Yesterday we made some nice gingerbread cookies and decorated them along with one small gingerbread house. Our son had fun cutting the cookies with cookie cutters and decorating the cookies and gingerbread house with all sorts of tasty candy which he kept feeding to his daddy.

This is the first year we had a tree (on the floor) for Christmas in our own apartment. Before this our children weren't really old enough to remember, or we were in a place where it was impossible to put up a tree. After I put up the tree, both children loved touching the tree, pulling off ornaments or putting them on, or just looking at the lights before bedtime. I liked the little bird decoration best, but our daughter liked the crochet angel with the bell inside. I think our son liked looking at the "rainbow" colored lights best.

We had several "Christmas celebrations" this year. It started a few weeks before Christmas, when my husband and I went to some friends house for a gift swap party nearby. On Christmas morning my son, our daughter, me and my husband all opened stockings filled with a few useful things and sweets. We then had our own somewhat relaxing morning with presents and fun. Our son really enjoyed opening his presents and looking for presents with names on them under the tree. I think our daughter just had fun with the wrapping paper in general.

In the afternoon we went over to my husband's parent's house where we ate a tasty dinner. There, the house was beautifuly decorated and the tree was perfect to look at. Our daughter played with her new dollhouse all day. The next day was sunday, so after church, we visited my parent's house for lunch. We played music together, enjoyed time with my sister who visited for Christmas and made some interesting puzzles.

Lastly,a few days later my relitives in the area had a generic yanky swap party. After that last party I put our tree away so that our children would know Christmas was over. When the tree was finally down, our children sat in the living room and relaxed happily together.

Nearby there is a park with a tower on the top of a hill, and if you climb up you can see the bay. It is quite a beautiful site to see. We occasionally climb up to the top and take pictures for fun.

Our son drew an interesting picture of our family yesterday. You can tell who is who by the color "hat" each face is wearing. He also colored a cute turkey for Thanksgiving.

Thinking of thanksgiving, my brother visited this year for thanksgiving, which was fun. mostly we watch him place a gamecube game called Pickman 2 (screenshot). It is very fun to watch him play, especially after eating some fun appetizers and a large turkey dinner.

As an early Christmas present, my aunt sent us slippers in the mail. they are nice and warm and really great. Our son loves his slippers. he thingks that you are supposed to slip in slippers so he spend an hour "slipping" on the kitchen floor with his slippers while his sister watched and laughed and laughed until they sat down to rest.

Our son got a bubble gun at school as a reward for getting 6 orders for his school fundraiser. Normal bubble guns are fun, but this one is the best bubble gun I have ever seen. It has LEDs on the top that flash, and one blue LED where the bubbles comes out. The result of this light is amazing. The blue light reflects off the bubbles quickly, so it looks like laser bubbles. When our children finished playing with the toy, I pointed it at the top of my cookie-jar TARDIS and took a picture. I was so happy with the result that I removed the background and then put the TARDIS in space with a few effects.

The air is a lot colder now, the trees are bare and the ground is covered in fun leaves to play in or walk on. Beneath the trees in the forest, you can see the berries on the ground, still bright red and beautiful. After playing nicely outside, it is time to come in an give the children a bath. The question is, does giving them a bath make them cleaner or dirtier?

We rode the hayride in an apple orchard this year. I held our daughter and my husband held our son. I always like to go on hayrides because it helps remind me of the harvest and how people in the past gathered food for the winder. After the hayride we visited the little shop where we bought a pumpkin for me to carve, and some other random stuff. I bought a fiddle cd from a group they had preforming live. But it is also fun because the children enjoy it.

I enjoy carving a pumpkin, and this year, as always, I though about making a TARDIS, but in the end settled on carving a swirly turtle. I used my own doodle design for the shell and I think it looks great. I also carved quick face pumpkins for our son and daughter. He told me what sort of thing he wanted and i made it for him.

Our son, who has been coloring pictures of Mario characters everyday, dressed as "Luigi" (the costume is perfect when he rides his kart.)and our daughter as "Princess Peach". I dressed as "Mario" to match. My husband would have dressed as "Toad", but he had to work that night. We all had costume hats to wear that I bought online. For fun I took the children to a few houses nearby and we got some candy. Oddly, people don't really give candy in the building where we live, and even the people in the houses said that people just don't come around anymore. I suspect that it is because people are more paranoid now and not willing to meet new people. That's sad, because we thought it was fun. One Asian man gave us a fortune cookies as a treat, and one store-place gave us a mylar balloon--now that was a great idea! The kids love that more than any candy.

Our son started school on the new town. He goes three times a week and seem to like his new friends. His school picture came out very cute. When is his not in school, he likes to ride his Galahad-Kart around our building as fast as he can wearing his new green "Luigi" hat.

Recently I have been watching sci-fi series called Andromeda from the early 2000's. They gave the main captain long hair almost like Macguiver. There is a lot of fist fighting and other types of "clean" combat in the show, that is a bit fun to watch. Although the show is a bit slow moving other than the fight scenes, I will probably watch all five seasons since the main character shows some good idealism.

Usually my husband drives the car to work, and on the days I have the car, I have to drop him off and pick him up at night with the children which can be difficult, so if I need a few small things we walk to the nearby drug store. Our son loves giving his sister a fun ride in the stroller as we walk along the road until we reach the climbing rocks. When we reach the line of boulders, our son runs happily to the big rocks, climbing and jumping off them until we reach the small playground that is very close to the drugstore. Both children love playing in the small playground, going up the ladders and down the slides. They think the reason for the walk is to play, not to go to the store.

Last week I got a fun package in the mail. It was a birthday present from my younger sister that had been back oreded for a while. I first opened the package thinking it was something I ordered, but was happily surprised to find a TARDIS cookie jar with sound effects inside. I took pictures and made some cookies right away so the cookie jar could feel at home--but mainly because it is really fun to eat cookies out of a police box. Each cookie disappears with a very nice dematerialize sound.

The apartment we moved into finally looks like a nice place to be. I got a nice double reclining love-seat from craigslist for our living room instead of using our nice old couch. This gives us more space and keeps the place from looking cluttered. Here you can see the living room, the kitchen, the main bedroom, and the children's bedroom/playroom.

Being far away from things that we know, we explored the area a bit. We happily found a small mall with a fun "undersea" play area which both our children enjoy. It has a pink oyster shell to climb on, a water tunnel to crawl through and the side is the side of coral reef.

our daughter's first birthday came right around the time we were moving into our new apartment closer to where my husband works, so she had two birthday celebrations, the first one with her grandmothers, and the second one at our new home. Our daughter loved eating chocolate cake and being with family. Interestingly, she started walking only a week after we moved. Here is a short video.

It is always fun to go to the beach in the summer. We found an interesting place where you hike though the woods and end at a beach where the crabs and seaweed thrive on the rocky shore and all you can hear is the water and small creatures moving in the woods. Our daughter wasn't sure if she liked it or not.

The beach is fun, but on really hot days, when we don't feel like driving a lot, we go to the air conditioned mall play area where our children have fun together.

Our son had swimming lessons at a nearby pool this month. The teachers tried to teach various kinds of kicking and how to "crawl" around the pool by holding on to the sides. I think the main thing our son learned was blowing bubbles. He especially liked the last week when the teachers let the students go down a slide into the pool. After swim class one day, we walked over to the pond which is down the hill from the pool. There we found some beautiful littly pads and some swimming ducks.

The garden just made it's first small squash. Our son was happy and carried the small zucchini inside the house happily. After he came back inside, he found his sister playing with his paints and paintbrushes. She might be a bit young to really paint, but she can pose perfectly when she wants.

Occasionally I buy some new fun looking snack for our daughter form the store. The snacks you can buy are so interesting that if you have enough different types, you can make food art to feed to your baby. It really is fun.

Thinking of art, I recently painted another coaster to put my cup on. I swirled and made a grid on this coaster and was happy with the interesting result.

The air is almost hot, and the garden has begun to grow. The yard continues to produce many colorful flowers. Even the wood pile behind the house seems full of life and color with flowers blooming wherever they can. I Seem to me taking pictures of everything now, the pine tree branches, the weird reflections of the sky on the stove pipe, and the texture of the wood in the woodpile.

The children love to play all day. Some days they play outside in the sandbox, and other days we drive to the crowded beach where Our son runs and jumps with the waves, playing with his toy truck while I play with our daughter in the sand. Other days they visit the park or just sit on the grass enjoying the warm day.

My sister visited for a few weeks before going off to college in the fall. She had time to help clean the yard with my father, play piano with my mother, and take really fun pictures of me with our daughter. She also learned to make origami money roses for a pretty looking gift basket we made together.

My grandmother died on May 12 at age 94. She had a long, healthy life and was very popular during her life. Many people, both friends and family members attended her memorial service and burial. As my contribution, I made a large collage of pictures from her life that was displayed at the reception. While everyone was visiting NH, me, my two sisters and brother made sure to have our picture taken together(notice how we all wear our usual colors).

For my birthday, my mother-in-law watch the children and my husband and I had the day to visit the city of Boston again. I make my hair into a fun shape while in the car as we drove to Boston for lunch. This time we went for fun, and because I wanted to visit Chinatown for my birthday. We rode the trolly both there and back and saved ourselves the 6 mile walk. That way we could spend more time looking around china town. We ate at a fun restaurant and bought some necessary kitchen utensils (cooking chopsticks) from a local grocery store, and then returned home for the family party where I was given a very tasty ice cream cake and some fun and useful gifts, including a couple shirts, a disc player, and some chocolates.

Flowers are everywhere it seems now, blooming from backyards and looking very bright and cheerful, espicily the one's in my mother=in-law's garden.

Seeing all theses flowers inspired me to attempt to plant a vegtable garden. If anyone know's me, they know I grew up inthe city and have no idea how to make a garden except from playing online games, like "farmville" or some such game. Basically, I made a square of dirt in the backyard just like in the games, and planted seeds into it. I hope they grow. I wonder if I have to do anything else to them...

Our daughter started crawling, exploring the house, and getting into all her brother's toys. She chases after whatever he is playing and grabs it it, which naturally annoys her brother. He's never had this sort of thing happen before and doesn't understand what to do about it. Though she crawls now, she occasionally goes the extra effort and pulls herself up onto a chair or something and stands there looking happy and proud of herself.

my younger sister visited for the week of her birthday, and she decided to go the the beach to celebrate. naturally we all went with her. Our son , who has been asking about the beach for a month, ran into the water, chasing waves for a long time while my husband watched.Meanwhile, my sister and I dug in the sand with our daughter, who had never been to the beach before. She tasted the sand like a good baby should, and determined the beach to be fun. On another day, when we couldn't go to the beach, I set a fun water-slide in the splash pool for our son, who splashed in the water again and again.

We got a bullet from Liberia that was formed into a cross, which helps us remember the truth about the cross. The little paper that comes with the cross says: "It is a symbol of how God can bring redemption even from human kinds worst evils."

With spring here, it is time to go outside, sit on a the dandylion covered lawn(and take some dandelion pictures), color rainbows and write on the driveway, or just enjoy the slightly warm breeze. But, when you go out, don't forget your sun hat. I bought a cute hat for our daughter and discovered that Galahad's hat is still to big for him, which isn't surprising, since I fit the 3-4 year old hat rather well. I wore my small Korean hat with a string so that we all had hats on. Once inside, my husband and son hugged sweetly.

While I was looking for game walkthroughs for our Kirby Air ride game, I came across a site* where people made various Kirby crafts, celebrating some number anniversary of Kirby. From there I found a kink to nintendo paper crafts blog*, which, to me, was an irresistible site. Our son colored a green kirby from one of the coloring pages. I HAD to try making something, so sticking to the kirby theme, downloaded the patterns I needed, and began making my own 3D paper kirby. Naturally it took a lot of cutting and precise glueing, but in the end it was worth it, and I had my own little kirby. Yippi!

The last day in April, my husband and I went to Boston to visit Chinatown. We walked from the VA center all the way to Chinatown and saw all the flowers and trees blooming, adding live and color to grey buildings. On the way back to the VA, we rode the "T", the local trolley system, since 6 miles is enough of a walk for one day.

When I think about kite flying, I imagine that it takes a while to make a kite fly, but once it's high, it stays there. However, one day it was a kite day. That means that it was so windy, all i had to do was literally throw the kite into the air and hold on to the spool as the kite zoomed into the sky. It was fun to watch the kite, and we all enjoyed watching it and chasing it in the sky. (the tail is some plastic-wrap tied to the bottom to keep it stabilized in the strong wind)
One day I decided to make a cake and make some fondant as frosting. Fondant is really easy to make, you just microwave some marshmallows and flavoring until it's liquid, and then powdwered sugar until it's a dough. If you use water instead of flavoring, fondant tastes like sweet play dough. After I made the fondant, I rolled it on a board covered in cocoa power to make it have a nice texture. Then my son wanted to add some extra frosting on the outside, so We finished decorating it together.

Our son enjoys painting mugs at the local ceramic shop--and painting in general. He loves to wash his hands (even when they are covered in paint). Our son also enjoys playing with his legos, espicily his penguin slide and little car.

Our daughter turned 6 months old this month, so I took her to a studio and had her picture taken. Then I came home and took my own pictures of her, since I know what she laughs at better than a photographer. In either case, the pictures came out cute. This one is where she looks like a china baby doll.

I found a partial picture of a pinwheel pillow I made when I was a teenager and wanted to make a small blanket for our dauther with a similar pattern. I found some nice cloth and bought some shinny cloth so that the blanket would have texture. In the end I think it looks very nice, and our daughter likes it a lot.

Winter means snow, and when there is snow, I eventually go outisde and make a snowman. This year I made the snowman a green hat and our son helped with the snowman and even added 2 extra arms below the real arms, so it might be an alien snowman, but it came out looking very nice.

Our son enjoys watching a show called Word World*. He always insists that I sit with him when he watches it, and somedays we all snuggle together and watch the silly animals build words and play games for a little while.

For my husband's birthday, he got a hiking type Garmen GPS from his parents. He likes it a lot, so one day we went out Geo cashing. That is, we found a GPS cash nearby, loaded the coordentents into the GPS and then wandered through the woods looking for it. We never found the item that was supposed to be there, but we all had fun.

Ice and people driving indecisively can cause a lot of rear-ender accidents. One night, while on the way to Salem, the truck in front of us was driving very oddly, as if he wasn't sure whether he was stopping of going. He finally did stop, and with the ice on the road we crashed into him before we could stop. I guess that's the end of our year's savings...