A Little Break

We've made it to NC...which means we're out in the county...which means slow internet connection...which means no blog posts for a while.  We're here visiting my Grandma Cameron and really going to enjoy our time together.  I have tons of post to do...birthday, parties, Chinese New Year, not to mention all the trip photos I've have taken and will take.  So stay tuned in another week or so and I'll be back to posting like mad!  Much love from the Tar Heel State!

Happy Birthday Timothy & Cameron

Happy Birthday Timothy and Cameron!!  How has five years gone by so fast?   I would define the past year as the silly years.  You both so easily escape into your own world, be whatever and whoever you want to be...we hope you never outgrow that desire to be who you want to be!     One of my favorite parts of the the day is our morning bible studies on the way to school.  Being able to take the most simplistic question like "is God a magician?", and turn it into a lesson of faith.  You both happily break our #1 rule everyday, no more growing allowed!   And as you both grow older, we see how different you are, yet how you both need the same things from us...encouragement, love and grace.  But it’s the grace you extend me in my wide range of faults that has taught me so much about real grace and the grace of our Heavenly Father.  In the midst of my frustrations toward your stubbornness, you still desire to only be in my presence and have my ever loving arms around you. 

Timothy, at 9:41am this morning you turn 5 years old.  Oh, and how long you have been asking when you will be 5 years old...in such a hurry to grow up.  Your day to turn five is here and how excited you are to be a Big Boy!   At only 5 years old, you have come to be a rock of security for your sister, your friends and the adults in your life.  A born leader.  That certain air about you makes people want to be in your presence, follow you and soak up your energy and love of life.  Playing is at the top of your to-do list everyday, playing all day, every day, only stopping long enough to eat and sleep...to which we have to drag you away to even do those two essential things.  Whether it’s building Legos, playing soldiers, building paper airplanes or perfecting your batting skills, finding something to play is effortless for your ever growing imagination.  You have a gift with numbers and amaze us and your teachers with your math skills seemingly without instruction.  Maybe because numbers are absolute...with rules and regulations.  You often pride yourself in knowing the rules and following the rules, most of the time.  And there never seems to be an end to all your questions, exhausting your Daddy and me most of the time, wanting to know every detail of every little thing.  But we know the Lord has crafted you for greatness and we know that knowledge seeking part of you will help you exceed your wildest dreams.  I love when you want to lead our family bible study, I love that you invent crafts my bible study can do and I absolutely love when I hear you say God is the biggest and the most powerful good guy ever!  We look forward to helping you overcome your struggles of perfectionism, fears of being alone and accepting that you can’t win at everything.  Remember, winning isn’t everything.  Our prayer for you is that you continue to challenge yourself, arm yourself with the word of the Lord and be steadfast in your young faith.

Cameron, at 9:42am this morning you turn 5 years old.  Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself it’s only 5, not 15.  Because of your independence and emotional capacity, you often surpass me in your maturity, reason and logic.   Your love of music is your trademark, singing every chance you can get...sometimes even singing the right words.  I love that you are always at my side, offering assistance in any way, just to be a good helper. You have such a heart for meeting needs, making your brother a top priority.  And what a generous spirit you have, giving out your hugs and kiss freely to those who win your love. Your smile is infectious, your sass is incomparable and you can melt our hearts with the wink of your eye.  Cheetahs, superheros and unicorns make up your list of must haves, requiring books upon books of each to keep up with challenging your ever growing intellect. But art is your most favorite thing to do, our memory boxes are overflowing with all your creations. From drawing, coloring, painting or building a house out of an egg crate, there never seems to be an end to your creativity.  I look forward to hearing all about your day at school and you happily indulge me with every single little detail. Even when there isn't that much to talk about, you find a way to talk and talk and talk...so much like your Mommy.  The Lord has gifted you with wisdom to learn from other's mistakes, but we pray that you know it's OK when you make mistakes.  You can't always be right, as hard as you might, but no one is perfect.   I know you will have no problem capturing your dreams, hoping your strong  determination will carry you through any rough waters.  We pray the Lord will continue to put words of praise on your lips and a song in your heart, my beautiful little girl.

Dinosaur Books

Cameron has taken an interest in dinosaurs lately.  We've been to the library a few times trying to find some book but they most seem to be too simple or too scientific and way over her head.  Luckily my best friend from high school, Lisa Yemma, is a paleontologist!  I think of her every time Cameron asks "what is this dinosaur called?"  I wish Lisa were here to teach Cameron everything she knows.  So I emailed her to ask about some good resources for little minds and she email back saying "expect a package."  Our package arrived last week and Cameron was so excited!  The books are perfect for her age.  The information is basic enough to understand yet gives you several facts about each dinosaur, helping you pronounce the names, learn the time periods they lived and great pictures/diagrams to see how big the creatures were compared to humans.

Now I must tell you, Lisa is a science teacher, living internationally, teaching in the low income district of the Dominican Republic right now.  So sending books for Timo and Cameron isn't that easy for her as well as sending any kind of thank you card back to her.  But Lisa is on FB and I had the idea to take a picture of Cameron holding the thank you sign, upload it to Lisa's FB page so she could see is immediately...the wonders of social media!  Cameron made the card herself (with me helping with the spelling) and then wanted to draw a picture to send her as well.

Thank you Lisa for the books! We can't wait to see you this summer and ask you the millions of questions we have!!!

Ti Kwan Do for Timo

So while Cameron chose gymnastics, Timo chose karate.  I looked all over for a program to put him in that would be a good fit and finally found the Korean Martial Arts Center teaching Ti Kwan Do.  It was perfect because one, it's Korean and two, Young is a black belt in Ti Kwan Do.  Yes, Young was quite the fierce black belt when he was in high school.  It's been great, Young can work with him at home and loves taking him to his class, trying to recapture his youth.  Timo loves the class and LOVES doing something special with just his Daddy.

Again, somewhat like Cameron's gymnastics, I feel like the first few weeks were more just trying to keep the kids entertained with moves rather than teaching/perfecting basic techniques. (they don't even give out uniforms until week 3)  Last week there were only two boys in the class, the teacher basically worked one and one with the students and I really saw improvement in Timo...as well as him telling me it was his favorite day so far.  I know these things take time and don't move as fast as I would like them to...hum, I wonder where Timo gets his impatiences from??  The head master has already told us it's about a two year journey to become a black belt!

Here is a short video of him "sparring" with Master Alex.  They spar at the end of each class to learn how to combine all the moves together.  I love hearing Timo yell "hup!" each time he attacks.


2776 from Sara ko on Vimeo.

Gymnastics For Cameron

Cameron started taking gymnastics in January and loves it. She's been asking ever since the summer olympics but because of swimming, we had to postpone a while. I just couldn't have them in two different activities, filling up our week running from one lesson to another. So we stopped our swimming at the end of the year and Cameron began her gymnastics career. It's been fun for Cameron too, it's nice for her to have something that's all her own, outside of Timo. Those two go and do everything together, but in gymnastics she gets to be independant. So far it's been a little slow going, feeling more like toddler busy time than actual technique...until last week. It seemed they took a turn last week and started really spending time on hand stands and summersaults.

 I don't have a lot of pictures and the ones I do have aren't that great, taken with my phone camera while she is in motion.  They move all over the big gym so most times she is far away for the waiting area.  They have a fun activity room for parents and other kids to hang out, so that's where Timo and I typically stay.  I can see her from the room but don't get very good pictures.  But you get the idea...here is her work over the past 4-5 weeks.

I think we're ready to commit to buying a leodard now...but it just seems like she would be so cold in it.

Weekend Laziness

The past few weeks have been so nice around our house because he haven't had anything to do! No plans, no obligations, nothing...very rare around our house. It's a sign that our children are getting older. I would have never had a weekend come when we didn't have some kind of activity planned to get out of the house to keep them busy. But now, they are getting old enough where they are more easily entertained, typically entertaining themselves. Young and I were able to take of a list of "to-dos" around the house and just have some relaxing time together with no plans.  Here are a few snip-its of our past few lazy weekends...a whole lot of nothing.

I have to admit TV played a small roll...Saturday morning cartoons and movie nights! (they aren't watching anything scary in the first pic, they were just complaining that it was too cold in the house)  They became fans of Busytown that comes on Saturday mornings.  And we watched Cinderella for the first time.  We've read the book and Cameron has her dress, so seeing the movie was much anticipated.  When it was over I asked Cameron how she liked it, "it was beautiful, Mommy."

Timo has been working hard in his spare time perfecting his tinker toy skills.  Yes, he build all of these all by himself.  He will stay in the play room for an hour or so and then appear with some new invention.

Cameron is always the big helper.  I've done a little "spring cleaning" and she is more than happy to help.  Here she is stocking the new package of toilet paper.

A little exercise...we managed enough energy to walk down to the park one sunny Sunday afternoon, Cameron was going crazy on the spinning thing.  But if Young and I were feel too lazy, the kids were more than happy to do their "exercises" on the inside bike.

And since there was no rush any day, I spent time teaching the kids things they could do themselves in the kitchen.  Cameron loves corn muffins so we made those one afternoon.

Timo wanted to make his own peanut butter waffle...but licking it off the knife was more fun for him!

And we spent a little time in home bible study doing the "Armor of God".  This is Timo's shield he made.  You can see his "belt" of truth or his "shoes of peace" but they're there.  I hope we can plan to have more lazy weekends...it's just good family down time!

Berenstain Bears

At school, the teacher is allowing students to bring in books from home to be read to the class.  One of Timo and Cameron's classmates brought in a Berestain Bears book and they were hooked.  The funny thing is we have one BB book but I guess they forgot about it or wasn't in their normal rotation of books.  So after reading our book A MILLION times, they wanted more.  So we braved the rain and headed to the library and cleaned out the shelf! (not really, they had several copies of the same books)  This is what we came home with

It sure was quiet at the dinner table that night...and at bedtime.  I love library days!!

Just had to toss this one in...I was washing and drying Cameron's quilt and had just pulled it out of the dryer at bedtime.  I wrapped them up in the warm quilt just before we started reading our BB bedtime books.  So cozy...

Needless to say, two of the BB book went to school with them the next to be read to the class.

Cameron sings...more

Cameron is getting pretty good at inventing her own worship songs. She likes to "preform" them for us, making us sit on the sofa while she sings in her mic. Sounds like she forgot the words at the beginning but she finished strong.
MVI 9219 from Sara ko on Vimeo.
And she'll sing just about anything just to play her guitar!
MVI 9217 from Sara ko on Vimeo.

Young's 40th Birthday Weekend

OK, so we are back up and running.  Sorry for the long delay in posts, but we've had some technical issues the past few weeks but hopefully it's been resolved and I can get back in the swing of posting.  I can't think of a better catch up post than Young's 40th Birthday Weekend Extravaganza!  Yes, that's right, Young turned 40 last week and we made a whole weekend celebration out of it.

He started out on Friday night with his co-workers in an all night party...and when I say all night, I mean all night.  He didn't roll home until 2am!!  Does he think he's 29 again??  But he had a great time out with dinner and clubbing the night away trying to capture the energy of his youth.  He paid for it Saturday morning...

After a long day of rest, we had dinner plans with some of his closest friends in San Francisco on Saturday night.  Most of the friends he has known the whole 13 years he has lived here.  I wanted to make the occasion super fancy so it was a Black and White attire, which meant I had to actually wear and dress and put on make up!  Anything for my husband's big 4-0!  The funniest part was Cameron...she was just so mesmerized by me putting on make up.  She watched the whole time, asking questions, wanting to know everything I was doing.  And Timo kept telling me I looked like a princess in my dress!  I might need to wear dresses a little more often just for the attention...

We had dinner in the private dinning room of Acquerello and it was amazing!  The whole staff really went out of their way to make it such a special dinner.  Even down to the customized menus!  The table looked so elegant and the service was simply perfect...not to mention the food!  Every plate was cleaned for each course...not a drop of food was left.

We had five course and managed to squeeze in a cheese course.  Here are the scallops and veal dishes, perfection. I hadn't planned on cheese but they had such a great selection, we just couldn't resist.  Normally they don't take the cheese cart into the private dinning room but our waiter made an exception and wheeled the whole thing in.  My favorite was the truffle cheese coated in ash....mmmmmm

Birthday time!  I know, I know, you're thinking "you didn't make him a cake?"  My thought was you don't go into a four star restaurant and bring your own cake!  Obviously the pastry chef knows what they are doing and why forgo an four star dessert for a baked cake???  Young loves dessert sampler plates so that's what he got!

The Birthday song...

MVI 9240 from Sara ko on Vimeo.
Some of the classy gifts his friends gave...isn't he so handsome!!

Then Monday, Jan 28, was his actual birthday.  The kids had made cards for him and were super excited to give them first thing in the morning.  Timo's card said "Daddy, you are awesome!"

Young had planned on taking the day off work so we could go to Napa and spend the day while the kids were in school.  But both he and I were coming down with major chest colds, feeling progressively worse as the weekend wore on.  By Monday morning we were ready to crawl back in bed and try to ride ourselves of the horrible coughing symphony we had going on.  We talked about maybe just taking in a movie but then decided to pull ourselves together and go enjoy his birthday.  You only turn 40 once, we had a whole day without the children and he didn't have to work.  We mustered up the strength and headed for our favorite winery in Napa, Domaine Carneros.  They even poured us a few extra glasses for free to help celebrate!

We had lunch reservations at Redd and had yet, another fabulous meal.  It was great spending the day with Young, all day, but I must say, we were not at the top of our game.  Young was starting to get feverish by the end of lunch and slept the whole way back home.

Cameron insisted Daddy have a birthday cake so we headed to a bakery to get a cake.  She picked out the chocolate/coffee/hazelnut one because she knew Daddy liked coffee, chocolate and nuts.  Did I really put the 4 on backwards??  Shows you how tired and sick I was feeling!  But we managed to enjoy the evening and wind down the festivities making Daddy feel very special.  Timo doesn't like chocolate so we got him a cookie...he loved that it turned his tongue green!

I love you Smaries, your are an amazing father and husband, and I can't wait to spend the next 40 years with you!!