12 Days

Happy New Year, everyone! 2013 is here which means we leave in TWELVE days to start our new life in SoKo. Twelve days, y'all. My brain is still rejecting the whole thing. I can't process the impending changes! It doesn't help that I'm coming down from a fun, week-long Christmas visit with my parents. Its so great seeing them with the boys, playing, hugging and laughing. I feel sorry for all of them that we can't get together on a more regular basis. I wish I could get more excited about this move for Marc's sake, for the boys' and for my own sake. I am very content with our life here and now we have to change it all up! I kind of feel like I did as a kid when my mom made me practice piano. Practicing piano is a good, worthwhile, life-enhancing endeavor...but I just wanted to play outside with my friends. I already feel lonely!

I know the majority of the way I feel is my own attitude problem. What I should do is focus on the positive things and appreciate this opportunity for what it is and where it will take us, but doing that goes against my true nature, which, as everyone knows, is a hard thing to fight against. I'm not a sparkly, bright-eyed, positive thinker. My "way" is to have low expectations and then hope to be proven wrong. Nice, huh? It usually works out, but I've also learned enough from life that it's not always going to, so its best not to assume everything is going to be peachy. Low expectations means less chance for disappointment, right? I can't imagine loving it there or making any really great friends or feeling at home there. With so many unknowns its hard to imagine anything at all, which is quite unsettling. But every single person I've talked to who has been to Korea or knows someone who lived there has only wonderful things to say about it. It's clean, the people are wonderful, the food is cheap and amazing, we won't want to leave, it's beautiful, etc, etc. But until I know that for myself and experience it, I will feel apprehensive about the whole thing. It's been that way for everyone else but how do I know it will be that way for me? All I can really do right now is wonder, hope, TRY to think positively and try to settle these butterflies in my stomach. I hope I don't have to try too hard to make myself like it if I really don't. Guhhhh...I'm such a downer! Boo, me.


For now I'll try to focus on the fun Christmas (except for the flu part) we had with my parents. 

Giggling with Nonny

A totally Spider-Man Christmas for Toby

He's so proud of himself

Happy for Christmas dinner!

Sad the rest of us are in bed or the bathroom with the Xmas Flu of 2012

Marc has three more days of work here and then the packing/moving debacle begins. Thankfully, we don't have to do any heavy-lifting this time. We just have to pack our luggage and separate the items we want to have sent to us in a few weeks from the 
household items/car that will be shipped on a boat in several weeks. We'll stay in a hotel for a few nights, soak up a few more hours in the homeland, then get ready for a loooooong flight with the boys. After my last solo five-hour flight with the boys I made a mental note never to travel with Jonah again. That's not working out so well, but at least this time Marc will be with me and he'll have his own seat! That boy!

You don't want to be on a plane with this kid. Trust me.