Swimming lessons

My good camera's battery was dead so hopefully I'll remember to bring it to their last class.  Cool water or not Jaemin loves his swim time.

Slide show from Korea

It took awhile, but I finally decided I needed to make time to do this before it got away from me.

High school?

Would you ever want to be young and repeat your high school years again?  I know I would NOT.  They weren't awful, but not that great of memories either.  But, what I'm realizing as I'm getting older is high school really never ends.  At work, in social circles; sometimes those issues you thought only related to high school still occur.  And, then when you feel like you need to talk and there's no one it really stinks.  Back in high school, it was always off again on again.  That's just how girls are (boys don't get that and they're lucky).  You would think you'd be past that and beyond those stages in adulthood.  And I guess that's the problem with me.  I don't want to repeat that. I'm too old for the drama and need someone, as a friend, I can count on.  I mean what happens when things really fall apart and you don't have someone?  Who wants a friend that's only there in certain times?  The downfall of being independent...I guess.

My kids.....

I really do love spending time with them, but I think the best time spent is when I only have 1 or 2 at a time.  Jaemin didn't get any special time this weekend, but the others did.  I took all 4 of the younger kids swimming Friday afternoon.  Kaelin had a volleyball swim party and it was really hot, so I decided I was caught up enough at work to take the afternoon off and take them all.  We had enough swim passes for all 5 of us except Chase. I guess really that was my Jaemin time because I spent all 4 hours chasing him around the pool.  :)  Chelsi ended up find friends from school there and obviously Kaelin had her volleyball friends.  Chase ended up with friends there as well.  Kinda cool since we never go swimming and definitely not at that pool. They were so tired, but had a good time.

Chelsi had a birthday party to go to Saturday.  I had only met the mom once, so I took her to the YMCA for a little tumbling time with her friends, but I stayed.  It's always a good time to get to know or at least try to get to know some of the other parents.  I'm not very keen on just leaving my kids unless I know the adults really, really well.  I guess I just don't trust people.  Not with my kids anyways.  They're irreplaceable you know.  She and I always have good talks on the way to and from the Y for gymnastics.  This time we just talked about her friends a little more since I got to meet more of them.  They all, of course, hugged her as soon as she walked in.  She is definitely very loved by her friends.

Saturday night there was an indy film premiere.  It was here because they filmed it here.  Since I had never been to any premiere let alone the world premiere (even though it will probably never go mainstream), I wanted to go see what it was like.  It was a scary movie, so I asked Cole and Chase if they wanted to go.  I don't let the girls watch those kinds of things yet and the boys only watch them with me.  We left the house at 10:30 pm for midnight showing.  Got home about 2 am.  They're pretty fun to hang out with.  They're always so different when I just have 1 or 2 of them.  They almost seem more outgoing with me when I have both of them though.  Like they feed off each other a bit.  We talked about the movie the whole way home and laughed a lot.  I hope I get plenty more moments like these. These are my favorites.

One of the other moms at the pool, Friday afternoon, asked me at one point where Kaelin was.  Her daughter couldn't find any friends to hang out with and I think she assumed Kaelin was with her friends.  I saw Kaelin up waiting to go down the waterslide with Chase.  I told her that they generally hung out together.  She thought that was pretty interesting since her son and daughter are the same ages as they are.  I told her how they fight, but they are the closest of the 5 and will always come to each other's rescue.  I hope Kaelin and Chase are always friends like that.

I hadn't gotten to spend much time with Jaemin over the weekend.  Of course, we read every night together, so I guess we have that 10 minutes together alone.  Tonight he decided to read Bee Bim Bop and Happy Adoption Day.  He's really a good reader.  Hard to understand because of his poor speech, but I know what he's saying, so I know he's a good reader.  He is such a sweet little boy and I'm so lucky Korea found us for him.  I thank God for him everyday.  I came to kiss him goodnight before I went to bed, as I do every night on my way to my room.  I could just sit with him and listen to him for hours.  Just watching him sleep.  I guess because I look at him while he's sleeping and really take the time to realize how lucky I am.  He gets mad every so often when he doesn't get his way, but in general you can easily distract him if you just try and he's such an easy going kid, outside of his sensory issues.  I absolutely love his personality.  He has so much.
Thank God for my kids.

Seoul from a 10 Year Old's Perspective

Kaelin's old iPhone 3G (used as an iPod because we don't do cell phones for kids) bit the dust.  It never quite worked great since we got it in December and slowly lost apps as iTunes updated their software, but she dealt with it.  Last week it totally went dead and won't sync music or anything.  So we decided to take it with us yesterday since it has an Otterbox Defender and use it as a camera.  The camera on it does still work even if it doesn't zoom or anything.

I was cleaning off the memory and found pictures from Seoul that Kaelin had taken.  Kinda neat seeing her perspective of taking pictures.  I guess she found some of the things we bought fun because she seemed ot have spent a great deal of time photographing those items.

The seatbacks for Korean Air....AWESOME.....with USB ports.

Some goodies bought.

She even took pictures of her brothers playing pool at Fraser Place Central.

Randoms in and from our hotel room....the girls' room anyways.

This was probably on the bus on the way to Suwon and Yongin.

7-11 right in the alley of our hotel.  The kids liked to go there on their own for snacks and we could refill our T-money subway cards there.

This is the restaurant in the alley next to 7-11.  It was good, but kind of expensive.  The one on the other side of Lee Kwang Towers is less expensive and better.  The owners are so sweet.

Seoul Tower and our lock.  We're on the first tree to the left of the tower if you want to find it back.  She even got some of the graphics on the express elevator ride to the top.

Floating.....2013

We hadn't gone floating for awhile, so when J asked if we wanted to go, we didn't have any plans this year, so it was time to go again. Chelsi still hasn't gone for her first time, but the girls both decided to stay with M.  We took all 3 boys.  The 2 big boys ended up sharing with other teenagers because we were one canoe short, but I think it worked out just fine.  Chase ended up bouncing back and forth with us and other adults because A. he and his brother squabble and B. he can't stay in the canoe and wants to swim.

It really was perfect weather wise.  And it was fairly relaxing.  However, 8 hours floating on the river and you just want to be done by the end.  We, of course, stopped to swim a few times and ate the whole time.  Jaemin loved the food part.  He had plums, pita sandwiches, chips, chocolate cake, Caprisun.....he was in heaven.  And somehow that boy was still hungry at the fish fry later at night, last night. He ate really well.  He had fun for his first time. He did fall asleep for part of it, so I had to hold him.

It got a little hairy at one point.  We got the better end of it, but didn't know it.  We took a different side of an island that was hard to get through because we had to carry the canoe and there were trees down.  I carried Jaemin since he was sleeping and Chase and Brian carried the canoe.  Apparently, on the other side(and it was a pretty large island), the rest of the group had issues and tipped a few canoes over with the current and brush, etc.  The teenager's canoe came out fine.

The fish was good as always and I heard from the frog lovin' bunch they were good too, but EWE!  They were up so late last night and slept late....thank goodness.

Jaemin on the bus to let off.

Stopping a few times.

Jaemin found some shells.

Chase perched like a turtle.

And, the kids found the big rock to jump off of.

The teenager canoe.  How it never tipped I DO NOT know.  Kallie was rocking it constantly.