outdoor illumination

Sorry for the blogging hiatus. I (Bonnie) have been feeling under the weather this break (more stories to come on this in the near future), so we have neglected the blog.

We had a white Christmas in Columbia with my parents, brother, and the dogs. It was really great. Tom and I are now proud new owners of an iTouch and a slingbox. Then we got to celebrate Christmas again yesterday with Tom's family. It's been such a fun time to spend the holidays with our families.

One of my favorite parts of Christmas has always been Christmas lights! The Robertson family has a deep tradition of "outdoor illumination." After Thanksgiving my dad and I would put up Christmas lights around our house (but let's be honest, my dad did all the work). My dad "toned it down" this year because my parents put their house up for sell. Check it out...


I typically dislike these large inflatable objects, but I have to give my dad some credit on this display because he is a pilot so why not turn your front yard into a runway for Santa in an airplane?! Good job dad.

Not only do I love displays at our own house, I love looking around town at what other people put up. Here are my two favorites that I revisit every year:

"The Magic Tree"


All of these were made by hand...very cool!

the most wonderful time of the year

This is a great gingerbread house that Tom's parents bought at a charity auction. It's pretty amazing! Also, the three dogs belong to Tom's parents...Gracie, Daisy, and Max.

got my hair did

Yeah for new hair cuts!
Hank wanted to say hey too.

we made it

I am currently sitting on a great couch by a fireplace in Kansas City, Missouri. Tom would like to note that he is watching football in real time.

This means that we made it safely back to the states. It was an uneventful journey (which is the way we like it). Now we have 2+ weeks to hang out in Missouri. It feels good to be back.

on our way

Last night our apartment turned into a war zone as we got ourselves packed and ready to go home. I enjoy the packing process in some ways...I think I like it because I get to see my husband's heart come alive. This man loves spatial reasoning situations. It's like he views packing bags as a puzzle that he gets to figure out. It's quite entertaining and impressive. I was convinced we needed to take an additional bag but Tom worked his skills and magically got everything to fit and be underweight in two bags. Amazing.

We leave today (Saturday) at 3pm Korea time and we'll arrive in LA on Saturday at 8:30am. I love time travel! From LA we fly on to Salt Lake City and then we'll hopefully get into KC at around 6pm. We're so excited that we get to spend Christmas with friends and family from home.

done

We are officially done grading everything for our classes this semester!!! We have had a grading marathon this week. Tom and I both have five classes and all of our classes had a cumulative final this week. Grades were due today, so we graded 5 sets of exams (2 of the sets were 10 pages per test...what was I thinking?) in about 3+ days.

It was kind of nice because we didn't have to teach this week. Instead we had to proctor 3 exam periods, so even though it was a lot of grading it was nice to only have to worry about grading and not lesson planning, etc. The past three days have looked something like this: wake up, go to school, proctor/grade, eat lunch, proctor/grade, help kids after school/grade, eat dinner, grade (maybe put a movie on the background), go to sleep.

But all the work was worth it because I got done today around noon and then I got to leave school!!! So even though it's a Thursday afternoon on a school day I've gotten to go to a coffee shop with my good friend Kim and do some Christmas shopping. It's a great feeling to have the semester be completed!

Tomorrow we have a work day. Saturday we fly home. We're now half way through Korea Year Two.

roasting by the fire

christmas shopping

Tom and I had a great Sunday in Seoul! We got to sleep in and have a relaxing morning, then we bundled up to head into Seoul.


Our first stop...the Seoul Flea Market. Let's go in!!!


And it was full of JUNK!


And more JUNK...


there were creepy things too...


after that we met Shrek! (donkey was there too)


then we proceeded to do some Christmas shopping!


Overall, it was really fun, stress-free, successful day.

the six foot tree

a real North American brunch

Tom's favorite meal is breakfast. This man loves sausage, eggs, pancakes, etc. The problem is, however, that Koreans do not distinguish between breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They can have kimchi and rice for every meal. This makes it challenging to find a good place to eat a hearty, North American breakfast.

(Sidenote, notice how I am using the phrase "North American." There has been a shift in my thinking. Before I moved here I was very American-centric, but now I have all these Canadian friends and despite some minor differences (they say "mum" not "mom" or "zed" instead of the letter "z") their culture is fairly similar to America's. Thus, when I refer to how my life is back home it has become more appropriate to say "North America" so I am more inclusive. Just food for thought.)

In our quest to eat a satisfying breakfast we have found the "Big Rock Brewery." It's a Canadian brewery that has an amazing brunch on Sunday mornings. Tom and I went with the Leigh family from school and we ate so much delicious food. They had everything...a person making omelets, bacon, sausage, french toast, muffins, coffee, cereal, I could go on. What is even more exciting is that in a week from today I can have a legitimate North American breakfast because we will be home in Missouri! Here's to breakfast and to North America!

i love christmas trees!

surprise!

My friends sent us a Christmas package! It was full of fun surprises to bring Christmas JOY to our lives.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the package was a card that said JOY! This has been my prayer for my life the past couple of weeks...that I would live with joy. It's been a hard working, challenging semester and I'm learning how to fight for joy in my life. It helps when you have great friends fighting with you.
One of my favorite gifts was a little tree!!! I decorated it with the ornaments that were provided and put it on my desk at school. They even provided a scented thing (what do you call those things?) that smells like pine!
The antlers that came in the package have been a big hit.
The kids just can't stop wearing the antlers. I love it.
Thanks friends! A big thanks to Jim and Jean who also sent us a surprise Thanksgiving package earlier. We didn't take pictures, probably because we ate the contents too quickly.

Less than two weeks to go until we fly back to America for Christmas...
I can't wait.

my weight

I spelled that right. I'm talking about my weight not a long wait. When I was home over the summer I packed on some weight. When I got home I was around 206 lbs. By the time we left to come back to Korea I was at at least 230 lbs (106.25 kg) if not a couple more pounds.

Side note: Is that a testimonial to the state of the American food industry? Or is it a testimonial about my eating habits? Probably a little bit of both. I totally binged while home and the food I binged on was probably not the most healthy for me.

Proceeding... one crazy thing about being 6'6" is that I can hide 20 to 25 lbs okay. But my wife did tell me at one point "you are looking a little pudgy." So I decided I wanted to try to take off some of that weight. I can't say that I did a whole lot other than try not to eat as much crap (ice cream, sweets, and such) as i normally do. Yesterday I got on the scale an weighed in at about 96 kg (211.65 lbs). I was pretty pumped about that. Today it was 97kg (213.85 kg). Another crazy thing about being 6'6" is that you can fluctuate like 4 pounds a day.

All that to say I lost some weight and am excited about that. Ideally I'd like for hang around 210 lbs. Now if only I could get in shape...Yes, that means I lost like 20 lbs. And yes, I know my feet don't fit on the kiddie scale.