Joe reminded me that I should post before February ended. As you may have noticed all four posts in January were done in one day.. Ha ha. The last month has been a pretty crazy one for us. Today is the day that Joe is taking the GMAT. He's at the testing center right now, and the test started 10 minutes ago. We've been studying for the last year for this test, but for the last month and a half, Joe's been studying full-time, about 8-10 hours a day. The test was originally scheduled for earlier in the month, but we decided to postpone the test to give ourselves more time to prepare. Turned out to be a good thing because the week that the test was supposed to be, we all got sick and have been sick since then.

Ellie also had an accident on Monday and had to go to the emergency room. At dinner time, we were making Korean style hotpot in an electronic skillet. The table was already set, and as I was getting milk out of the fridge, I saw, in slow motion, Joe yell out and reach out towards to the skillet as it dived towards the kitchen floor. I didn't know what to do as I stared at the floor at what was to be our dinner. I took two more steps over, and then that's when I saw Ellie, in shock, covered in soup that had been simmering just seconds ago. I immediately ran to the laundry room sink with her, stripped her down and started dowsing cold water on her. I was washing oily soup out of her hair when I noticed that her skin was starting to peel on her arm. I yelled out to Joe that we had to go to the hospital right then. Al agreed to stay at home with Dan, and we sped over to the emergency room.

Once we got there, however, the staff at the emergency room did not treaet her burns like an emergency at all. It took over all hour before they got anything on her, and they spent like half an hour just trying to get her oxygen saturation, which clearly was okay because she was pink and was crying very loudly. We were even more upset when the nurses fretted over her for 10 minutes trying to decide where to poke her to get her IV in. My  mom, being a nurse, was even more frustrated by the inability to care for her grand daughter, and she was really panicking because Ellie's face had swollen up and started to blister. Eventually, when they were bandaging her up, my patience was wearing thin too as the RN tried to roll up her shoulder with bandages, ignoring the ER tech's very reasonable suggestions on how to properly bandage a shoulder. At the end of the visit, the ER doctor insisted that we came back in the morning for a follow-up and promised that we'd leave very detailed "notes" on what he saw that night for the staff in the morning.

Anyway, we didn't have a very good experience at all at the emergency room. We had Ellie sleep with us in our room that night, and she slept fairly well because she was on lortab. In the morning, we ended up going to see her pediatrician, who actually was a lot better with the bandaging than the ER staff (even though she had a nurse who was just as incapable of bandaging properly). Anyway, long story short, she was in pain for a couple of days, but she recovered pretty fast considering how severe her burns were. The only thing was that she had to go through that experience at the same time as a really bad cold and teething (she got 6 new teeth in the last 2 weeks, including three pre-molars). Al, Joe, and I were all sick with a cold as well, and I still haven't recovered from the cold yet. Having to carry Ellie around (because she was so miserable) gave me too much strain and I've been having back pain and lower abdominal pain (and today joint pain in the knee). I've had to take care of the kids full-time and when they're taking naps, I was helping Joe with studying, so I didn't have much time to rest at all and recover... Anyway, hopefully after today, we can have lots fun and sleep and rest.... Can't wait till Joe gets home from the test!


We still managed to do some fun things.

Ellie's watching her blankies being washed.

We went to the Kangaroo Zoo with Sophie

Al got to go to school with his babysitter, Kelli.

Playing Mega Man 4 on the nintendo for FHE

Studying ABCs together

Jamie's Wedding

December 28th was Joe's brother, Jamie's wedding. We woke up early in the morning to drive up to the breakfast by 9. It was at the Lion House, and I got to take some nice pictures of the people there.

Right as we were about to leave, my friend who was going to babysit for us during the temple ceremony called. There was a misunderstanding with the time, and we had to cancel with her since she was still in Provo and would not have made it to the temple in time. Fortunately, Sam's sister, Allie, was nice enough to babysit for us, and the kids were just great (so we heard). Joe's grandpa did the ceremony, even after the hip surgery, and he did a great job. He had to come in a wheelchair, but he stood up during the actual marriage part, so I was really proud of him. I took some more pictures after the ceremony over the professional photographer's shoulders.

The reception was at the Ogden Union Station. The room was a little small, but the decorations were fabulous! I got too lazy towards the end of the day, and I didn't take as many pictures, but at least I took a picture of the beautiful cake Joe's cousin Lindsay made!

Happy Anniversary!!

December 27th was our 4th anniversary. I know, already 4 years!! Well, considering we have a three year old boy, I guess it makes sense that we would be celebrating our 4th anniversary, but it seems like the last 4 years have gone by so fast! It's been a blast, of course, and time just flies.
My parents were nice enough to babysit for us, so we got to go on a date. I wasn't feeling so good with morning sickness and all, so we kept it low key, but it was still fun to go out just the two of us and enjoy the time together. Ever since I started having morning sickness and cravings, Joe had been asking me, "Are you craving burgers?"So far, I hadn't. So we decided to go eat out at Burger Supreme for lunch.

We each had a cheese burger meal and got really, really full. Although, in retrospect, we probably should've gotten a pastrami burger, since that was the first time Joe took me out to eat. :D

After lunch, we went strolling at the mall to digest and to wait for our movie to start. Then we went to watch Contagion (during the movie, he kept telling me, "remind me to wash my hands."). After the movie, we shared a salad at Cafe Rio. Joe said the salad was surprisingly good and said it was nice to share it because that would probably be the only time he'd get to eat it since he doesn't want to order one for himself (men and their manly image to keep up). We decided to go home after dinner since I wasn't feeling too well, but it was a lot of fun to go on a date. :D We're looking forward to the next 4 years!

Christmas Vacation

Okay.. so this post is so long overdue, so I'll try to write as much as I remember.. Ha ha. I don't have a good memory, so Joe may have to edit this post a little bit later or something.

My parents wanted to go down to Vegas on a family vacation this year, and they had it planned for December 27-30 since early this year. Well, Jamie decided to get married on the 28th, and we thought we wouldn't be able to make it to the trip. Well, it turns out, there was a vacancy during the week before, and my parents got a really good deal on a two-bedroom condo (instead of one-bedroom for the week after), so we were so excited to go. Since we had extra room, we could invite Joe's mom to come with us as well (we had been talking about going to Vegas to go to the Korean sauna for a while).

Well, Joe had the 22-28 off from work for the vacation/anniversary/wedding, but his company was actually acquired by another company on the 21st. So his "vacation" got extended indefinitely, and it was nice to have him home for the rest of the break. :D (Joe wants me to emphasize that the company was "successfully" acquired and that you need not worry about us. This is actually a good opportunity for us since he gets a month off to just focus on the GMAT full-time and also look at other job opportunities later on and still get paid -- as part of the severance -- to be home with us.)

Anyway, Joe, Joe's mom, Alden, Ellie, and I rode in our car, and the ride actually wasn't too bad. Ellie had fun riding in the back with grandma, and she did really well (except for the last 10 minutes before Vegas). She enjoyed eating snack and watching Pororo on the dvd player. Alden had a blast since he got to play on the nintendo ds with very little restrictions almost the whole way. I also put some primary songs on a CD and promised him a certain type of candy for each word he caught (like Jesus, Heavenly Father, etc.). Well, the "music game" didn't last very long, but I think it was a good try. We'll have to try it again on our next road trip. We made a few stops on the way, at Beaver, St. George (just for gas), and then all the way to Vegas (the kids were asleep majority of the time between St. George and Vegas). However, we had to pull over a few times to clean our windshield because it was snowing pretty badly and after that the salt on the road made it impossible to see anything out the car.

Once we got to Vegas, we headed straight to our condo. We got to relax and have dinner. After dinner, it was pretty cold and the kids were still sick, so swimming was out of question. My parents offered to babysit, so Joe and I went out on a mission to find me a Christmas present (I had already shopped for everyone else, and Joe, well, he had other things going on.. lol.). We went to the big outlet mall and made it through the whole outlet mall with 140 shops in less than an hour (we are not big shoppers), and the only stop we made was at Aeropostale, where I found another shirt for Joe, and luckily, I found a shirt that I liked that Joe agreed to wrap for me. :) We also made a stop at Carter's. Alden had been saying this whole time that Santa was going to bring "yellow monkey pajamas" for him, and I was unsuccessful in locating anything in Utah. We found the perfect one, but they didn't have one Al's size, so they called the other outlet on the North side (all the way across town) and put it on reserve for us. Well, since we were done with the outlet within an hour and still had plenty of time left until bedtime, we decided to drive up to the North mall. We picked up Al's pajamas, and finished looking around the North mall in less than 20 minutes (it was cold, and most of the stores, I had never heard of...) That night, Joe, Alden, and I shared the King size bed, and Ellie slept in her playpen. The bed was so comfortable and we all slept pretty well.

The next day, we went over to Mandalay Bay. We heard that they had sharks. Well, turns out, they had a full scale aquarium ($18 a person!), so only Joe and I decided to take the kids in, and my parents and Joe's mom stayed outside to wait for us. It was pretty small, compared to others we'd been to, but it was REALLY nice.. Each tank had its own theme and was decorated to look like the real sea (minus the pollution). Al and Ellie enjoyed looking at the fish, and we even got a free picture with Santa. The kids refused to sit on Santa's lap (or even get near him), so we got an awkward picture with Santa in the middle and all of us packed into a corner of the picture.

Touching sting rays

Al's favorite, jelly fish

Ellie trying to eat the candy from Santa

After Mandalay Bay, we met up with the rest of the crew (my brother and his wife, and Chloe and Dan, the exchange students) at Woo-Chae. Woo Chae is a Korean style all-you-can-eat barbecue, and we LOVED it. Joe and I really wanted to go for dinner since they were serving beef Kalbi at dinner, but my mom said it was out of her budget, so we went for lunch. It was still delicious and we stuffed ourselves with meat (yum).

After lunch, we headed over to the Korean sauna (imperial health spa). We had been to a few while we were in Korea, so we were excited to go again. Alden loved the pools (even though they were pretty hot) and kept saying "swimming." In the sauna part, they had several heated themed rooms, and one of them had several King-size "tubs" full of marbles made of mud clay. It was so nice to relax in there (even though it got pretty hot for the pregnant woman), and Alden and Ellie just LOVED playing with all the marbles. :D

After the sauna, we went over to the Korean market. It is a huge supermarket with small shops and a food court. Joe and I had dinner (beef Kalbi, of course, and black noodles), and we bought some stuff to take home with. (In retrospect, I should've shopped there more thoroughly than I did because I keep having cravings for these Korean foods that are pretty difficult to find here or are expensive to get). Joe also bought me some 팥빙수 (shaved ice with fruits and red bean paste).

The next day, we decided to go tour some of the hotels since Joe hadn't seen them before, and I also wanted to take Al to go see things. We went to the Bellagio gardens and missed the water fountain show by 10 minutes on the way out. We also headed to the Caesar's Palace because I remebered seeing a really big toy store there. Turns out, it was turned into a very weird style clothing shop, so I was really disappointed... Anyway, to make up for that, we found a McDonald's with a playplace. We were probably there for like an hour and a half, and Al had so much fun with big kids going on the slide and running around. For the rest of the day, we just came home to relax.

Bellagio garden

Found this on the way back from McDonald's

Next morning was Christmas, and we wanted to go to church at 9. So we woke up really early to open presents (we even took a Christmas tree there so we could put presents under it). Alden and Ellie were pretty tired, but they were stoked to open presents and find treats inside the stocking. The church was only about 40 minutes long, and we headed home after that. The kids didn't have any problems with the drive back, except for when Al asked to go poop. We had to tell him to hold it for a few minutes so we could find an exit (Beaver), and even then, all the convenient stores and even McDonald's were closed! We had to go to Travelodge and asked at the front desk if we could use the bathroom. Well, by then, it was already too late, and Al didn't have the urge to go anymore, so we drove straight home after that.

Our Christmas tree with presents

Al, showing off presents with his name on. He looks pretty tired..

Ellie, showing off the treats from the stocking

Opening presents

Our speedometer got stuck on the way home...

When we got home, we made a big dinner with ham and dumplings and had a big family dinner with Yeagi and Jonathan too. We opened presents and also got to talk to Yearim who's on her mission.

Opening presents at home. Al gathered up all the presents with his name on (he had been counting them everyday) and put them in this box. Then he got inside too.

The next day, we drove up to Bountiful to see Joe's family. We went to Joe's dad's house to open presents, and then went over to Joe's mom's for lunch. We had wonderful lunch (courtesy of the Korean store in Vegas) with 삼겹살 and 갈비. After presents, we went to visit Joe's grandpa at the rehab center where he was recovering from his hip surgery. Then we went back to Joe's dad's to spend more time with him since we only got to stay for a few minutes before lunch.

It was a really good Christmas, and we loved spending time with the family. Only if it involved less driving, it would've been just perfect! Ha ha.

Silly kids

So every night, we play this game called, "Here comes daddy!" Alden and I (sometimes Ellie too) run downstairs to our room and hide under the covers, and Joe and Ellie come looking for us downstairs. It usually takes Joe "a few tries" before he finds us under the covers, but lately, he's gotten more clever. So today, I was hiding with both kids, and he walks into the room and says, "Alden's not here either! Where could he be? He must be in the other room." and shut the door. So Al out his guard down and listed up the covers to wait for Joe to come back into the room. And all of a sudden, Joe jumped out from behind the bed and yelled, "I found you!" It made all of us jump, and Al said, "Daddy! You scared all the family!!!" Joe and I were laughing so hard, we couldn't breathe. We are always so surprised at Al saying funny things, it always makes us laugh too.

The other day, Al and Ellie were sharing a juice box, and Ellie has a habit of biting down on the straw so hard that the juice down't come out anymore. She was doing it again, and Al couldn't drink, so we told her to stop biting down. She smiled, looked right at us, and started clenching her teeth so hard with her shoulders raised up that she was shaking. She kept doing that whenever we told her not to bite. al thought it was so funny.

Oh good news, Ellie can walk now. She can stand up on her own without any support. She gets on all fours first and slowly pushes herself up. She's taken quite a few steps to walk before she falls over. She's taken about 7 steps now, and we're waiting for her to start running around the house, chasing after Alden.

Ellie loves to share her food, even if it's already been in her mouth sometimes. She always gives me some to take a bite first and then puts it in her mouth (almost as if to see if the food is poisoned). Now when she hands me things (mostly toys and sometimes food), she says "자!" which means "Here you go" in Korean. Today she also said, "Ah~" while she was putting something in my mouth, and also said "boo!" to ask for a book. She also loves to "read" books, and she would turn pages while babbling so it sounds like she's reading the book. She also sings with me when I sing...

Alden's reading skills have been improved drastically, and he can also do simple addition and subtraction now with the help of his fingers and some pictures (1+3, 5-2, etc.). He can also read any number up to 100, and he also weighs himself every night and read the number out loud (thirty one point four!). Sometimes he can read a whole sentence, depending on the words, and one of the sentences he read today was "Two hippos, one rhino, and one piano on your trunk are very, very heavy" (I Broke My Trunk from the series Elepahnt and Piggie by Mo Williams). Although it's not the first time he's read the book, we still think it's pretty impressive for him to recognize the words enough to remember what the sentence was. If he was actually reciting what he memorized, then that would still be impressive cuz that would mean he memorized the whole 50+ pages of that book... Anyway, we are very proud of him. I need to tach him more Korean though. He knows about half the alphabet now...

Ellie and Alden still adore each other, and it's so cute to see each other give love. They are always giving each other hugs and kisses, and Ellie always likes to tough Al's face or head or lean into him and rest her head on him. Alden also loves to stroke Ellie's cheeks and says, "I love you!" or "Baby's so pretty!" (Sometimes, he tells me I'm pretty too. Hee Hee...)

This post is getting to be longer than I planned, but I keep remembering more stuff to write down so I don't forget in the future... This acts as the family journal a lot of the time so... Forgive me.. Ha ha.

The kids have been sick for a few weeks now, and Al had a fever for a couple days and he's now feeling better. Ellie's taking that course now, and she has really bad runny nose and fever at night. Last night, she wasn't feeling good at all and was crying on bed after we out her to sleep. She doesn't usually cry for longer than 2 minutes after we leave her but that day, she had been crying for more than 10 minutes. Al usually sings to calm her down or says "울지마" (don't cry) but last night, we started hearing him cry too. So we went into their room, and Al told me that Ellie was crying because of monsters in the room and that he was scared too... So we had to turn on the lights and go through the room and fight the monsters. Al loves to pretend to use the lasso (thanks to Diego) so I told him to grab the lasso and fight the monsters off. He got rid of the monsters under his and Ellie's bed, inside the closet, and behind the rocking chair, and after that, he was able to peacefully go to sleep.... (and the whole time, his Buzz plush doll was too scared of the monsters and was hiding in bed, according to Alden).

An update in the new baby. By the way, we call the baby, the new baby, because we keep calling Ellie the baby... Anyway, I went to see the OBGYN the other day, and he couldn't be sure of the "age" of the baby because I was breastfeeding when I got pregnant. So they did a quick ultrasound, and determined that the baby was at 13 weeks (it was 14 weeks according to my first day of last period). The new due date is July 12th. We'll keep updates coming!

P.s.: I'll add pictures when I get in the laptop later. It's taken me long enough to type this much on the iPad... And I still have to post about our Christmas vacation and Jamie's wedding too...

Here are the pictures that I promised!

Ellie on her birthday

Familiy Picture

Ellie pretending to blow out the candles that Al already got to as soon as we said, "you."

Al and Ellie playing in the library basket

Al putting the Christmas "stocking" to good use...

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!