BOO!

Is it Halloween yet? Oh yes, it is. Our poor Jack-o-Lanterns don't like humidity any more than I do. Ours turned into a moldy, old man jack-o-lantern in less than 1 week. That's just sick....but kind of fitting for Halloween, right?

Cora - a dark fairy

Madelyn - Alice in Wonderland

JT and Alex - Mario and Luigi (the cutest thing EVER!)

Me - Sally, from The Nightmare Before Christmas. (Really, could my forehead BE any bigger?)

Joe - no costume, but improvised a uni-brow when JT refused to wear his mustache for more than 1 minutes.

Trick-or-Treat (Please, for the love of....you don't have to knock on the door more than once!)

The chapel sponsored this festival, with booths and food and music, etc.

After being indoctrinated at the front gate about how NOT to go to hell (yes, I'm serious), we let the kids jump on the bouncy house, and then we left. I'm not going to wait in lines on Halloween, even if it means prizes. I loved these costumes the best.

Then back home for a sugar high before bedtime. What the heck are you doing?!

Seriously? They're all unwrapped AND licked. That's gross.

Previous to Halloween, I got to go to another fun dress-up party - an 80's big-hair night for the ladies. Food, Kareoke, Old Pictures, Jelly Bracelets, Banana Clibs, Blue Eyeshadow and Hairspray. The hole in the ozone just got a lot bigger.

Close-ups of the hair (I know, we look good)

I can't believe I'm posting this next picture....I was totally posing

Man, that is scary....but fun:)

A Day Off

A couple of weeks ago I think we were all feeling a bit ornery (gosh, that word looks weird when you spell it out). Anyway, Joe had to go down to Osan AFB to take a language tests, so we decided to take the kids of school for the day and all go together. It was a much needed day of play. It was a gorgeous day, and the kids and I spent several hours at a park there, one that actually has a large grassy area, and we played

and we played

and played

and played

Cora was behind the camera, so she didn't make it into any of the pictures:( Usually I am not one for the park much, but I actually enjoyed myself, listening to music, and soaking up the sun.

Joe had a lunch break between tests, so we went to Chili's. For some reason we all thought that this was very funny.

It's an "UN-kissed" lemon. But I thought that this was even funnier.

And now look closer at the top.

Korea - Just wonderful:) Of course, if you never saw "The Dukes of Hazzard", then you might miss the joke. When Joe was all done testing (or if you're in TX then you might say, "Whenever Joe was all done testing, hehehe), we did some shopping, had some Korean food, and came home. Sometimes you just need a day off.

Settling In

Unpacking takes a long time, and we're still not done, but I finally took some pictures of our new place and decided to post them. We LOVE our new apartment, and the "village" we live in. Even though we live off of the main base, we have almost everything we need right here. We have our own pool, playground, library, and gym - everything within a 1-2 minutes walk, if not closer:) The best part is that we have our own little commissary (grocery store) that delivers the groceries to my apartment!!! The main commissary on the main base does not do this, so we are spoiled. One of the baggers here looks through a bag of coupons that he has as you are unloading your shopping cart, and finds coupons for you - sometimes I want to kiss him;) I am so much happier about recycling here because I can take out my recyclables every day instead of once a week (when it's only once a week, you inevitably forget on that one day, and your recyclables build up, and then you're tempted not to recycle as much). We have yet to discover much of our surrounding neighborhood, but there is, OF COURSE, a 7-11 not far from the main gate to our housing complex. You just can't survive without a 7-11 here! (I'm not being sarcastic, I'm actually serious. For example, Cora had a field trip, and I forgot to buy some stuff for her for a sack lunch. The commissary isn't open until after they leave for school, so I went to the 7-11 and got everything I needed). The kids love being here because they have friends who live here, and it's much easier to have regular playdates. Most of all, we love all the extra space we have here. It is a 5 bedroom apartment - kind of a weird layout, but that's okay, because it's not like we bought the place. Here's our entryway.

straight across from the front door is the Dining Room - the boys bedroom and master bedroom are off to the right.

then the Living Room

along the opposite wall of the diningroom/livingroom is our very long Kitchen, with the Laundry area at the end.

this is looking back from the laundry area

across from the laundry, separated by a wall from the living room, is this room - it's a modge podge of computers/piano/exercise equipment.

a look down the hall from the modge-podge room. the 2nd door on the right is the girls' room, the 1st door on the right is for me:)

I am a lucky girl, because the guest room doubles as my sewing/craft room.

complete with plenty of closet space. the bed is leaning up against the wall, so I have plenty of floor space when we don't have guests......which we have yet to have;)

on the left side of the hall is the kids bathroom

and across from the bathroom is a big storage closet

and finally, at the end of the hall is the playroom - behind where I'm standing to take this picture is a wall of closets. Oh, and the playroom is RARELY this clean.

Yes, we could have let all the kids have their own room, and that was the intent of the military when giving us a 5-bedroom apartment, but where is the fun in that. Plus, the kids LOVE having a playroom....and so do I:) We are still getting things arranged and in order, but already we feel at home here - more so than our last apartment. It was a good move.

We're Moving.....Right?

We've moved! After being here for a year, we were offered an apartment on base housing - not actually ON base, but a base housing village about 10-15 minutes from base. We're actually further from base then we were before, but the selling point was that this apartment is so much bigger then our old one.

We had to be out of the apartment on Thursday. On Wednesday we had our first set of movers come to pick up all the government furniture we're borrowing (couches, chairs, tables, beds, etc.) For some reason, they couldn't just have one set of movers come and get everything and move it. Instead, in the wisdom that is the military, they had to get the government furniture, check it in at their warehouse, then re-check out different furniture for our new place, even though it's all the exact same kind of furniture. Okay, whatever.

Thursday our other movers were supposed to come to get the rest of our stuff. But by 10:00am, when they still hadn't shown up, we started to worry. Joe called the housing office, but our housing counselor wasn't there. I'm not exaggerating here when I say that Joe was on the phone for almost 2 hrs, getting the runaround from one office to the next, trying to figure out what was going on. They finally transferred him to the transportation office, where it was confirmed that we did NOT have movers scheduled for us that day. Aaaaahhhhhhh! Apparently, we were supposed to schedule those movers ourselves, even though we specifically asked our housing counselor if we were supposed to schedule them, and she said NO and that she would take care of it. Nope.

So the transportation office told us to get over there as fast as we could to fill out paperwork, and they would see what they could do, even though it was highly unlikely that we'd be able to get movers that day. We went straight to the transportation office, only to be told that everyone had just left for lunch, and to come back in 1 1/2 hrs. Seriously? So then Joe and I are frantically loading our van with as much stuff as we can, thinking we're going to have to move ourselves - although, really, how they heck are we going to move a piano and an entertainment center down 13 flights? But still, we didn't know what else to do. As we're doing this, a moving company calls us and asks if we had gotten over to the transportation office to fill out the paper work. We said we had an appointment at 1:30. They said they could come that afternoon. Apparently, someone had called them BEFORE they went to lunch, and BEFORE we had even filled out paperwork for it. I don't know who it was, but THANK YOU!!!

So, miraculously, we got movers that same day. They didn't get there until 4:30pm though, and we were there until midnight cleaning. The movers delivered our stuff to our new apartment the next morning, on Friday. They were supposed to be there at 8:00am, because we had an appointment with our realtor and landlord to check out of our old apartment at 10:00am. Of course, the movers were late, and we had to push back our meeting, but it all worked out in the end.

After that was all over, I had to go straight into getting ready for the District Primary activity, which was the next morning. Not exactly the best time for it, but I didn't know I was moving when I set the date for the activity. I was up until 3:00am making name tags that I had NO IDEA would take me that long to make. By the time I realized how long it was going to take me, it was too late at night to call my counselor for help. But the activity was a fabulous success, so all is well.

Now I'm spending my days upacking boxes, and boxes, and boxes, and boxes, and boxes......you get the idea. Next post, I will tell you all the wonderful things about our new apartment, and post pictures, of course.