Celebrating Lunar New Year

Every year, the Korean Canadian Children's Association organizes a Lunar New Year's Celebration for the families with kids from Korea. It's a really fun event, with great food, fun things for the kids to do and lots of friends from the Korean community and other adoptive families.

In Korea, the Lunar New Year's celebration is called Seollal. The celebration usually lasts three days and it is a very important celebration in Korean culture. During this time, many Koreans travel back to their home towns to pay respect to their parents and ancestors.

Part of the tradition is a ritual called "Sebae", which is a traditional practice of paying respect to one's elders on Korean New Year. Children wish their parents a happy new year by performing a deep traditional bow and the words saehae bok manhi badeuseyo (새해 복 많이 받으세요~) which translates to may you receive many blessings in the new year~. Parents typically reward this gesture by giving their children new year's money (usually in the form of crisp paper money) and offering words of wisdom.

For the KCCA party, the kids learned how to do this deep traditional bow before some respected members of the Korean community. They were then given a small purse with some candy and gifts in it, as well as a crisp new $5 bill (courtesy of the Consul General from South Korea, Mr. Hong, Ji-in - I think???).

We also learned how to make a type of sushi roll, and got to enjoy some fabulous Korean food.

The Cake I Had Donated:


The Two Alex's with the Cake:


Learning How to Bow:


Doing the Traditional Bow:


Paying his Respects and Getting a Small Gift:


Making Sushi with Mom:


Dear Friends of Ours:


Alex's Sushi Roll:


Cutting the Cake:

Gymnastics and Trampoline

Over the winter, we signed Alex up for a second round of gymnastics, and decided to do the dual gymnastics/trampoline class.

He love it all - especially jumping on the trampolines (as you can tell from the pictures lol).

Here's a few pics from his last class when they got their awards for passing specific levels. Alex got two as he passed the level for both gymnastics and trampoline.

Sorry the quality of the pictures isn't any better... it isn't easy taking good pictures in an indoor gymnasium.

Christmas

We had a lovely and relaxing Christmas this year. It was our first Christmas that we celebrated Christmas morning on our own. With Strider being so young, it just made sense to try to simply things this year. We did see the rest of our families at different points over the holidays, so it was a wonderful time.

Santa came!!!


Alex and I on Christmas morning:


Chris and Alex:


Happy kid:


Venom opening presents:


Alex and Sarah Making Cookies:

KCCA Christmas Party

There is an organization in Toronto called the Korean Canadian Children's Association (KCCA). This non-profit organization was started by an incredible man named John Lim. John believed that Korean-adoptive families should have access to Korean cultural events so that our kids are exposed to the rich Korean culture, heritage and food. He built an amazing organization, and so many wonderful people from the Korean and adoptive communities volunteer to organize some incredible events.

One of the highlights of the year is the annual Christmas Party/Cultural Night that is held every December. I recently joined the KCCA's Parents Committee and so it was doubly important for us to attend the party this year as we'd missed it the last couple of years because it conflicted with Chris' work holiday parties.

Also, John Lim passed away not too long before the party, so I volunteered to do a video tribute in his honour. While it was wonderful to see so many families we hadn't seen in a long time, it was also very sad as it was the first big event we celebrated without John being there with us.

Even with the sadness of having just lost Mr. Lim, the evening was still wonderful, and Alex had a super time with the other kids. He was given a hanbok by a lovely Korean gentleman that I didn't even know who had heard through someone on the KCCA organizing committee that I was looking for a new hanbok for Alex. I was so grateful for this man's generosity and Alex looked simply adorable in the hanbok.

Chris had fun playing with all of the kids at our table (they seemed to gravitate towards us *laughs*), and Alex loved the magician, the food and the different songs and dancers.

We look forward to attending this again next year and hopefully for many years to come.

Alex in his new hanbok:


Chris and the two Alex's playing at our table:


More of the two Alex's playing:


Some of the dancers:


More Korean dancers:


Kids having fun at our table:


Watching the magic show:


Alex and his friend, another Alex:

Fall Fun!

Well, we survived another Halloween! It’s been a crazy, busy week but tons of fun.

Since my last update, Alex has been busy settling into his new school. He seems to love JK and his teacher and he’s making amazing strides with learning his letters and recognizing words and phonics and other fun stuff. It’s incredible to watch how quickly things change at this age - only a month ago, his drawings were still mostly indecipherable scribbles, but all of the sudden, he’s making more efforts to make things look more clear in his drawings, and add details, etc.

We celebrated Chu’sok this year, which is a big annual harvest festival in Korea (almost like a Korean Thanksgiving). It’s a big three-day festival in Korea, and one of the big parts of this tradition is for Korean families to return to their hometowns to pay respects to their ancestors, and thank them for a good harvest. For the past three years, we’ve tried to incorporate a bit of this tradition into Alex’s life by going to the graves of my grandparents (Alex’s great grandparents, and my mother, Anne’s parents) to pay our respects and tidy the graves a little bit. I don’t think Alex really understands the significance of doing this, but my hope is that it will help him feel a connection to his extended family in Canada, but also to his Korean roots.

We also had fun going to the St George Apple Festival, and Alex had a great time playing on the bouncy slides and riding a pony. We try to do this every year as it’s quite easy to get to and it’s lots of fun. We also went apple picking for the first time ever at a local farm owned by the family of one of my friends. It was a great place, with lots of varieties of apples, and the weather was amazing for getting out and enjoying the sunshine.

We also went down to Bronte Creek (a beautiful provincial park in Oakville) for a walk to enjoy the Fall colours and just get out while the weather has been so nice. I’m not looking forward to the Winter, but they’re saying it will be milder than normal - I’m just hoping that also means less snow than last year!

One bit of big news in our house is that we’ve finally decided to get another dog! We lost our Jack Russell, Gulliver, to cancer in early 2005 and we’ve been dog-free ever since then. Alex has finally reached an age where I’m comfortable having a dog in the house again, and after much research and discussions, we decided to get a Labrador Retriever from a great breeder about an hour from where we live. Two of her dogs just had a litter in mid-October, so we’ll be bringing one of those little guys home sometime in the middle of December. We don’t yet know which of the 8 pups we will pick, but we know we’ll get a male, and our biggest concern will be temperament. We went to visit the pups when they were a week old, and we’ll go back one or two more times before we go to pick ours up in December so it’s fun seeing them grow up over time.

We had a great weekend visit with my parents when they came out to Cambridge to see us. Alex had an incredible time with them, and we really loved that they were able to come and see us.

I also got to head into Toronto to go see a dance show of the US Tour from the TV show, “So You Think You Can Dance”. This was our second year going and it was just great. Jennifer came with two of her friends and we all loved the show.

That brings us to Halloween, which was this past Friday. Alex and I went to buy our pumpkins the day before Halloween (we’ve never left it so late before), and we had tons of fun carving them. This was the first year that Alex got to design his own pumpkin, even if he wasn’t allowed to actually carve it.

As in past years, we went to Toronto to go trick or treating with my nieces. One of Kathy and my friends has a son close to Alex’s age, and they’ve played well together before, so we decided to have them go together. We got them all dressed up for pictures, and then they split up based on ages so we took Ian and Alex with us and they had a fabulous time.

We then drove back home to Cambridge, and were back on the road again the next day to take Alex back to Kathy’s for his first sleepover as we had a work party for Chris’ company that we were going to in Whitby, and we knew it would go late so we stayed overnight and picked Alex up in the morning. He was very excited to go for the visit, but wasn’t that keen on the idea of the sleepover, so we weren’t sure how it was going to go. Thankfully he had an amazing time, and when I called him early the next morning, he told me he now loved sleepovers, and didn’t like them before because he didn’t know what they were *grins*.

Well I think that’s it - I’ve put a bunch of pics into a new slideshow that will hopefully work for this blog. I think you can watch them on the blog or actually click on them to pull up the full-sized image. Hope you like them.

Summer's End

Holy Cow!

It hasn’t been months and months since my last update. I guess I’m getting better at trying to keep this site updated. I’ve added a new album with pictures from the last month of the summer. I hope you like them.

We had a great summer. Aside from the near-constant rain we had in SW Ontario, we still managed to do a fair bit, including trips to the zoo, African Lion Safari, North Carolina and some camping.

Since my last update at the end of July, we spent a really fun day at African Lion Safari with Chris, Alex and I meeting up with my sister, Jenny, and her son, Kian, as well as Kathy, Steve and their two daughters, Jennifer and Sarah, and one of Jen’s friends and Grandpa as well.

We enjoying driving through the game reserve to see the animals and Alex had an amazing time at the splash pad as he’s now big enough to go into the ‘bigger kids’ area where there’s tons to do. He just loves water and getting splashed and soaked and it was fun for him to get to play with his cousins too.

We also got away for a great trip to North Carolina with my side of the family. We had 13 of us in total sharing a huge house in the Outer Banks in North Carolina (Rodanthe to be specific). The house was beyond belief and Alex had the most spectacular time playing in the pool, and the pirate ship playhouse, and flying kites and playing on the beach. We even got to make a few day trips to try out some famous North Carolina BBQ (Eastern Carolina style) as well as a trip to the aquarium. The trip was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I hope Alex gets to one day experience something that fun again as he just loved playing with his cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncle and he loved the ocean and the waves and everything about the trip.

We finally also had some good news about Chris’ job situation and thankfully his job is secure and also we don’t have to move anywhere. It’s been a hard 18 months waiting for the company that bought out Chris’ company to set everything in motion with the new structure, but it’s nice to finally know that most people in the sales force were able to stay with the company. The new company has its Canadian head office in Montreal, so Chris will be heading that way more often now.

Alex also started Junior Kindergarten (five mornings a week)… well, he hasn’t officially started yet. They have “staggered” entry for JK kids so that the kids all get a chance to visit before starting school officially, so he and I went for a 20-minute visit last week, and this Thursday he goes for the full morning, but with a small group of kids, and then on Friday the entire class goes for their regular class. He seems to be taking it all in stride - I think Chris and I are finding the transition much, much harder.

Because we had a bit of a break until he started school this week, we took advantage of the time and went camping up near Kincardine at Inverhuron Provincial Park. It rained on and off, especially as we were trying to pack up, but overall it was a great trip. The scenery is lovely and the park is very rustic but still has nice hot showers and clean bathrooms (a must-have in my books), so we’ll probably go back again at some point. We just got back today and Alex is in daycare tomorrow afternoon and then Thursday’s the big day where he goes off to school for the first time and Chris and I collapse into piles of tear-filled goo on the way home.

I’ll be sure to do more updates as I can! Thanks for following along with our family adventures and pictures!

Finally an Update!

Well summer is here and I can't believe I haven't updated this site since February! I kept meaning to do an update, but there was always some event or party, etc. coming up and I'd decide to wait to update the site until after that passed so I could include pics of that, but then I'd forget about it and the weeks and months just flew by.

I'll try to keep it brief with just the major highlights of our lives since February. Forgive me if I jump around a bit in this entry. I'll also post a bunch of pictures from the past few months in a new photo album.

Let's see... big news in our household.

Alex turned four on June 11. His party was tons of fun, with a few kids from his daycare plus some of his other friends all over for a backyard party. My niece, Jennifer, and her friend were hired as party planners and they did an amazing job of organizing some games and activities, plus they decorated the backyard and did up the loot bags for the kids. We also had a lovely Korean lunch with family in Toronto in honour of Alex's birthday.

We also had a wonderful birthday party for Alex in London with Chris' sister and her family. A great meal and a wonderful time for all of us.

One of the big surprises Alex got for his birthday was a big inflatable climber/obstacle course from Grandma and Grandpa. We’d come across an amazing deal on these at some Wal-Marts (usually they sell for $500-600 but they were on clearance for $99!!!), so it was a great present for Alex and such a good deal that we bought the climbing mountain version as well as they’ll be great backyard toys for years to come.

Alex just finished daycare last week until he starts school (JK) in the fall. He's been going a couple of days a week to the same daycare since he was younger, so it was sad to have his last day last week. His new school is just at the end of our street, so he'll be in JK in the mornings, and then for two afternoons a week, he'll go to the daycare program at the same school so that I have two full days to work.

Chris' job situation is still somewhat in limbo. His company was bought out over 18 months ago in a huge buyout by another pharmaceutical company. As the purchase was really complex, it's taken a long time for the companies to get things sorted out, but we're hoping to hear exactly what's going on with Chris' job within the next few weeks. While we weren't too concerned about Chris losing his job, it was still a possibility that might happen, so we've been trying not to fret too much about things. We have no idea if he'll be doing the same thing, or if he'll move into a new role or if we might have to move, but at least we won't have to wait much longer to find out.

Another big thing was that we bought a new tent trailer for camping. I'm not a huge lover of camping, but Chris loves it and I know it's a wonderful experience for Alex. We'd always camped in tents before this, but last summer we rented a tent trailer and we really liked the experience, so we started looking at older used models and eventually ended up buying a new 2009 Jayco tent trailer. We've been out with it twice so far and we are really enjoying it. It's a lot to learn, but it does make the entire camping experience much more comfortable for all involved.

Our first trip was to a Provincial Park near Peterborough that we’d been to many times before. We loved our time there, even though Alex got sick with a bronchial infection the first night and ended up on antibiotics. We just got back yesterday from our second outing with the camper and we’d tried a private park this time as it had lots of things to offer for young kids. Everyone was very friendly, but this was more of a trailer park with people there for the whole summer with permanent trailers and big RVs versus campers like us. It was a nice experience, but not much in the way of privacy or nature, but we did have fun at the splash pad and swimming in the lake.

Another fun thing we did since my last journal entry was to go to see Walking with Dinosaurs in Toronto. This is a great show if you get a chance to see it - Alex loved it. We had planned to have Grandma and Grandpa come with us, but they were both sick with a chest cold they caught from Alex (or Chris), so a friend of ours and her son came instead.

Jumping backwards a bit here - the winter was pretty tough overall. The snow here was just crazy and I actually got snowed in once when Chris was away on a business trip. I found someone to come out and clear the driveway and walkway, but there was about 36 hours where I couldn’t even get the front door open because of all of the snow.

Health wise, things have been good for me. No major flus or bugs over the winter, but Chris had a really rough go with migraines that just seemed to get worse and worse even though he was on new stronger meds. Eventually he was able to see a neurologist who specializes in migraines and she switched his meds as she thought some of the headaches were a reaction to the meds he was taking to deal with the pain, and overall the improvement has been amazing. Now instead of migraines 90% of the time, he can go weeks without a headache.

Alex had a small cough/cold about six weeks ago and managed to pass it onto both Chris and my Mom, but both of them got REALLY sick with it even though Alex just had a slightly runny nose and a bit of a cough. Chris had to have two different rounds of antibiotics to get rid of the infection in his chest and my mom was wiped out for a couple of weeks as well. I have no idea how I didn’t catch it, but thankfully I managed to stay healthy (a bit of a surprise lol).

The summer’s been great so far - lots to do with the new camper and we’ve been seeing our family in London and Toronto when we can as well. We have another camping trip planned this weekend in Niagara Falls for the long weekend and then we’ll be going to North Carolina with my whole family for a week near the end of August. With stays overnight in Buffalo and Virginia Beach while enroute, we’ll be away for about 10 days.

I’m thinking of moving this site to a more traditional “blog” website so I don’t have to pay for the storage. If I do move it, I’ll be sure to let you know.