Boys and Their Toys!!

Ever since Dalin was born he's always liked trucks,cars and well anything relatively boyish in nature and his newest "collection" is certainly no exception. These little toys are from Fisher-Price I think and are called Planet Heroes. Each one of them represents a planet and they each have their own planet sounding names and they are out to save the universe from the "bad guys"...i.e. Professor Black Hole and his Comet henchman....and yesterday we found another one of these coveted "men" for Dalin and thought we'd buy him another one for his collection-we have almost all of them...just some are put away for his birthday next month!! So this morning I thought I'd have a photo shoot with our Universe saving, Planet sparing, all around good guys, and well one bad guy too!! So without further adue we introduce: sporting the light blue and wielding a suction cup gun from his hand, we have: Yuri (complete with Russian accent in their Planet Heroes movie that comes with every package) who is representing the great but tiny planet of Uranus..next to him we have our newest arrival complete with an air-blasting "AirZooka" ride is: Tune, here all the way from that windy planet of Neptune (filled with liquid to signify that his planet has a liquid core as well!!), and last but not least we have: Zip speeding his way here from Mercury just to save us all from certain doom from the evil and HUGE bad guy named: Tiny (an oxymoron in toys, what's the world coming to) who is an asteroid from Professor Darkness's evil army intent on destroying the Earth and the rest of its friendly planets!! And we did have Digger who was hailing from the big red planet of Mars but we seemed to have misplaced him in a hotel in Seoul, though we still have his drilling weapon!!

So it happens again.....

Well though this time at Gyeryongsan was much more pleasant than the last time...it got really cold on the second night and our huge giganormous tent nearly took off in the wind a few times and so we decided to pack it up a night early and these were some pretty spotlighted trees that we had seen on the way in and wanted to capture them on our way out!!

Chris's Firsts

Though Chris has been an avid camper and all around Boy Scouter all his life, he told me on this camping trip that he had never successfully started a fire without a match-those of you who watch Survivor know....that's not just TV that's for real...especially the two sticks thing-yeah never would even attempt it because I would get too frustrated and throw the sticks in the woods and then would freeze to death overnight!! But we have evolved somewhat from that nowadays and have flint and steel..but that's still not much better!! So when Chris shaved these teeny little silver things of magnesium (at least I think that's the right element) into the wood, I thought you have got to be kidding but then he struck it with his knife and sure enough first strike caught and we had a really nice fire that night!! Though it wasn't enough to keep us warm all night unfortunately. I guess building a campfire inside the tent wouldn't be a good idea!! Slight hazards I guess!!

Buddha and His Followers

While on our hike we found this Buddhist temple and I learned something that most people already knew...but Buddha was a real person..his name was Siddharta I think and he "retired from the world" at the age of 29-now think about most 29 year olds you know of and think of them doing this...and studied for 6 years and then became the Buddha I guess...He was thought of as a great teacher and philosopher that could help people with all their confusions about life and just overall problems and solve them. The story continues that after many years of being this all knowing seer that he went out into the woods and sat beneath a tree and died....I certainly know I don't understand it all but it sure does seem hard to me to grasp the idea of praying to a statue....it would so cold and unfeeling to me, yet when I pray to my Heavenly Father I can feel his Spirit attending to me always and I know that HE knows that I am here and knows my heart, feelings, and mind individually. The second picture is an actual monk that still are very much a part of this culture here in the Asian countries..this particular one is a woman as well...what conviction for a woman to believe in something so fully that she would shave her head. Props to her.....!!

Our Feeble Attempts

Well Chris has a very nice digital SLR camera that he can and does take any picture I can dream of on a whim for him to take and does so very nicely, however on this hike we just had my smaller digital camera (which is still very nice, i.e. birthday present) but it just can't take the same detail as the fancier one and so these are mine and Chris's attempts at my wanting a "SKY" magazine type picture-you know the ones on the airplanes that make any destination that you are going to look like paradise even though it's actually a landfill or something.....anywho I couldn't ever quite express what I was thinking of for Chris to do here but he did a good job of trying to decipher the "Well c'mon you know...magazine pictures....No dear that's just not quite right....Well you're ALMOST there...." Anyway I can definitely be hard to understand sometimes...only sometimes though contrary to Chris's opinion!! ;)

We're Going Hiking,Hiking,Hiking!!

So the next morning after a rather cold and late night we get up ready and raring to go on a hike around the park...little did we know until the next day at church that some church member friends were at the same park, EVEN on the same hiking trail as us but just at different times of the day!! Anyway, these are Chris's new trekking poles that I had tried to order a month ago as a surprise but got ski poles instead-OOPS!! and so we had to send them back and get these and Kyle just loved holding them...especially while in the backpack on Chris's shoulders-Notice there are pointy ends to these things...pointy stick, jugular vein,1 yr. old....it just doesn't make for a pretty "picture." Wish I had a picture of him carrying them on Chris's back but I think I was afraid at the very second I would've taken the picture that Kyle would've stabbed Chris in the neck and I would've witnessed my husband's death via trekking pole!! No fun!!

Gyeryongsan National Park

We never cease to find another adventure to go on around Korea and this particular one took us to yet another one of the National Parks...we have visited quite a few and this particular one we have visited twice. The first time was not a good "memorable experience"-it was VERY memorable though because of the festival that happened to be happening on that particular weekend-at first it was beautiful because the cherry blossoms were blooming and we had a tree-lined drive up to our campsite. Everything's good and Peachy (or rather cherryie-haha!!) so far but then we get ready to go to bed and the music and loud people talking and just all around commotion doesn't seem to be getting any quieter and it didn't get any quieter until Chris and I (and actually Chris's best friend that accompanied us) got up at about 5 AM because it was so loud and of course unintelligible....granted it's Korean already but then you have some drunk people singing it and it becomes pretty obnoxious!! SO that time we left a day early...then comes this year when we were originally planning on camping at another park-Songnisan N.P. so that we could hit as many as we could while living here....well we drive about 3 hours away just for the lady to tell us that camping is only allowed in the Summer and well the middle of March is not that kind of weather around here....so at 6 pm we're faced with the decision of either turning around and going home with some very sad and disappointed campers or try for Gyeryongsan again about an hour away. So we do this and get there about 8 pm-literally just praying that someone will let us set up a tent for the night...and they did. And so this is Kyle "helping" set up the tent at like 8:30 in Destinee's jacket!! He was such a big helper!! :) And the other picture is just a windmill restaurant we saw on the way to Songnisan.

Things You May Not Know About Me....

First of all I stole this idea from one of my high school friends that I recently reconnected with...Thanks Leah!!

Let's start with the Man of the Household:
~His favorite color is purple (hey, when you're in Korea, purple sounds manly!!)
~I (Ruth) have only seen ONE baby picture of him (so much for comparing children pictures, huh!)
~He has a knack for injuring himself in funny ways-the latest was a meetup with a lantern in the top of our tent-picture running full force and running into a brick wall!! He even has the cut to prove it.
~One more injury bullet-picture a glow-in-the-dark frisbee (i.e. LIGHT UP) so that people can play in the dark-and yet when you throw to him you heard a deafening thud as he hits the ground!!
~He was once on the...how should we say-"Portly" side!! (Of course no pictures as we previously discussed, but have heard stories)-oh and he had Coke bottle glasses-poor Chris!!
~He is deathly afraid of heights
~He HATES rollercoasters!! (Silly, yes I know!!)
~He doesn't like cucumbers, and cantaloupe-pretty much ANYTHING else is not off-limits-including squid and octopus!! Oh and KIMCHI of course!!
~One of his best friend in high school was LDS ....see he was just getting him primed to meet me!
~He has one brother and one sister
~Both his brother and sister are either married to a member of the military, or are in themselves-even though his family grew up not liking the military-Then I say don't live in Ft. Bragg, NC (Army Special Ops HQ)
~He likes to sing, but only in the car and only with silly voices!!
~Before joining the military,the furthest west he had ever been was Houston, TX on a college band trip
~He plays the trumpet,baritone and well anything brass for that matter!!
~He's been a member of the LDS church for 7 years
~And another steal from Leah's blog-he doesn't see the difference between detergent scents or any soap scents for that matter. (Silly men)
~He is a swimming master(by that I mean he's really good!!)

OK, and on to the female "head" of the household:
~I can tell the difference between Mountain Rush,Clean Breeze, and Free and Clear (a newly learned skill since having Destinee) laundry detergent scents. (Any woman could!!)
~My favorite color is teal (blueish-green)
~I collect mini tea sets (go figure, LDS collecting something with the word tea in it!!)
~I also collect porcelain dolls
~Our favorite colors go well together-(our wedding colors)
~I definitely like to sing (okay everybody already knew that)
~I love being a military spouse-yes even the occasional time away from each other-The benefits of being in this profession FAR outway the odds!!
~I love rollercoasters or anything high and scary!!
~On that same note I've reversed bungee-jumped...and it's all on tape!!
~I have one brother and two sisters
~I was once a skunk in a play!!

Okay well I just liked the idea of a little insight into each other's lives with these little known facts!! Thanks again, Leah!!
~I didn't know how to dive until I was a teenager