Where did January go?

I have always found that January and February have always seemed to drag along. After the hustle and bustle of the Holidays, things just tend to slow down. All you have is short cold days and long colder nights that you count off waiting for the longer and warmer days of spring.

Not this year. Things have been much more busy. Both of the girls are taking swim lessons, twice a week. Patrick has his theater class and his Korea Class (for his trip to Korea in April). Also, we have been busy trying to get ready for our cruise in February. We are going on a six day cruise in the Western Caribbean. Yes, we are taking the kids as well. We have less than two weeks now until a week of fun in the sun.

Getting ready for the cruise involves a lot of shopping. We need to get all of the kids their summer wear a little early this year. I hope they don't out grow the stuff before the summer is over. Getting ready also involves a little exercise and a little dieting. Not that I am trying to look better, that will never happen. The dieting is more like a preemptive strike on the five pounds I plan to gain while on the cruise! :-)

Throw into that mix a week with another Korean Exchange Student and the month has passed more quickly than normal. Our exchange student is from Busan, Korea. I think that he enjoyed staying with us. I know that we enjoyed having him. He was a very polite and easy going young man.

He arrived on a Saturday and it took him most of the weekend to get over the jet lag. I only let him take a short nap on Saturday, but he still was up a lot of the night (which is normally his day). We let him sleep until almost noon the next day and after that, he was mostly on our time.

The Korean Exchange Students had field trips Monday - Thursday, but Friday was a free day with no school, so we took him to OMSI. He seemed to have really good time there with Patrick. We saw a movie in the Planetarium and Patrick and He toured the submarine. Here is a picture of the arch we built while we were there.


Below is a picture of our kids playing 'Monster'. This apparently involves crawling around on all fours while you are snarling and growling. After a while of this, you attack some poor village full of Barbies and pretend to eat them. Here, however, they are eating Cheerios like a monster would, on the floor.



Another interesting thing about this year is the weather. We have now had snow on six seperate occasions. As I write this, it is snowing yet again. We have never had more than an inch or two, and it always melts off in a couple of days. Here is a shot of the snow earlier in the year.