Jae's new hat???

I bought this hat while I was in college. Years ago. Not that I was a heavy boozer, but because Danielle was visiting me and I thought that it would be a hoot to take some pictures in. Well, I kept it. It has moved from several apartments and finally to our house and it was always kept in a box. A couple of weeks ago, as Bill and I were going through some boxes and purging to make room for other things and I came across this hat. Good memories came to mind and I smiled. Then Bill decided that we couldn't throw it away, that it would be great to see Jae use it - with apple juice of course!

Well, we finally got around to having him try it out and of course Jae loved it. He wanted to play with it some more, but unfortunately, the hat does not work so hot. It was probably operator error in putting the straws back correctly..but for some laughs, we took some pictures of Jae. Perhaps one day, we will see this exact same shot again. Who knows?











The following is a picture of me and Danielle with the hat, and yes, that is V8!

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy halloween in your neck of the woods! This year was no different for the Grunwald's in Oregon - short! We were fortunate that it didn't pour on us, the weather was actually quite nice. Jae was Optimus Prime and Hannah was Hedwig (the owl from Harry Potter, also Jae's costume when he was 1.5).

The kids had a great time going from house to house but as usual, Jae was tired by about block 3 (He's just not a walker, plus his mask was starting to bother him). Hannah was a trooper and kept up with him until about block 2 and started getting tired (she almost fell asleep while I was carrying her, but all the excitement from the other kids distracted her). The kids still made out with a good stash of candy. We came back to hand out candy, but only got a handful of visitors, so now we've got a bucket of chocolate hanging around the house! This is not a good thing.

Hope everyone is doing well!!!
Patty, Bill, Jae, and Hannah Grunwald


This is a picture of Jae wearing the owl costume (just for a quick comparison). He's growing up so fast!

The Cousins!

So most of you know the story of how our first annual Halloween pictures went with Jae, Hannah, and Bryan..well, here is the proof! According to Stacey, a new species of owl has been discovered..the crying owl. It was very memorable to say the least. In hindsight, I wouldn't have changed a thing.

Jae is going to be Optimus Prime (although he's only wearing half of his costume in the picture..that's another story)

Hannah is Hedwig the Owl from Harry Potter (Jae wore this when he was 2)

Bryan is Tigger (the cutest Tigger I've ever seen)












Happy Halloween!

Hannah

I just had to post this picture because it brought a big smile to my face.
I love this little girl so much!

Transitions..

Well, today is the last day for Jae and Hannah at their current daycare. Bill and I decided to move the kids for several reasons: a) it turns out that we are in a different school district than where our current daycare is located and of course they won't bus Jae to Kindergarten next year and b) we did not want Jae to have two big changes next year (a new daycare PLUS Kindergarten). So we made the decision to pull the kids out this year so Jae could meet new friends in his new daycare that may be in his Kindergarten class next fall. Anything to make the transition easier. Although, I think it's worrying Bill and I more than it is Jae. He is pumped about his new school and the thought of turning 5 and going to a big kid school.

The new daycare is part of the same daycare family as his current one, just at a different location and in our school district. The new daycare is a lot bigger than his current school and seems a bit more regimented, but we will miss the small, close-knit group at his current daycare. It's actually a good time to change schools since many of his friends are moving up to Kindergarten anyway and will only be at the daycare for half day. It's just bittersweet, since he has been going to this daycare since he was 18 months old.

And poor Hannah, we really hate having to pull her out (because she loves her Maritza), but we know that she will adapt. It will be a hard month (Jae's transition to this daycare was awful for me. He cried everyday for a month when I dropped him off!) , but we feel the change will be good.

So today, the kids are having ice cream sundae's and cupcakes for their last day!

Until next time...

Summer Endings...

Have you noticed the sun setting earlier these past couple of days? Just another sign that summer is on its way out and fall is soon to arrive. I love fall, so I welcome this season with open arms!

But, back to summer. We've had a very busy summer, so I've been told. We didn't go anywhere, but it was still busy. Lots of little things here and there. However, I can't seem to tell you a darn thing that we did. It has buzzed by and somewhere between June and August it all became a blur. I know we spent a lot of time with family and stayed cool in our air conditioned house, Jae mastered his bike, we went to several birthday parties, Hannah blossomed before our eyes, Jae rode the MAX for the first time and LOVED IT, Jae was in T-ball class (and didn't love it so much), we attended the annual Brew Fest, Anna turned 30, Bill celebrated turning 34, Barb and Jake bought a house, and I just tried to stay afloat.

But the best thing about this summer, we learned we were going to have a nephew! It doesn't get any better than having little babies around. Can't wait for September to arrive.

Hope everyone had a wonderful summer...

Hannah at 15 months!

Hannah is 16 months now. It's amazing how quickly she went from crawling to walking. She is all over the place now and into everything. I want to say that she is more daring than Jae was at this age. She is a talker and jabbers all day. She still has her mood swings, but for the most part, she is a very happy little girl.

We went to the doctor and she got her vaccinations and my girl barely cried. She let out one cry and was fine after that! She must be like me and have a high tolerance for pain. LOL.

Hannah weighs 22 lbs 7oz and is 31-1/4" tall. The girl has a big head at 18.5".

Jae's new kicks!

Jae got new shoes for his T-ball class (and because he needed them). Bill was on a mission and came home with these pair of white/orange Nike shoes. We would prefer velcro, but the laces make the shoes look pretty cool.

Although when Jae first saw them, his reaction was "those look like girl shoes." In his defense, the room was a little dark and at first, even I thought they were pink!

Good job, Daddy!

A, B, C's

Jae has been learning his letters and he's quite good at them. I got him a dry erase sheet from Target ($1 bin) so he could practice without wasting tons of paper. He'll sit at the kitchen table and practice, although he wants to practice during breakfast and dinner too and not eat...I'm very excited about this, but he needs to eat as well..we need to work on this.

Ms. Patty (his teacher, not his mother) says that he needs to learn his lower case letters for when he enters the 4's class this summer! I can't believe he's one year away from Kindergarten! It's kind of freaking me out.

We are changing daycare centers in the fall. The one that Hannah and Jae are currently attending is not within our school district, so they can't bus Jae to and from elementary school.

Forks!

On Monday morning, I woke up and I looked out the window to see what the weather was going to be like. Much to my surprise, I see these white things sticking out of my yard and I think to myself "what the hell are those?" I look across the street to my neighbors house and sure enough, I see them there too. I look over to my right and see them at my next door neighbors house. I go outside to investigate and what do you know, FORKS! at least a couple dozen poked into my yard. I had to smile because it was pretty clever and whoever did it had A LOT of time on their hands! As I was driving down the street, I looked at all the houses and sure enough, forks were sticking out of their yards too.

Dang, if kids are already bored, imagine what the rest of summer will bring!

Lunch with jake

Wedding vows

Wedding Day

Patty has been gone since 9am doing bridesmaid things. I just finished getting dressed and will get shuttled to the church in a few. After the ceremony the wedding party (and spouses) will take a trolley from the church and end up at the reception.

Plane Troubles?

We waited 10 min while they checked front gear, leaving now

Waiting in Dallas

Patty & I made it to Dallas. We are in Chilis waiting for our connecting flight to Nebraska. I wish there was a better selection, at least they have beer.

Hannah & Dad

I used a sick day today and stayed home with a sleepy, cranky, & feverish Hannah. We had breakfast & then napped. Her fever started at 104 and went down about 2 degrees every 4 hours. After the nap I tried to get Hannah to help me install a new hard drive in our PC. She must have a short attention span with geeky stuff (like her mother) because she started crying halfway through the process (Patty never cries like that though). We took another short nap and then she helped me vacuum the downstairs before we went to Safeway to get some dinner items. She fell asleep on the way home but woke up when we got out of the car. We made some hot dog/cheese stuffed crescent rolls from the Kraft cookbook and while those were cooling she watched me finish installing our new 500GB hard drive that will store all our music/pictures/movies (our two 80GB drives were getting full). After the drive install, we tried the crescent rolls. She had about half and then appeared to be done. I started the process of making some mac n' cheese but you can probably guess what happened next, that's right another nap. While she was napping I setup the the backup software to save all our files off to our new 1TB external drive. Hannah from her first extended nap of the day (90 minutes) and had some juice and graham crackers. She seemed quite refreshed and was content while I marinated our chicken that we would be BBQ'ing later, made some jello for desert and shucked the corn. Finally, Patty and Jae got home. Hannah had a big smile on her face (but not as big as the one on my face).

Dozer Day!

It's Dozer Day 2009!

Aunty Stacey was gracious enough to get us tickets for Dozer Day in Vancouver. This is the first time we have gone to Dozer Day, so we did not know what to expect. It was better than I thought it would be and hopefully we will be able to go again next year!

Dozer Day took place in a rock quarry. They used very large dump trucks to cart people from..

Ok, this is hilarious..I actually fell asleep while writing this post and I thought I had saved it as a draft, but I guess I published it instead. ha!

Jae really enjoyed Dozer Day, although he did start getting grumpy towards the end of it. Hannah ended up falling asleep, I think it was the rocky motion in the stroller. Lots of little kids (mainly boys) running around.

I really need to get better about updating this blog!

More pics from Dozer Day!

Updates

My goodness. It's been a long time since I've posted any updates. Life has been fairly hectic and this has just pushed aside.

Let's see...

Hannah has been walking up a storm lately. She is more graceful with standing and walking, although sometime she looks like she's been nursing the bottle a little. =) Her comprehension is great as well. She understands quite a bit when we talk to her. All around, she is growing up to be a good little girl..but we need to work on the attachment thing a bit.

Jae is really enjoying being 4. He's doing so well with his spelling and reading. Like many 4 year olds, he's full of questions and always curious about everything.

A weekend in Omaha, yes, Omaha.

My good friend Danielle is getting married in May! I'm so excited for her. So of course every bride to be needs to have a bridal shower, so I made my way to Omaha for the weekend to celebrate with her.

Danielle's aunt's hosted the shower and it was wonderful. The food was Yum-O (just for you Danielle), the desserts were Yum-O, the hospitality was great, and the guests were fun and nice!

Since many of the bridesmaids had to travel to get to Omaha, we decided to have the bachelorette party the same day. We had dinner at the Melting Pot (the 3 hour dinner) and then headed out for some drinks..and possible dancing! We ended up a place called Naughty. This is a bar that is located right across the street from the reception hotel, so we thought it was our duty to try it out so we could report appropriately to all the guests. Needless to say, it was an entertaining evening.

There was WONDERFUL people watching to be had, we even got our own peep show! We had some drinks and kept it low key.

Here are some pictures from the shower if you're interested.

Bill and I are going to Omaha in May for the wedding, sans kids. Should be a good time.

until next time.

Jae is 4!

Happy Birthday to Jae! Our little man is 4!

We had his party at Pump It Up and boy did the kids jump around. Bill and I were really happy that Jae had a memorable 4th birthday because on his 2nd birthday he got sick and we had to cancel and his 3rd birthday was just family because little sister Hannah was only three weeks old and mama couldn't handle a party!


Jae is really into fire trucks, well, pretty much any kind of truck, but he wanted his birthday to have a Fire Truck theme. So, here it is. The local grocery store did an excellent job on his cake!

Needless to say, the kids all burned off lots of energy and Jae received a lot of toys!

For more pictures, check out Jae's 4th Birthday pics!

Love,
Patty, Bill, Jae, and Hannah

Hannah's First Birthday!

Hannah is officially 1 year old! Where has the time gone?

Bill and I can't believe that it's already been a year since our beautiful girl was born. It really seems like just yesterday she was born and she was this tiny (ok, maybe not that tiny) bundle of joy. It's been a great year having Hannah in our lives.

Hannah was sick on her birthday so she wasn't the party animal I was hoping she would be. Instead, she was rather clingy and ended up sleeping with grandpa on a chair. Hannah celebrated her birthday with all of her friends and we played games and just hung out.

Her birthday theme was Care Bears (we call her Hannah Bear all the time). We had a traditional Korean first birthday where she wore the traditional Korean dress (hanbok) and we had a table full of rice cakes, fruit, and candy. It was a wonderful day to celebrate her first year.

For more pics, please check out the album. Hannah's 1st Birthday!

Bye Bye Wings..

On February 4, 2009, Hannah got her first haircut! Bill and I wanted to wait until she was 1 and since that is quickly approaching, we thought the time was right. Not to mention that she's got pictures coming up and I wanted a "do" that wasn't pigtails.

Hannah was a trooper in the little yellow car as the lady was cutting her hair. Leading up to this day, I had envisioned a little girl crying at the top of her lungs and lunging towards me to get out of her chair, but I got none of that. Obviously, my first experience with Jae was not as smooth as with Hannah, hence the apprehension I had going into this experience! I just have to say that Hannah has proven to be the opposite in many things from Jae. She sat so still and was so cooperative while they were cutting her hair, I was wondering who's child was sitting in the chair.

For those of you who have seen Miss Hannah, you know that she's got these "wings" growing at the back of her head. They two long pieces of hair that have grown faster than the rest of her hair. Well, we had those cut and now she's got a cut bob cut. We think it's cute. We think she likes it too.

Here are some pics..

A January of birthdays!

January is a big month for birthday's for my side of the family. Jinny's b-day is on the 10th, my brother's birthday is on the 24th, and Anthony and Catherine's b-day is on the 26th!

We went to Olympia last weekend and celebrated all four b-days! It's nice that we can celebrate together. My brother is going to be 40 next year! What??

We been enjoying these trips more and mores b/c as Jae gets older, he really enjoys playing with his cousins, and boy do they play!

We bought it, now what??

Happy New Year! What's your resolution for 2009? Well, since you asked, it's to get in shape. Who's isn't in the month of January?

So, with much coercion from my mother, we bought an exercise machine, a Schwinn Fitness 431 Elliptical to be exact. We bought it in the beginning of January and so far, I've used it once. ONCE! Bill has used it twice. I/we can give you all the excuses in the book about why I/we haven't been on it more, but it's mainly because I'm/we are tired. And then you're probably saying "well, if you used the elliptical, you wouldn't be so tired, yadda, yadda yadda" much easier said than done. After a full day of work, dinner, getting two kids ready for bed and then cleaning up the mess from dinner, relaxation time is around 9:30-10pm. Who wants to exercise then? I'd much rather be sleeping or reading or doing something crafty, too bad all of those things don't really help you lose weight. LOL.

Well, we will defy the odds and not be a fairweather exerciser just because it's the New Year. We will overcome the stereotype and use our elliptical as if we were a customer at Circuit City during their closeout sale! Hopefully by summer we will be in bathing suit shape..HA!

I've attached some images of our new best friend. LOL!




















Bill working hard to put this together.















The finished product!

Jae Quote of the Day!

When I was in Daddy's belly, I growed into a baby. LOL!

Jae Quote of the Day

... I'm going to cuddle with my fire truck ...

Danish pancakes (Ebelskivers)

Ebleskiver's are traditional Danish pancakes. They are made in a special pan called a monk's pan (see adjacent image).

For Christmas, Barb and Jake gave me an Ebelskiver maker. It all came about because Barb was looking for a gift for someone else and asked to get mine and Stacey's opinion about it. I told her that I would want one because it just looked cool and who doesn't like pastries with fillings inside?

So when I opened up my gift, surprise, it was the Ebelskiver maker!!! Everyone thought that it was an egg poacher, but no, it's supposed to make yummy breakfast pancakes with filling or nothing at all. I thought this would be great for Jae to a) help make since it's pretty much just pancake batter, b) insert the middle filling, c) have fun eating! Well, he didn't really do any of these three, this time.

With all things, practice makes perfect. Bill and I attempted to make the recipe that came with the pan and there was enough for about a couple dozen. We forgot to cut the recipe in half or quarters, so we had a whole big bowl of batter. Since it was our first time, we limited the help that we would need from Chef Jae, which didn't really make him happy. We just needed to focus and make sure we were doing it right. We followed the instructions that came with the pan and it started out really well, but once we put the filling in, that's when it started to fall apart.

For our first attempt, we tried chocolate, jam, and peanut butter. The chocolate was good, but we didn't have any morsels in the house, so we ended up using some dove chocolate pieces. It was dark chocolate and didn't melt that well and we ended up burning one side b/c we hadn't quite mastered the temperature. The jam was a disaster. We put the filling in and added more batter on top and then flipped it over when it was ready, but the jam had gotten too hot and oozed out of the other side, so it made a mess in the pan and started burning. The peanut butter just never warmed up. So needless to say, we didn't really have ourselves an Ebelskiver breakfast.

We decided to stop making these after the second batch and instead made regular pancakes with the batter. Luckily we had some m&m's in the house, so Jae got pancakes with m&m's in them.

We will try making these again until we have perfected them! Wish us luck.



This is what they look like.

Hannah update!

Hannah is now 10.5 months and she is all over the place. She has been crawling since November and now just gets herself around without any problem, and boy is she fast! She's got legs and arms of steel and lifts herself onto anything that can hold her weight.

Last week she was in the kitchen hanging onto a chair and she pushed it from the middle of the kitchen to the table! It was so amazing to see. We were wondering if she would be walking by her birthday, and by the looks of what happened today, she just might be!

Her two bottom teeth have come in and she is now cutting the top right tooth. This better explain the miss crankypants mood that she's been in lately!

For the past couple of months she has gotten into the habit of waking up in the middle of the night. Sometimes it's really easy to put her back to sleep, but other nights she just needs to be cuddled and/or fed and as much as I love to cuddle, it just breaks the flow of sleeping..you know what I mean? LOL. I just remember that Jae was a really good sleeper (even now, once he's out, a marching band could come through the house and he would sleep through it).

But Hannah is doing great and growing like a weed!

Happy New Year!!

We hope that everyone had a safe and wonderful New Years!! I say this every year, but I can't believe that another year has ended. Time really does fly by, especially when you've got kids!

We had Stacey, Barb, and our friends the Ly's over for New Years Eve. It was a lowkey evening and we just ate and talked and played some games. We watched the ball drop in NYC and the Ly's left for the evening since they had their two little ones with them. The rest of us were fighting to stay awake. I'm usually a night owl, but for some reason, my eyes were becoming very droopy that evening. I was surprised that Jae stayed up until midnight (sidenote: Jae has never stayed up this late before, but since the new year only happens once a year, we decided that it would be ok), but he was moving around and full of energy. He liked telling us everytime the fireworks would go off and at midnight, he opened the door and yelled to the world "Happy New Year" (of course with the help of his aunties). And as soon as everyone was out the door, we locked our doors, turned off our lights and became pumpkins. Hannah was already asleep, so the three of us crawled into the bed and drifted off to sleep..only to be woken up by Hannah around 3am. Luckily she let us sleep in until 8am.

We invited Barb and Stacey over on New Years day for rice cake soup (duk guk) a traditional soup that is eaten on new years day. It was pretty good, but made me miss the days when my mom would make this for my brother and I.

Already I am thinking about what the year will bring. Although 2009 means that we will become a year older (and wiser), it also brings new milestones and memories to cherish for us. Some big events for us in 2009 are:
-Hannah will be turning 1 in February. A big bash will be planned.
-Jae will be turning 4 in March and will be 1 year away from kindergarten (the thought freaks me out)!!
-Bill and I will celebrate 6 years of marriage in April!
-I will be a bridesmaid in my dear friend Danielle's wedding in May!

Resolutions
Bill and I have the typical resolution this year, to be healthy! We struggled a bit in 2008 to keep healthy, but we are focused and ready to start anew in 2009. Wish us luck!

We hope everyone has a wonderful 2009!

An Im Christmas!

This was Christmas #2. We loaded up the car and drove to Olympia to have a second Christmas with my parents; brother and SIL, Jinny; and the twins, Anthony and Catherine.

The best part about getting together is watching Jae play with his cousins. It always takes a little bit for everyone to get past their shyness, but once that happens, it's chaos! Just picture three, three year olds running around and up and down the stairs and then you add Christmas toys on top of that and you've got a madhouse (in a good way)!

We ate lots of good food (korean and american) and left the parents with a car full of food (Bill had to take some pictures of what we were bringing back with us, he was a bit overwhelmed).











Here is a link to more pictures. Click or cut and paste into your browser. http://picasaweb.google.com/patty.grunwald/ChristmasWithGrunwaldsAndIms?feat=email#