"I miss Daddy!!!!"

Troy finally comes home today, after traveling to Salt Lake City for 10 days.  Lucia missed him tremendously.  Several times, we'd come home and when she spotted his truck, she'd exclaimed "Daddy's home" but then was sad to realize that his truck was home but he wasn't.  Troy worked really hard while there, but managed to capture some photos of the mountains.

"Halmo"

Why? I don't know.  Somewhere along the line, Lucia decided to start calling Halmoni "Halmo."  She definitely knows it's a little joke as she'll grin and/or giggle while saying it.  She's been super-duper happy with all the attention lately, of course.  Her little sister, despite Halmo's attempts to win her over, still isn't quite sure about hanging out with someone besides Mommy.  However, I did get to leave the house for a girls night out for a couple hours.  Woot, woot!

So far, we've gone to the pool twice, gone to story time, gone shopping more than I can count, ate lots of treats, played at the park, read lots of books, played lots of puzzles, hit the HUGE kids exchange this past weekend, and tried out the "new-to us" scooter.

No better donuts than from Halmo's town

splashground

mall

just a swingin'

personal pusher

"higher!"

trying out the scooter... guess who's going the other away

That's MY baby

One morning, I found Phoebe trying to feed the baby doll a bottle, and then trying to move the doll around to better angle in the bottle.  Later, she bent over and gave the doll her trademark open-mouth kiss (which looks like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in the photo).

Corny family photos

It's funny to see the resemblance between dad and daughter as they share a corn on the cob.

The EXACT same expression!

Our hilarious kids

Fortunately, both our girls bring a decent sense of humor into their personality mix.  It's hard to describe the difference in their humor but they're both definitely unpredictably funny.

This cheery grin and giggle is infectious!

Gotta LOVE the mohawk  in the morning

Another view of the famous mohawk

"Mommy, these shoes are FUN!"

Miss Mischief

Dol or Dohl: Korean first birthday part II

More photos.... some of these are much more candid (read: crying). The first two photos show Phoebe wearing the hanbok that belonged to me when I was her age. And of course, dol isn't complete without a doljabi, in which the child selects an object among several on a table to predict his/her future.  For example, thread means long life, a book means she'll be a scholar, a brush means she'll be artistic, money means she'll be wealthy, a stethoscope means... (insert whatever your perception of medicine is here)...

You can watch the video to see which one our girl chose. (some photos courtesy of my cousin, thanks!)

Just about at her limit (wearing her mommy's dol hanbok)

fascinated by mini-bananas

special attention from sam-chon

in the "fancy" dress

the "real" version of dol, crying included!

"Whatcha eatin'?"

first public appearance with hanbok

balloons are more fun than doljabi

dainty girl didn't really want to dig into the smash cake

buffet spread

Dol or Dohl: Korean first birthday

Our youngest is now almost a year old.  The first birthday (or dol or dohl) is a big deal in the Korean culture, and we celebrated a few weeks early (doljanchi) while we were at Halabuhji and Halmoni's house, to include as many family members' plans as possible.  I started looking through Pinterest for ideas and found many, although I didn't actually do much physical planning until we hit Chicagoland.  We used the french doors as the bones for the pink and white background seen in the photos. Colorful paper fans set the top border and balloons on each side framed the entire scenery which highlighted the amazingly cooperative birthday girl perched upon her throne with the dol table set below her.  Her hanbok colors tied into the cake decorations.