Happy Thanksgiving!!

So many people have asked me: "Just how do you actually MOVE to South Korea? What's THAT process like?"

Well, today you get a little taste of the madness folks. First of all, if you had come to our house in the early weeks of November you would have seen little green post it notes like these all over the walls. This helped us prepare for moving stage one - the South Korea shipment.

Moving Stage two is when they come after Christmas and put all our loose housewares into storage, leaving just the large furniture items to stage the home and Moving Stage three is if and only if the house EVER sells, they come back for the large furniture pieces. Thankfully, I will not be here for Stage 3. 2 rounds of moving really is enough for me.

So the movers came on Monday, Nov 16th and packed up all the things on the post-it notes which we had cleaned and arranged into piles in each room. It was quite a process.

We are taking things like favorite kid furniture, toys, bedding, pictures, bikes, ect. They allowed us a 40 ft shipping container (the contents of which you would NEVER be able to fit into a Korean apt) and we filled about half of a 20 ft shipping container, which is still a ton of stuff.Here is a shot of our container which will be loaded on a ship and then begin it's long journey across the Pacific Ocean. They gave us a value of US$40,000 for all of our crap and it's a good thing the movers are not the same guys that will be on the ship because I would have been tempted to bribe them to just shove the thing off the boat as soon as they reached open ocean. $40,000!?! I mean come on!
I did however ask the movers how they felt about getting rid of the "Lloyd Triestino" on the side and spraypainting "Team Stolasz" on instead. I even told them I would make the stencil. They were NOT down with that. The problem with our country Ladies and Gentlemen is that no one goes the extra mile in their job anymore.
So the house does feel a bit empty, but we still have everything we need so not to worry....

As soon as the Korea shipment left, we started gearing up for the holidays. Teddy and Sasha both celebrated with Thanksgiving feasts at their school. Here is a shot of Teddy and Luca with the rest of the Manatee class at their feast. It must have been great because I was unable to get either one of them to stop eating long enough to take a picture:

So the next week was full of trying to remember to bring juice boxes to school one day and chicken nuggets the next. This sounds like an easy challenge, but I have a confession to make: my brain has gone to mush. Usually my mind works like a super computer - I mean I never write anything down, and It's just all there. I wake up in the am and think "What today?" and the line of code goes "Wednesday. Library book day. Sasha to school, Teddy not, you're driving carpool, make lunches, visit post office, send B-day letter to Smitty, and lecture tonight is Coastal Processes - don't forget to email your power point slides to yourself..." But in the last 6 weeks my mind has started to fail me. I wake up in the am and just think "duuuuh what day is it?" I come out of any shopping mall and stand there like a moron realizing that I have just no idea where the damn car is. None! This doesn't happen to me! Jeff's take on it is that now I should understand what he has to deal with all the time and maybe I will be a little more compassionate when he takes the wrong exit or forgets where the car is instead of looking at him with pity and going "REALLY?!?"

I have not lost a child yet and I also have not showed up to teach my class with nothing (both things I fear greatly) but I do have to say that I flaked on Library book day like 3 straight weeks in a row. Somebody send me a Tuesday night email reminder please!

Here is Sasha, my little ham with the Marlin class having her feast a few days later:

Me and my 2 wonderful kiddos. I thank God for them everyday. I am also humbled by their abilities to think mental circles around me in my weakened condition. This does not bode well for their teenaged years....

Sasha wanted pictures with her favorite boys. Here is this year's crush:

And last year's crush:

Man, seems like only yesterday she was 3 and refused to admit that there were ANY boys at all in her class. Here is Teddy and one of his good buddies Nick. Poor Ted. It's his first year of school and he finally has his own friends and is being invited to his own Birthday parties and I am just yanking the rug out from under him in 2 more weeks.
The other holiday stuff is also keeping us busy. We went to Old Town Spring so Sasha could play with her Suzuki group and we met Santa. Santa and his lady friend liked Monty so much that THEY asked for a picture with my dog. Love the way Monty is looking at the camera like "yeah, it's pretty much like this wherever I go. I put up with it..." Hopefully Grammy and Poppy duck will keep him well-groomed and give him plenty of new opportunities to mingle with "his public" in NC. Many of you have asked if we are taking Monty to SK. They EAT dog there folks. Monty would be the like a South Korean wedding feast. Are you kidding me? He is staying state-side with his grandparents.
Here is the diva playing in the Christmas Violin whatever it was. She's such a rock-star....

We also took a break this week with school being out and went to the zoo with Uncle Will, Auntie Andreea and Luca. It was probably our last visit to the zoo and most of our favorite animals were out and about so that was really fun.
So that's all for now. It looks like we will be here through the holidays and then we will be flying to SK on the 31st of Dec, arriving on Jan 1st (good thing it's not Y2K year eh Mom and Dad?) So we will say Happy New Year on the plane as we cross the international date line if we can figure out when that is. We got a really empty flight because most people don't want to be flying for New Years but being parents of small children who have no life anyway we decided to jump at the opportunity of a semi-empty flight. Maybe we can run down the aisles with streamers or something.....