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#