proud of him for not complaining about the pain, not just once. What a trooper. I love my boy!!!

"I love yellow!"

We read a book titled "yellow" before bed. Alden's favorite color is yellow, and he kept saying, "I love yellow!" the book goes like this.

"I wave good-bye to the bus driver. The school bus is yellow.
Grandpa hangs up my raincoat. My raincoat is yellow."

Anyway, you get the point. The next page says,

"I eat a banana. The banana peel is...."

I paused, hoping that Alden would recognize the word, or more, the pattern. He yells out, "Yummy!"

Next page. "We feel the warm sun. The sun is..." "Sunny!"
Next page. "Grandpa feeds the ducklings. The ducklings are..." "Eating!"
Next page. "grandpa counts the chicks. The chicks are..." "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve!"

Ha ha ha. He is just awesome.

Another funny story. We always take our shoes off in the house, and Alden always forgets to take his shoes off when we go inside. Today, we were in the garage and wanted to go to the back patio. He sits down next to the steps and starts taking his sandals off.

"oh, that's okay, you don't have to take them off. We'll just be quick going to the back."
"oh. This way?" (pointing towards the open garage door)
"No, through the house."
"oh... (with a perplexed look on his face) That's funny."

I guess I'm supposed to be consistent about the rules on wearing shoes in the house. Lol. Everyday, I learn something too.

Okay, baby?

Today as we were trying to fall asleep for our nap on my bed, Ellie was in a really good mood and kept squealing and laughing. I was trying really hard to get Alden to fall asleep but he was having a hard time relaxing and falling asleep. Finally, he turned over to Ellie and said, "Baby! We need to quiet. Mommy, Daddy, Alden asll sleeping, okay? That's not loud. We need to quiet, okay?" ha ha ha. I was trying so hard to stop myself from laughing out loud....

Time out!

Today, I was trying to put Alden down for a nap, and we were lying down on my bed. I was pretending to be asleep so that Alden would be able to fall asleep. He was getting really bored and started talking to himself. He put up both hands in front of him and started to make them fight each other. After a few seconds and after he had counted, "One, two, three, four, five," he yelled, "Time out!" Then he put one of his hands away from the other one for a few seconds. Then he said, "Done? Yes." Then made his hands play with each other again. (repeat 5 times). Ha ha ha ha.


Here's a picture of the Father's Day card Alden made for Joe. One side has a picture of Joe that Alden drew (with glasses in orange) and things he likes to do with dad (I asked Alden what he enjoyed doing with Joe). On the other side, he wrote DADY in blue, and ANLDE (he ran out of room and had to write in N beteween the A and L) in orange. He also drew his own face in orange. :)

Carnival!

We were planning a trip to Bountiful and asked Laura what they'd be up to so Alden can play with Sophie. Laura said that they were gonna go to a parade and a carnival at West Valley City, so we invited ourselves to the carnival. Alden had never been to a carnival or an amusement park (well, that he remembers. We went to Everland in Korea when he was 8 months old) so I really wanted to take him. They had tons of kiddie rides that Sophie and Alden loved. Laura's cousins Nicole and Josh were there with their three boys, so the kids went around on the rides together. Alden had so much fun and was so excited to go on different rides. After an hour or so in the sun, however, all the adults were hot and tired, so we called it a day and left the carnival.

Alden doesn't look very excited in this picture, but he was, I promise! :D

Ellie enjoyed the view and the warm weather.

This was a pretty bumpy ride, and the kids loved it.

After that, we decided to drop by the DI we saw on our way into the park, and found tons of books for really cheap. We found a lot of Dr. Seuss books and Arthur books and got them for only 33 cents each! :D

Then we visided Joe's dad, and he taught Joe how to change the oil in our car. We also had a nice visit with Joe's grandparents, and went to Joe's mom's ward BBQ. While we were at Joe's dad's house, Alden was singing, "A! L! D! E! N! Alden!" Ha ha ha.

Sparklers. :D

Joe is so funny....

I don't know about anybody else, but I think Joe is the funniest guy on the planet. It's one of the reasons why I'm married to him. Ha ha.

So the other day, I was feeling sick and didn't have much of an appetite. My mom offer to babysit and told Joe to take me out to eat. I wasn't really feeling up to eating anything so Joe was trying to figure out what I would want to eat.

He darted naming off a whole bunch of food like, "Chinese? Italian? Mexican? All you can eat pizza?" Then he said, "do you want some pho?" I didn't answer so he said, "what about some dough? Rye? Or me?" so it was then that I realized that he was going off the music scale... He continued, "how about some 소 (soh-cow)? Latte? Tea?"

Ha ha ha. I love Joe... And happy Father's Day!

Ellie is a big girl!

Ellie is finally getting her first tooth. The left bottom front tooth. :D She had been drooling a lot, like a lot in the last week or so, so we are so happy to see that little tooth come out. She's being such a good sport about it, and doesn't while or cry or anything even though she is teething.

Potty training that we started with her just for fun has given us a surprising result. In the last week, I haven't had to change a poopy diaper yet. It's still hit-and-miss with the pee, but she has pooped four times in a row in the toilet!! (That's actually better than Alden's tracking report) Yay for Ellie!!!

Yeagi's getting married!

My sister, Yeagi, is getting married next month. I took engagement pictures for the couple, and here are some samples. :)

pictures and more pictures

Seems like my recent posts have all been lots of words and not too many pictures, so here's a post filled with pictures.

"T-Rex!"

Playing with bubbles in the backyard

Enjoying the warm weather out

Taking care of the plants everyday.

Ellie's trying to eat my camera strap..

Al's drawing skills. I used brown and he used yellow (yes, he drew the nose on my person, and he also drew the arms out of the head).

Alden and Sophie "hiding" from the gorilla.

Alden took a bite out of our first strawberry. It was gone the next day. lol.

Ellie started eating real food. :)

Playing football

Posing for the camera