Owen Wilson is...

Uncle Kevin in Little Fockers:

a few tidbits

....tomorrow is going to have 5 seconds more sunlight than today, and today already has 2 more seconds, so we are really looking at +7! I'm planning to use those extra seconds to play a short game of fetch with Cho and work on my presumed vitamin D deficiency.
....i was informed by a wise woman in Ohio that i should not fret about missing the lunar eclipse on the winter solstice as there should be another one in 2094. Yes!
....it is pajama day today, the last day of winter camp, which made the morning routine super easy!
....sew your own hello kitty purses for ages 5-8 year olds can be a productive challenge at any age. I'm just saying, at least for the craft-challenged folks out there like myself
....Cho Cho says she would like to use her extra 7 seconds to eat a bone, or two or three as we know how quickly she can eat them bones.

Have a great day!

Winter Solstice is here!

And that means that tomorrow....
SunRise: 8:05 AM EST
SunSet: 5:07 PM EST
Length of day: 9h 02m 09s

... and that folks is 2 seconds longer than today! Wooohooo!! Let the upwards trend begin!

And while we are at it, we have the lowest solar noon at: 23.9 degrees altitude. But, come boxing day, we will be up to 24.0 degrees! That is a long way off from 70.7 degrees altitude in the summer, but every tenth counts.

Lunar Eclipse!

Tonight is the first time the first time we have had a full lunar eclipse on the winter solstice since 1638! And the ask from the global volcanic activity is supposed to make the eclipse even more brilliant. According to NASA, the eclipse begins at 1:33 AM EST with totality beginning at 2:41 AM and lasting for 72 minutes. The actual peak is 3:17 AM. Coming home from school today i saw the full moon rise, with a pink and orange rainbow around it. That is bad news. It means the clouds are rolling in. We are supposed to get a few inches of snow overnight, so i guess we will miss our lunar eclipse! If you see it, post a picture for us!

Running in the snow

Cho Cho and I went running yesterday and she was going crazy sniffing the deer tracks! Here she is running like a crazy dog down the trail! Oh and here she is after the run. haha.

Horse Barn

We went to feed carrots to the horses yesterday! It was quite chilly, about 12F. They seemed to be doing OK with those cold temps! We took along Cho Cho who ran around the farm like a crazy dog.

Oh, and now wonder Cho Cho has been going crazy lately. She has had a visitor on our door step. We didnt get to see the visitor, just the remains of its meal.

Getting crafty

Here are Bee and Frankie sewing clothes for their dolls. Bee is sewing a pair of underwear and Frankie is sewing a skirt. Considering I am the one teaching them how to sew, the outfits will be very, very simple! Still, they did a really great job with a needle and thread!! Once the outfits are complete we shall have another fashion show and post pics!!

Team Europe!

Here is Bee presenting with her group, Team Europe. In the group report she said that Scotland was formed from volcanic activity and that she helped to draw the forests and made the map key. The group was very proud of their poster! Pretty good for second grade!



And then the other night Frankie asked me if I was ready for the fashion show. So I said sure! And i waited to see what she was going to dress up in. I was wrong. She brought me into the kitchen and showed me a bunch of pictures she drew of girls (and one boy) with different outfits. I thought that was cute.

Whats for supper?

What's for supper? Why is that such a hard question every day? Well, we seem to do variations on pasta, fish and beans every single night. Tonight we having bean soup ("pastavazoo" - or pasta y fagioli), a staple in our family in the colder weather. It was one of my faves as a kid. Its basically, cannellini beans, onions, garlic, tomato, water, and rosemary if you have it fresh. We don't, so no rosemary tonight. However, we love to have the soup with bread and we just so happen to have fresh baked loaf from Scott's sister, Colleen. (thanks!). And of course we will have it with popped broccoli! What else is new! haha. I hope you stop by for supper!

ChoChoVision - WSQRL

This is how Cho Cho sits at the playground when we play. We call it "chochovision"!

Something spooky

Bee had to write a story about something spooky for school and so she wrote a story about a ghost. here is the picture she drew to illustrate her story. I had to laugh as it is the sweetest, cutest ghost i have seen in a while!

A nature day

We had fun with nature today. We found a spider in her web eating a fly!! I hope you can see it in this picture! Then we found an old hornets nest that Frankie is holding in her hand. And then there was the playground and the hike around the fields with Ms. Cho!

today at the park

nice fall michigan day!

random pics

Here are a few fun pics. Bee at the ND football game. Frankie and her friend in our backyard by our super huge puffball mushrooms! (they are edible, and people cook them up in olive oil with garlic. not me though!). And Bee with a picture she drew while waiting her turn at the doctors office! And the Cho Cho after going running! And Scott and the girls when we were at Mackinac Island.

1st day of school!

Frankie has been waiting for this day for over a year! She is a big kindergartner and marble muscrat just like her big sis! Needless to say she woke up at 5:45 and was so excited she could not get back to sleep!! Bring on the school year!

driving up the coast

After visiting Gyeongju (the old capital of the Shilla Dynasty, 57 BC - 935 AD) on Wednesday we rode up the eastern coast to Mt. Soerak (Seoraksan National Park), which is at the northern tip of South Korea and borders North Korea.

We started off the day at a local bakery to buy some Gyeongju Bang, which are little barley pancakes filled with bean. Delicious.

The drive took us along the East Sea, where we stopped at a beach and put our feet in. The waves splashed a little higher than we thought so we got a bit wet! And, we also stopped a rest area and the girls got an ice cream!

Then we stopped at a local seaside restaurant for some traditional korean soup. We sat on the floor at the little tables. The girls ate the noodles from a noodle soup. While the woman gave the girls a fork to use, they made it through the meal with just the chopsticks. Korean chopsticks are metal and rounded at the bottom, so they took a little getting used to. Im used to the wooden chopsticks that are more square at the bottom. They seem heavier and slipperier. The woman who owns the restaurant went out to her garden and picked fresh tomatoes for us to eat. She also said the girls were "beautiful" and "well behaved". Of course all of this was said in Korean but that is what our friend Miyoun told us she said.

For the most part we took the Asian Highway north, and periodically we would see the signs for Russia & China. Partway through the drive Scott took over as driver, so he is now quite proficient at reading road directions in Korean. haha. Actually we have learned the korean script for a few very important words (men/women - for the bathrooms!). haha.

Gyeongju roadtrip

What a great day today. We rented bikes at the train station and rode around Gyeonju, checking out the historical relics of the Shilla dynasty, which ruled Korea from here from 57 BC to 935 AD. This was the first major dynasty in Korea, we already checked out the third and last, and we'll get to the second when we get back to Seoul.

Bee rode with Angie on a mini tandem and loved it. Frankie rode on a child seat behind me. Next vacation, we do all-tandem.

The Shilla buried their royalty in pyrimid-like mounds, which are now all over Gyeonju. I figure you've really made it in the "Dead King" category if people are still mowing the lawn on your mound 1000 years after you die.

The best part of the old stuff was the Cheomseongdae astronomical observatory (below). It consists of 366 stones, one for each day of the year, 12 stones at the base, one for each month, and 30 levels, one for each day of the month. Not sure what observations could be done here, but...



Then it was the Children's museum, where B&F (with some help) did some archaeology, by putting together the urn puzzle below. It was especially hard because kids kept trying to touch Frankie's blonde hair the whole time we were doing the puzzle.

For dinner we tried to go to the Terrace, which was just next door to the place we went to the night before. Unfortunately, the Terrace had new owners, and only served dishes containing abalone (!) but the owner directed us to the "Spoon and Chopsticks", a Korean restaurant that definitely did not cater to tourists- no English in sight, but lots of great food.

Bee and Frankie didn't eat as much as we did, so we treated them to Isaac Toast, where they made the grilled cheeses right on the street in front of us...

Waiting for the bus

We will have lots of other pictures from our adventures today but we thought we would put a few of our bus trip into Gyeongju (where we ended up renting bikes to get all around town). One of the bus stops had a lake with lotus flowers in bloom. It's the big summer lotus flower festival here since this is their peak season.

The bus stop near the train depot was surrounded by lots of sidewalk vendors. We were really impressed with the artistry of the food presentation! There was all kinds of fruits, vegetables, fish and lots of other things!

Gyeongbokgung Palace

Yesterday was our busiest day yet.  We started out by ordering our own breakfast at Tae Geuk Dang bakery down the hill from the hotel.  We were completely clueless as to what to order, but Angie is always good about asking. She looked up the word for "breakfast" (achim) and "what do you recommend" (mwo chucheonhae jusillaeyo) in our handy dandy lonely planet guide, and asked a very nice lady who suggested a big-sized roll that they could cut into quarters.  It looked like it was custard-filled but otherwise was the size of a half-loaf of bread. When they served it, it turned out to be filled by a cross between egg salad and cole slaw, with a Korean twist of course. Surprise!  Angie and I ate the whole thing, and frankie even ate a couple of bite.  But, both girls really had ice cream sandwiches instead.

We took the subway down to Gyeongbokgung Palace, seat of power in Korea during the Josean dynasty from the 1500's to 1910.  The palace included a history museum, a changing of the guard reenactment, and lots of old stuff in general.

This is the stupa from the high-monk Jigwang-guska, a masterpiece of ancient Korean stone stupas, believed to have been built around 1085, making it the oldest thing we saw today. It was built during the Goryea dynasty, the one that came before the Joseans.  The Goryea palace is about a kilometer away and we'll visit it later this week.

Somehow, Bee and Frankie's Korean outfit wound up in a museum.  Who knew?

This guard was clearly intimidated by Bee and Frankie.

After the palace we met Angie's friend Miyun and went to a very nice noodle restaurant.  We finished the day in a place that was very familiar to us...