Ethan's 1-Year Pics

In Korea, a baby's first birthday (or "dol") is a big deal. You dress them up in a traditional "hanbok" & have a big dinner, or feast as my in-laws like to call it. It's supposed to be HUGE, like a wedding reception, but my family tones it down a little bit. We're having the big party on Saturday, so I'll post pictures then. But here are some pics that I had taken last week of Ethan in his hanbok.

Not only Ethan has to wear a hanbok for the celebration, we all do. So I took Tyler along to have his pictures taken as well.

I have a large canvas print of Tyler in his dol hanbok, so I'm having this one of Ethan blown up too.

This was the only halfway decent picture of the two of them together. Unfortunately Ethan refused to smile at this point of the photo shoot. Luckily, Tyler made up for it with his giant cheeser grin.

I made a little tie and diaper cover for the session. I think they turned out pretty cute.

He looks like such a little man in a vest & tie. It makes me smile. :)

Am I a mean mom for thinking that the crying pictures are the cutest? Just to let you know, he wasn't really crying. This is his "fake cry" letting us know that he was WAY beyond done!

My little cheeseball

I realize that these are probably funnier to me since he's my child, but here are some funny things that Tyler has in the past few months:

Situation 1: For FHE we were discussing the Christ's birth, death & resurrection.
Ty: What is a resurrection?
Me: After you die, Heavenly Father brings you back to life. That's called being resurrected.
Ty: So, you're good as new?
Me: Yes.
Ty: Oh, so you mean that Halmoni (his grandma) won't be old anymore? She'll be brand new!

Situation 2: When my mom cooks rice, she often puts some sort of small bean (lentil, chickpea) in as well. Ty doesn't really care for the beans, but eats them anyway. For Halloween, he got some Krispy Rice chocolate.
Ty: What kind of chocolate is this?
Me: That chocolate has rice in it.
Ty: But does it have beans too? Yuck!

Situation 3: Every year, I buy boxes of apples as gifts for my previous music teachers. Tyler came with me to the red barn to buy them this year. They are kept in a big refrigerated room.
Ty: Whoa! Some body needs to turn the air conditioner off in here!

Situation 4: During Christmastime there's always a lot of talk about "what you want for Christmas."
Ty: Uma, what do you want for Christmas?
Me: Ummm...I don't know. What do you think I would want?
Ty: Oh, I know the perfect thing! A Laundry Folding Robot! (right on kiddo, right on!)

Situation 5: My mom had some Koreans visiting over the holidays.
Ty: Did you know that there are two kinds of people?
Me: What?
Ty: Yeah. There's Korean people, and there's regular people!

Situation 6: At a family Christmas party, we saw Nate's cousin & her little (adopted) African-American boy. Remember, we live in Utah, so there's not that many ethnic people around. ;)
Ty: Why does that boy have dark skin?
Me: Because people are born with all different shades of skin.
Ty: Oh, I get it. It's like he's chocolate and I'm vanilla!

Situation 7: Tyler is prone to get pneumonia. Last year alone, he had it 3 times. We're always telling him to try not to cough. It was Ty's turn to say family prayer one night & he prayed for help him not to cough. The next morning...
Me: You didn't cough very much last night.
Ty: Nope. You know why?
Me: Why?
Ty: Because Heavenly Father keeps the coughs away with lots of MAGIC!

Situation 8: We have 9 am church now, which means that we are always in a hurry getting ready. And Tyler takes about 30 minutes (at least) to eat a meal. We were running a little late one Sunday...
Me: Tyler, you need to eat your breakfast really fast.
Ty: Why?
Me: Because we're going to be late for church.
Ty: Oh. Is it "fast" Sunday?

Situation 9: It was Tyler's turn to pray again one evening. I'm trying to get him to come up with things to pray for on his own, so I often ask him to think about what he's thankful for when he's praying. These are a few of my favorites...
-Thankful for Christmas to come
-Thankful for my birthday to come
-Thankful for springtime & for the Spanish language

I've Reached My Limit

Apparently two kids is my limit. It's taken me a very long time to get back into the swing of things. After 10 months, I finally feel like I'm back on a normal laundry/cleaning/exercise schedule. We won't mention my lack of blogging, but hopefully that will recover soon too. So here is the update. I was awful about taking pictures at Christmastime. Well, that's not entirely true. We did take a lot of movies, but most of them are too boring for anyone but grandparents to watch, so I won't put them up here.

Our kids are spoiled...by pretty much everyone's standards. Tyler got a box full of "Cars" from his brother (we're trying to win some love here), and now his collection is overflowing! His display box is completely full, but despite our objections, he still insists that he doesn't have ALL of them yet. Does a 4-year-old really need more than 130 Disney Cars? Really???

Tyler also got glasses! Nate was far-sighted when he was little & had glasses from the time he was three until he was sixteen. Ty was complaining about his eyes being tired & itchy, so I took him in and sure enough, he's just like his daddy! He hasn't complained about them since the first day, and has actually grown to love his glasses.


After the New Year, we took Ty to see a couple of theatre productions for kids, "Peter Pan" & "Babe." He loved them both, which made his daddy very happy. I'll be more excited when I get to take him to some concerts. ;)

Ty turned four! In tradition, I had to make his annual "Cars" birthday cake (detailed pics below). He had three parties (this kid knows how to milk it!) and we went to the dino museum on the actual birthday.

This picture just goes to prove that you can have fun playing in the sand no matter what age you are!

Here's the cake. I'm down to about 3-4 hours to make one now. That a big improvement from the first year's cake that took 8+ hours! Phew!


Now onto kiddo number two. Ethan has started to get around. Like his brother, he doesn't crawl, but chooses to scoot around on his bottom. It's pretty funny to watch, but makes me wonder, "What is up with my kids?" It's one thing to have ONE kid bum scoot, but TWO! That's just plain strange!

Ethan love his binky, but being the mean parents that we are, he only gets it during naps & bedtime. So he improvises by making a binky out of pretty much anything. Like a carrot....

Puzzle pieces....

Toy animals....


And my personal favorite, a french fry! HA!