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.

Early birthday party for Lucia

Because we were lucky to have all the grandparents together in one spot, we decided to celebrate Lucia's third birthday a couple weeks early.  She liked the idea but was slightly confused since she already knew about plans for a birthday party with her friends later.  When she finally understood she would have TWO parties, her eyes lit up with excitement!

Play date

Time flies by when you're out of town.  We didn't see hardly as many people as we hoped, since much of the time was spent trying to plan a big birthday party, timing all the errands between two naps per day, while trying to let the girls have some fun at the park and other places.  Fortunately, we did manage a play date with these cute kiddos one morning.

Easy travel

Our eldest relished the airplane travel.  Both girls traveled well, really. I'm learning that traveling becomes easier as the girls get older. We loaded the mp3 player with different videos and had bought these hot pink headphones awhile ago.  She loved the honey-roasted peanuts, apple juice and video hour between take-off and landing.

Cousins, cousins, cousins

What fun the girls had!  Since we live farther from cousins and can't meet often, our time to play together was precious.  Playing in the sandbox, cruising down the slide, swinging on the swings, walking on the trail behind Halabuhji and Halmoni's house all involved cousins!

And then Grandma and Grandpa came....

... with another cousin!  They came over and up by train, and Lucia and her daddy went to pick them up at the local station.

Storytime at the park

My parents' library offered story time at the local park where I played as a child.  We were impressed by the venue, the performance and the audience.  A live guitar is always welcome, and how can you go wrong with "skinamarink?" As the weather was simply perfect, the girls played on the playground afterward.

Tae Kwon Do lessons with Halabuhji

This lesson lasted just a few minutes but was fun to watch!

More cousins

My cousin and his family flew in from California the other day.  Their beautiful daughter is one month younger than ours and we loved watching the girls play together.  The attraction between babies is simply amazing.

Post-potluck storytime

Everyone stayed for potluck after meeting, and then Lucia and her new buddy Nikki hit up Heather and Joel for book-reading.  The older ones obligingly read Berenstain Bears and more.

And more random photos of just hanging out....

Library, indoor waterpark and Culvers

We hit the library as one of our first stops as we LOVE Charlie and Lola books lately. Since swimming is the latest new fun for Lucia, she requested several times to swim, and of course the grandparents were very willing to accommodate that request.  We ended up at an indoor waterpark where the girls (and the adults!) enjoyed themselves very much.  I took the baby down the kiddie slide, but couldn't catch my balance at the bottom and stumbled forward several steps (which felt like forever) and fell down, scraping my knee and elbow badly.  But better me than the baby!!  And you can't be in the midwest without hitting Culver's...