Happy Halloween!

Seoul loves "the mermaid one" (The Little Mermaid) so she was Ariel for Halloween. She loved her costume and wants to wear it every day. She mastered saying "trick or treat" and knowing she gets candy when she says it. However, she quickly learned she wouldn't get candy from mom every time she said it.

Ready to go!

I'm such a cute Little Mermaid! (notice the pose: hip sticking out with bucket held up a little)

Having fun taking her headband on and off, enjoying daddy carrying her.

Saturday night we went to our ward Trunk-or-Treat where she was a little leery of all the costumes but soon adjusted. Then she had a ball walking around with the cousins trick-or-treating and holding out her pink halloween bucket. She got so excited each time someone gave her candy.

Absorbed in watching everybody... what are these people wearing??

Seoul's friends, Grace and Isaac, as adorable Oompa Loompas.

It really was so fun having a little kid get into the spirit of Halloween, but she doesn't understand the scary parts yet. We have a candy bowl that has a skeleton hand come out and touch you when you reach in for candy. Seoul hates it, to put it mildly. For days afterward she would say "hand hurt... all gone" (after I put it away in our Halloween bin in the garage).

Fittingly, Kelley dressed as a San Francisco Giants fan and I was a pregnant Asian woman. Ha!

Family Updates

Seoul

What a great little person! She has such a personality and talks up a storm. It's all about new words and sentences these days. So far her longest word is 'calculator' and her longest sentence is "I want my ball." She narrates everything: daddy's milk, mommy all done, Seoul do it (or Seoul's turn), and so much more. Every day we look at her and love her more and more! Each day she asserts more independence, which is good and bad of course. The thing we don't like is this new high-pitch scream. She loves to help, whether it's fixing chairs with daddy or vacuuming with mommy. She loves her new bed and the transition is going well. Nursery is fun for her - this last Sunday she didn't look back when Kelley dropped her off. At meals she likes to sit at the table rather than her high chair.That's our big girl!

Kelley

Hard-working as always, he is now pursuing more education. He has applied for a certification program that begins in January. Should be quite the adventure but he is ambitious about providing for our family as best he can! For the 4th year in a row he won fantasy baseball... woohoo! He loves spending time with Seoul and talks to Sydney. Work is going well... super busy, but he gets some great commendations for his impeccable customer service. What a great man we have in our family! Seoul and I appreciate everything he does for us :)

Joo Lin

Just call me "Large Marge" these days! I feel HUGE but not uncomfortable, just awkward. Being pregnant with Seoul I never had reason to crawl on the floor and lift a small child on a daily basis :) [12 weeks to go!] I don't do anything terribly noteworthy, but I realize I LOVE being a stay-at-home mom with Seoul! Each day is filled with activities for Seoul with a little work fit in between. I feel really good with where I am in life - so blessed :)

"take me out to the ball game...."

Kelley is pretty excited the San Francisco Giants are in the World Series. Ok, that is an understatement. He is beyond excited!! Right now we are sitting here watching the Giants beating the Texas Rangers and hope it continues that way. I like baseball and I'm understanding more of it. I've learned to not bother Kelley when a game gets intense... and I admit I hope they win it in the first 4 games :) I'm not sure I can handle the stress like when they won the National League Championship Series against the Phillies a few days ago... I may just go into labor super early!

This is what we'll be doing for the next few days: (fingers crossed!)

Gm 1 - Wed Oct. 27    TEX @ SF 4:30 PM
Gm 2 - Thu Oct. 28      TEX @ SF, 4:30 PM
Gm 3 - Sat Oct. 30       SF @ TEX, 3:30 PM
Gm 4 - Sun Oct. 31      SF @ TEX, 5:00 PM
   [And if we must]
Gm 5 - Mon Nov. 1      SF @ TEX, 4:30 PM
Gm 6 - Wed Nov. 3     TEX @ SF, 4:30 PM
Gm 7 - Thu Nov. 4       TEX @ SF, 4:30 PM

Happy (late) Birthday Kelley!

This post is long overdue - sorry Kelley! He said he stopped counting at 25 anyway, so what's a couple extra weeks in the scheme of things??

Kelley is great at choosing creative things to do for his birthday. So this year he chose to go to Roloff Farms ... the home of the little people family of "Little People Big World." Although I have never seen a whole episode personally it was a popular idea amongst those who went.

We got to meet the mom, Amy Roloff. She was cool, available to take pictures with people and chatting with all the visitors. Kelley's mom embarrassed him by telling Amy that all Kelley wanted for his birthday was to go to your.... (pause) farm for his birthday. At various times there were other family member sightings. Good times!

They had a little pumpkin house and had some fun pumpkin scenes inside. Kelley laughed a lot!

There were some exotic animals that were fun to see. The petting zoo was fun since Seoul actually fed the animals and got excited to see them. She was real happy about the "baby pig" (as she called it)!

Seoul rode the pony and enjoyed it... until she got confident and waved at someone and then became unsure and wanted off. She did a few rotations, though, and it was a proud moment for us to see her becoming more adventurous :)

Seoul LOVES bouncy houses also... especially when the cousins are there to play with.

I made Crazy Lady Cake at Kelley's request (it's a variation of german chocolate cake). He opened gifts and we spent more time with family and friends. He ended the evening watching the Beaver game. It was a really fun day!

Happy Birthday, my handsome 25-year-old husband!! Love you! Better start thinking of a fun adventure for next year :)

B.I.G. C.H.A.N.G.E.S.

Our House

Kelley tackled the project of painting the exterior of our house recently. It went from tan with cream trim to willow green with white trim in a weekend. Being pregnant I wasn't a lot of help and he actually told me I'd be fired from prep work because I took too long to mask things off. Really! So I held the ladder a lot :) Kelley saved a shutter so Seoul could help paint, and you can see she took it very seriously. Now we have a fantastic new look to our house that I love! We are still working on the finishing touches (shutters, landscape, etc). Kelley is such a hard worker and has so many talents - gotta love him!

old look

new look

Seoul's Room

Kelley surprised us one day by bringing home a big girl bed for Seoul. We've been looking recently because we want her transitioned out of the crib before the new baby is here. So one evening we put it together and she LOVED it! Once it was put together she climbed up and wouldn't get off. However, that night she slept in the crib at her own request (literally pointed to the crib and said "that bed"). The next few naps & nights she did great and got me thinking it was going to be a simple transition. Then came the weekend.... let's just say I have no pictures of her running down the hallway every few minutes :) She is so proud of herself for getting out of bed by herself. As she says when she finds me "Seoul off bed" with a big grin. Silly girl! Fun times...? (I'll let ya know - haha)

 

awww.... where did our baby go??

my daily dilemma

Do I write in my journal or do I post on the blog? I believe Dallin H. Oaks gave a talk once about making choices between good, better, and best things, although I'm sure he didn't mean something trivial like this. Don't judge me for my choice... but I will take a stab and say some of you are glad I chose this rather than my journal tonight, right? Mmhmm... I won't make you admit it....

See!

This is Seoul every day... thus, fewer pictures (at least that are clear) and not much time to take them before she's running at me to "see! see!" - whether it's a video or the regular camera. These days, it's more like "Seoul see!" Today I did get her to stand back so I could take the picture before she could see it. She is very reasonable sometimes :)

Some of Seoul's Words

Seoul likes to eat big tomatoes like apples. She picks them off the bush... knows to pick red ones and take the stems off. This time I took preventative measures so it wouldn't stain yet another shirt.

We had fun getting her to say just a few of the words she knows. As we're sitting here watching the video to see what's on it, she's repeating all the words with herself. This was a month ago and it is nuts to see how much she's progressed in speech and vocabulary!



Please note this really is an extremely small sample of what she can say... especially without being prompted. She can say almost anything if we ask her to... it's hilarious. Her newest word is "awesome!" She's my little jabberbox!

(video from 9/9/10)

Seoul's a helper!

Seoul LOVES to help these days! As soon as I get the vacuum out she asks to dust. Not only that, she is thorough! She moves the pictures off the entertainment center to dust underneath them. While I do dishes she likes to unload the silverware into a drawer. When I pull out the broom or mop, she insists on a turn also. The funniest thing is that she loves to do laundry. As soon as I pick up clothes or mention starting wash she runs at me yelling "clothes" or "button" (to push to start them).

Enjoy the video. Earlier she had put everything from the washer into the dryer (with just a little assistance since they are so tall and she can't reach everything). Now it was time to unload the clothes and she was more than a little excited...

Seoul helps with Laundry from JooLin Rice on Vimeo.

Can I possibly teach her to do it all so I don't have to do any when she's older?? Haha!

(video from 9/16/10)

She has a name!

We've chosen the name Sydney Louise for our new baby girl that's on the way. Seoul and Sydney will be sisters in more ways than one...

When we chose Seoul's name, we discovered my dad is very into the meaning of names. Who knew :) He was unsure of the name Seoul because it is just a city (capital of South Korea, where I was born). It grew on him and (I think) he was OK with it by the time Seoul was born. I told him yesterday we'd chosen the name Sydney and he liked it right away. Again, a city (in Australia). Last night he sent me this random factoid in an email:

      "I was interested to find out what cities were sister cities to Seoul and Sydney is one since 1991."

I love it! I love the name. I love the fact that Sydney is a sister city to Seoul. I love that my dad researched this and let me know! (never EVER would I have thought of this connection) - love you dad!!

Today

These are just some cute things from today that I thought I'd document. I know, words aren't nearly as fun so there are pictures of other activites at the end if you want to miss out on reading about the cute things Seoul does!

Seoul's new favorite thing is to shower in the morning, instead of having baths at night. She loves being naked and loves to slap her tummy and say "naked baby" then let the water drench her.

Seoul and I went to visit Kelley at work and have lunch. We love living close to his job so we can visit every couple weeks. When we wait for him in the front lobby, Seoul looks anxiously down the hallway. When she sees him coming out of the stairwell she runs at him yelling "daddy!" It's loud and probably disruptive, but it's adorable!

We ate at Chipotle and as soon as we walked in she exclaimed excitedly: TACO! She had a chicken taco and kept asking for "more hot sauce" (which was the pico de gallo salsa). She identifies our drinks.... mom has water, seoul has water, dad has pop...hoping daddy will give her a sip of his pop. Silly girl!

On the drive home she got upset that I forgot to point out the Temple as we passed. My punishment was to sing the song "I love to see the Temple" numerous times. I need to learn that 2nd verse correctly - I just make up words right now. She is very particular what songs I sing or what we listen to on the radio.

We had some tickle/giggle time. I love her giggles! She tips her head up so I can kiss her neck and then she puts it down and says "it tickles!" Then she put her arms up so I could tickle her on her sides and armpits. Again, she put her arms down and says "it tickles!" But of course we do this game over and over and it makse us both laugh!

Ok, the boring reading part is over and here are some pictures :)

We had playgroup at Fir Point Farms one week. Seoul likes the chickens... until they fly over the fence at us, which happened this time. They had a hay maze set up to get to the slide so Seoul is running full-out trying to find the slide.

 

We went peach picking so I could can peaches - yum! Seoul loves peaches and had fun... for the first 5 minutes. It was a hot day as you can see from the pink-cheeked girls.

I don't remember why Seoul was upset but I thought it was a cute picture :)

We are having a...

....well...we aren't having twins! Kelley is really taking that one rough. He says that he is going to pump me full of fertility drugs until we have twins. Silly man!

Well...did you figure it out yet???


Ok, so does that look familiar? It was this day 2 years ago that we had our ultrasound for Seoul and posted that message. Now it has changed from fertility drugs for twins to going until we have a boy. Hm.
Sorry, no ultrasound pictures... they didn't give us the pics on a CD like last time and our scanner isn't working at the moment.