Catch up

I'm not doing a great job of blogging :( I'm sorry. I keep saying I'll try to do better, but I don't. So I'm not going to promise anything and just do my best.

Let's see what has happened since I last wrote....LOTS!! I'll do my best to give a recap.

The 2 major things most of you already know...
1. Shane took command of the 70th Brigade Support Battalion in the 2nd Infantry Division at Camp Casey. It was a wonderful ceremony and reception. The job is crazy and Shane loves every minute!  I love it too....well except for all the middle of the night phone calls that only seem to occur on the weekends when I actually get to see my husband. I'll let you infer why those calls come on the weekends :) No, actually it is a great Battalion and we are really going to enjoy our time over the next two years.

2. I accepted a job as a Kindergarten teacher here at Yongsan. I am so excited, but also feeling a bit overwhelmed. It has been so long since I have taught--1999 to be exact--so it is almost like starting over, and the room I'm taking over is a MESS!! Oh and I can't get in there to do anything until the 2nd week of August--and my first official day is the 21st!  EEKK!!

It is going to be great though. I have already gotten to work with one of the teachers and she is great!  We are going to have a fantastic year!!

The girls are still on the swim team. It is quite interesting to see them swimming in the monsoon rains.

 

They have one more meet for the summer. They have made some huge improvements. I'm very proud. They aren't winning, but they are beginners and their times are improving each week so that is all that matters. Oh and they are having fun too :)



The girls tested for their next belts in taekwondo on Friday. Dillan will test today. We will see if they made it soon.

I have attended a few Division and Brigade level events for spouses and really like the ladies here. I think we will enjoy each others' company. And that's good since we will be working together for our husbands for the next year or two.


Brendan got his foot on a soccer ball a bit this past week with a mini soccer camp. He was happy to get out and do something athletic. He starts football next week so that will help him out a bunch. He has made a group of friends, but without something productive to do they walk around a lot and complain that there is nothing to do :)

I took the 3 youngers to meet their new piano teacher today. She is really nice and I think will be a great fit for us. They start that in 2 weeks.

Mostly my life is surrounded by my trying to figure out how I am going to balance : taking care of the house, getting kids to all their activities, helping Shane out with the Battalion, keep our marriage/family on track when we only see Shane once a week, cooking most of our food from scratch, getting to the gym, dealing with living in Korea, oh and teaching fulltime!!!  I think the chaos may have just been upped a bit....but we will make it work as we always do. Happy Chaos!!

Korean War Museum

Our 4th of July was pretty low key. We grilled some brats for lunch and hung around the house most of the day. We did head down to the festivities on post for a while and let Dillan jump around a bouncy house a bit. Since it is the start of monsoon season it was raining quite a bit so we decided to head home and watch The Avengers instead. When the fireworks went off we were able to see them since we live on a hill so that was nice too. The one eventful thing that happened for us was that we got approached by a modeling agent for the kids. We were just waiting for it to happen because everyone said it would. I will send their pictures in and we will see what happens...

Today we went to the Korean War Museum. There is a lot to see there and it's free...even better in my mind, Oh and the Korean girls really seem to like Brendan...lots of giggling and whispering when he walks by :-)

 

someday we will have a picture without Meghan's fingers...

 Daddy used to drive one of these

These 2 are quite impressed.

 Dillan wanted his picture by everything

After the museum we went and found a Korean restaurant and had some good food once again..,today we ordered pork belly and pork cheek because the kids couldn't get over that they served that :-). It was good, but other than the meat Dillan thought everything was too spicy. He did not have the best food day...oh well.

Oh I know what else I wanted to mention... last night for dinner we had prosciutto with melon and a big salad. Shane made a vinaigrette from fresh raspberries to top it and I must say it was delicious!!!!

Tonight we are having Philly Cheese Steak Stuffed Peppers, homemade fries, and a salad.
Until next time...

New Chore System

I have been thinking for a while how I wanted to implement chores in our new home. New house= great time for change. I also wanted something that was basic and easily flexible. Since I'm really hoping to work this fall it needs to be something that will allow for the kids to be independent in getting their things done and on the chance I don't work...they can still be independent :)

Anyway, here is what I came up with...I hope it will work out.

The first 3 pictures are in a little entryway nook that we have. The posters are above each child's marker board. The marker board will be where I will write out a couple of chores each day that I need completed--their Chore Board.

 Where the morning/evening routine posters say morning/evening chore, I have a chart on my refrigerator like this. I just move the clip each day and they do that job.

And this one is a copy from my friend Angela--I loved her idea and had to steal it--Thanks! I'm hoping it will at least lessen the perpetual questions around here :)

I hope I didn't bore you all too much with this post...I'm just excited about this as it looks like it will really work for our family.

And now I'm off to make some homemade pina colada ice cream.
Have a great day!!