Our Trip

See our pictures of our trip!

We had a very good time this past week on first family vacation as a family of four! Both kids behaved much better than we were expecting on both the trip up and the trip home, although neither one of them slept very much. One guy in particular was very helpful with getting our luggage up to the fourth floor (the hotel didn't have an elevator), and the rest of the group on the tour had a lot of fun seeing us tote our kiddos around with us all weekend. We had very overcast weather on Sunday and Monday, which is quite a bummer because we would have had some spectacular views at Ulsan Rock. But, we got quite a bit of exercise and it was good practice for future backpacking and camping trips! The only thing we didn't get was sleep, but that can wait until after we move, right? :)

Memorial Day vacation

Check out where we are going with the kiddos this weekend--Mt. Sorak . We can't leave Korea without a good hike, can we? It would have been easier to do this LAST summer, but for some reason we just weren't planning that far in advance. We are going with a tour group from base leaving Saturday morning and returning on Monday night. From what my friends have said, we can stick with the group or do our own thing. We only have Sat. afternoon, Sunday, and Monday morning to explore, but that may be a God-given time boundary so that we don't push the kids too hard in our desire to be the hikers that we were in 2004! More details (and hopefully pictures) to come!

The insanity continues

(Meet my sister and brother-in-law...Jennifer and Jeremy Maddox)

I know why you guys read my blog. We never sit still and it is fun to read of the crazy things OTHER people are doing because just reading it makes some of you tired. Have a "sit" as Hannah would say and enjoy...

We are flying out of Seoul on Saturday, June 23rd. We got the itinerary changed so that we can be in GF two days early. We fly Seoul, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Great Falls. We arrive at 10:45pm on Sat. GF time. (It STILL takes longer to fly from Seoul to GF than to Charlotte, NC!) On Monday the 25th our storage goods will be delivered to our house. Then we unpack, buy a minivan (know of a good one for sale??), get everything set up in the house, outprocess from the AF, and recover from jetlag. Sounds like a fun week so far, huh? Not to mention getting to see our friends and all of their new babies while showing off our own! :)

Not to make things easy, I decided that I needed to see my family as quickly as possible. My sister is in grad school right now, so the summer is the best time to spend time with her. My mom has vacation time the week of July 4th. So...the kiddos and I will be boarding a plane on the 1st to fly GF, Salt Lake, Atlanta, Indianapolis and then drive an hour down to Bloomington, IN to spend two weeks at my sister's house!! My parents are driving up that first week to see us, too. Everyone gets to meet Benjamin! I'M SO EXCITED!!!

How is this possible? Let me just tell you...It costs an arm and a leg to fly in and out of GF. The cheapest ticket we found to Indianapolis was $545 each. Airlines let kids under 2 fly free, but only if they sit in your lap. I can't have two kids sit in my lap (and Jeremy will be working and not going with me) so I had to buy a ticket for Hannah. That's $1090. Who has that kind of money?? Not the Rhodes family. So, my wonderful brother-in-law donated enough skymiles for us to fly on Delta. Total cost: $630. Not to bad for three people flying around the US, huh?

Thank you, Uncle Jeremy!

We fly back on July 15th and then my wonderful in-laws arrive in GF around the 19th to stay for three weeks! Just in time for Scott and Jeremy to drive to Seattle to pick up our car, for us to paint the upstairs of the house, and my household goods to be delievered and unpacked. I have three weeks of live in babysitters!! I'm blessed among women! My family loves me :)

It happened...

They came. They saw. They took everything. Our movers came today and loaded up seven wooden crates with over 130 boxes & furniture. We are Americans. Americans with too much stuff. Americans with too much stuff and more stuff in storage. And now I'm sitting in my apartment with borrowed furniture from base and bare walls that echoes anytime anyone talks...or cries...or squeals...so even though our house is empty of "stuff" it is full of noise!

It is a surreal thing. I remember thinking as I was saying my vows "Wow. This is weird. I'm getting MARRIED right now." And with both labors (well, during early labor) I thought "I'm living out my labor story. What happens in the next couple of hours I'll retell and remember the rest of my life." It is very much the same right now. We are leaving. Leaving Korea, leaving our friends, living the Air Force. We are moving to start a new life in a new house. (Ok, new to us!) And we will always remember the day that the movers came.

That was my today.

Too much TV?

It is hard to not utilize the TV as a babysitter, especially in the midst of packing up our house. Hannah loves BOZ, "the green bear next door." I don't mind him to much either. Pretty catchy songs, good message, fun animation. The only time Hannah will sit still is during a BOZ DVD, and she will sit so still that she looks like she is in a coma. Today, she had her first movie quote. Perfectly replicating a scene in one of the movies she strokes her little chin with her pointer finger and thumb and says "Hmmm....I see..." Then she stroked Benjamin's chin and did the same thing.

I must say that when my 21 month old quotes movie lines it either means she has the memory of my sister (and is a future theatre major!), or we are watching a wee too much TV.

I'll decide that after I unpack my boxes in Great Falls!

From the South to the Middle East

Ok, so I'm all about food nowdays. Really, I'm all about my bread maker :) This weekend we tried our hand at fried chicken and rolls, a staple of almost every Southern diet. Today I made hummus and pita bread! I will very generously remind my readers that I make no homemade bread without my bread maker. All of the kneading and punching and stuff is just not something I can do. I can, however, read a recipe online and figure out what dough cycle on my bread machine will produce the desired end product. Today, it was pita bread. It's just getting so hard for me to spend $2.50 on eight pitas when I know it is only flour, salt, sugar, water, and yeast. I probably saved $2.00 on just this one attempt. But the even better part is that my husband thinks I'm the coolest thing...since sliced bread :) (I couldn't help myself on that one!) For some reason he finds it so much fun that we make homemade food. I can honestly say "we" because he was the one who fried up the chicken.

Next up...falafel with the extra garbanzo beans!

It's about time

It's about time. About time for me to REALLY learn how to cook. Jeremy & I made fried chicken and homemade rolls last night for the first time in our marriage. They were some kind of good! It made me realize that I need to stop saying that I'm from the south if I can't even cook a decent southern meal. I mean, I don't know how to make cole slaw. I've never made hush puppies. I haven't made blackened catfish. What kind of southerner am I? I'll tell you--one that goes to restaurants to eat such yummy goodness. That will have to end. No longer will I have Captain D's to run to in order to curb the hush puppie craving. Pinto beans and corn bread, red velvet cake, and banana pudding is not enough--I need to go beyond the basics of my southern roots and truly embrace the food heritage that has been present in all my childhood memories. I owe it to Hannah and Benjamin. I owe it to my husband. I owe it to my friends in Great Falls. I'm a woman on a mission.

One Step Closer

The change in plans (and our lives!) over the past two months have hit me in stages. I'm glad they haven't hit all at once, but it seems that with every step we take forward, my stomach always response by tensing up in a little ball. It's as though I get tense when I think of my future reality and the tension only leaves when I forgot about tomorrow and concentrate on today's worries! :)

Today, we finally got orders, have all of our move dates scheduled and got the HORRIFIC flight itenerary planned. (Why, may I ask, does it take longer to get to Montana from Korea than it takes to get to Charlotte from Korea? By THREE HOURS!) The silver lining in the itenerary is that we go through LAX, and I've never had any reason to go through that airport. I'll be with two kids, a double stroller, two diaper bags, possibly two car seats, our carry-on luggage, passports in hand while out of my mind jetlagged, but I'll still be able to say that I went through LAX. And since I don't have any anticipation to be going through that airport again in my life (the only thing west of Montana that I'm interested in flying to is Alaska), I'm glad to have another airport on my "places I've flown through" list.

Orders. They are so....final. I'm really leaving Korea. I'm really leaving the cushion of my mommy friends in the same apartment building who help me to not lose my mind. I'm really moving somewhere and become an oak tree. (You know, have "roots.") So for now I will lose myself in the latest book club book (The Lights on Tenth Street) and forget about how in the WORLD I'll be ready for movers in less than 9 days!

I'm a Revolutionary!

From Lifeway.com:

"NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Parents who faithfully and consistently apply God's words on life and family have a better chance at raising desirable children, Christian pollster George Barna says.

Revolutionary Parenting
An April 9 news release promoting Barna's new book "Revolutionary Parenting" is short on polling data, but it mentions three dominant approaches to parenting -- parenting by default, trial-and-error parenting and revolutionary parenting.

"Revolutionary parenting, which is based on one's faith in God, makes parenting a life priority," Barna, chairman of The Barna Group, said. "Those who engage in revolutionary parenting define success as intentionally facilitating faith-based transformation in the lives of their children, rather than simply accepting the aging and survival of the child as a satisfactory result."

Barna sought out young adults who considered knowing and serving God their top life priority, possessed a biblical worldview and believed that their main purpose in life is to love God. Then he worked back to research what parenting characteristics produced such children.

One of the most sobering outcomes of the research, the news release said, was that less than one out of every 10 young adults in the United States meets those simple criteria."

Found!

(Reference previous blog before reading)

The dustbuster is found...in the couch. In the couch? Wouldn't a person expect to find the ring there? How could I not see the dustbuster in the couch? Oh! Wait! Maybe because my mind is lost, too!