2010 Year End Wrap-up

It's been an exciting year for the Malone Family. It started out with finding out that I was pregnant and is ending with a beautiful four month old baby, who is currently sleeping on my chest and drooling on my shoulder. Here's a look back at 2010:

January - David and I took a week-long trip to Taiwan to visit his old mission stomping grounds and completely missed the worst snowstorm Korea has had in 60 years. We visited lots of his old friends and explored Lukgang, Yuan-lin, Sun Moon Lake, and Taipei. David enjoyed eating all the Taiwanese food, but I had a rougher time on account of the little being growing inside of me.

February - We celebrated our birthdays with a big dinner party with our closest friends here in Korea and David bought me a sewing machine. I made it past my first trimester with no morning sickness (just slight nausea) and no vomiting and finally announced the good news to my family and friends. We went to the OB-GYN for the first time and saw tiny baby Zara (who, of course, we thought was a boy).

March - In anticipation of our baby's arrival, I started putting my sewing machine to good use and began work on a baby quilt. We visited Osan Air Force Base to enjoy Chili's (yes, that's a new-worthy event) and David went to Yonsei University for language training which helped him finally achieve a 3/3 on his DLPT. He's awesome like that.

April - We enjoyed the arrival of spring, cherry blossoms and fresh strawberries to Korea. I continued to grow my baby bump and worked on the baby quilt. Suyom got sick but with fluids and lots of rest, she made a full recovery. We had our 20-week check-up including an ultrasound to determine the baby's gender but the stubborn little thing decided she wants to keep us guessing by keeping her back to us, with her legs closed. The technician guessed it was a girl, but David and I refused to believe that our baby wasn't a boy. We didn't get a good look so why should we believe them? (Whoops.) My beloved Grandpa Hayman passes away on April 28th. I made the hard decision to not return home for his funeral (which ended up being a good decision though I would have loved to have been there with my family).

May - I went in for a round of three ultrasounds at a Korean hospital to get a better look at the baby's heart (all good there). Over Memorial Day weekend, David and I took a trip to Beijing, China. I climbed the Great Wall of China while six months pregnant and will probably be insanely proud of that fact until the day I die.

June - I give up all hope and patience with my baby quilt. It's still not done but it just needs to be bound. We celebrated our second anniversary by going out to an Indian restaurant in Itaewon and David was pulled over by the MPs (military police) on the way home for talking on his cell phone (which he wasn't) and he was let go with a "warning" (even though he didn't do anything wrong). David was also pulled to work at the front end which meant he worked a regular day job (7:30-4pm) at Yongsan (instead of working an hour south) and we got to see a lot more of each other which was lovely.

July - Celebrated Fourth of July with our friends, the Cottrells. At the beginning of the month, one of the doctors erroneously diagonosed me with pre-eclampsia which meant I had to pee in a jug and collect all my urine for a 24 hour period (twice). By the end of the month, they had me coming into the WICU twice a week for NSTs and blood pressure readings which consistently showed that everything was fine with the baby and that my blood pressure was normal. I visited the Seoul Zoo. I taught my last few English classes. David kept working at the front end, but went down to Pangyo twice a week.

August - Being large with child, I basically spend the whole month camped out on the couch, waiting for a baby to be born and continue to drag myself to the hospital twice a week. Zara finally makes her appearance on the 31st after 13 hours of labor! (Only 4 of that was active labor, though.)

September - Newborn fog time. Breastfed, burbed, and changed diapers. Repeated as necessary.

October - My parents come to Korea to visit us and met their newest granddaughter (#5 of 6 grandbabies). David blessed Zara at church on the 17th. We visited Busan, Chinhae, Jikjisa, and Gyeongju and grew to love Korea a little more. David started working down at Pangyo full-time again and I miss having him come home for lunch. I started tutoring again for a few hours a week. Zara celebrated her first Halloween and we attended our ward Halloween party as James, Lily and Harriet Potter.

November - Our friend Kimberly came to visit us and we explored more of Seoul together. Zara continued to grow and amaze us. We celebrated a very thankful Thanksgiving with our friends the Bartletts and the Cottrells.

December - A month of ups and downs, but we love our crazy baby and are amazed at how quickly she's growing and learning. (She even learned how to roll over this month.) We had a great Christmas together as a little family and look forward to what 2011 will bring us.

I learned a lot this year, about myself and the world around me and about other people. I'm amazed at how much growing I can and still need to do. I read a lot of great books, and changed a lot of my opinions, and became more involved in the happenings of the world around me. I expanded my talents and found new things to love. I continued to work on my cooking and baking, learned a lot of new techniques and found a lot of great recipes and hope to continue to expand into new cuisines. We made an effort to eat healthier and I found a new desire to make a lot of things from scratch, to can foods, and to garden. (Although our little potted garden was pitiful. I hope I'll have more success next year.) I really enjoyed taking up sewing again and have so many projects I'd like to do. I find sewing to be a fun "for me" hobby and helps me have something to look forward to outside of my daily mom and housewifely duties. And of course, the biggest change was that I became a mother which I'm not too humble to admit that I'm really good at, and I love it more than I thought I would. I thought I'd still feel a great desire to work and have a career and I was really worried about being defined a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom). Those desires aren't completely gone (someday I'll be a museum curator, I will!), but right now, I can't imagine having a better job than raising Zara and I just couldn't bear the thought of having to leave my daugther with someone else while I went to work. I'm just so thankful that David works so hard so that I have the opportunity to be at home with the baby.

David continues to amaze me with his hard work, determination, and intelligence. He really does work so hard and I'm so proud of him. On top of working an insane job with demanding hours (thanks North Korea), he's managed to keep his 4.0 GPA and is so, so close to finishing his B.A. in accounting. (He hopes to finish it up by June, just in time for him to get out of the Navy.) I think he's learned more about where his talents lie and has finally found the path and career he'd like to pursue. The Navy has been very good to him and us, for helping him to achieve his goals and pay for his education, but we're both really looking forward to his time being up and for having more control over our lives.

2011 holds a lot of unknowns right now, but I'm pretty confident that everything will work out that way it's supposed to. I'm looking forward to having another wonderful year which will hopefully include a visit to Japan, our return to America, and the next chapter of our lives as civilians. 2010, I will always remember you as a spectacular year, full of waves of joy and pools of sorrow (to quote John Lennon) but ultimately, you brought us the greatest gift of joy anyone can have: a little girl with her Daddy's crazy hair and her Mommy's dimples. It sure is going to be hard to top that.

Holiday Baking

I was quite pleased with my holiday baking this year. (And the four pounds of butter I used.) I made a lot of delicious treats and there's nothing I love better than sharing them with all our friends each year. But I think that next year, I'll pick only 2 or 3 items to make and give everyone a lot more of each item. Most people only got 1-3 of each cookie and I definitely preferred some over others. Plus, I think some of my baking suffered because I made so many different types of cookies. Better to focus on a few and make them really awesome next time.

For starters, I made my favorite chocolate chip cookies with toffee and oatmeal. I covered a few of them with leftover chocolate from the Oreo truffles.
Then came angel thumbprint cookies. My mom and I used to make these every year for Christmas. I hadn't made these in awhile, so I decided to give them another go. (And filled them with my homemade strawberry and peach jam.) Sadly, I wasn't as impressed with these as I used to be. Probably because they didn't have any chocolate in them....

I also made Oreo truffles which are seriously one of the easiest things in the world to make. They look all fancy and nice and they certainly don't taste like Oreos but they are delicious. All you have to do take one package of Oreo cookies (minus a few cookies), crumbify them in a food processor (yes, I totally made that word up) and mix with one package of softened cream cheese. You roll them in balls and then cover with some melted chocolate.

So awesome. And of course, I had to made sugar cookies. It's the one thing I just have to make every Christmas. And every Christmas, I contemplate not making them because they are rather time consuming and I like other cookies better. But every year after making them, I eat like 12 and remember why I love sugar cookies so much. This is a great recipe which I got by way of my friend Kara, who in turn stole them from our friend Tessa. I love how recipes get passed and exchanged among friends. And now, every time I make these sugar cookies, I think of Tessa and the time we baked a peach and blueberry pie together in her tiny kitchen in San Francisco and I start to miss her and all my old friends so much that I have to eat 10 more cookies to stop feeling so depressed.

I also made two types of fudge. I made hazelnut chocolate fudge from a recipe my sister sent me but I really wasn't that impressed with it. So I made a second batch (the kind I normally make) from the recipe on the back of the marshmellow fluff jar. Last, I made a new type of cookie: 1785 Inn's Ten Layer Cookies. They were divine. But it's a good thing I only made one pan because they are heart-attack-inducing. Graham cracker crust. Dark chocolate chips. Milk chocolate chips. Butterscotch chips. Toffee chips. Coconut. Sweet and condensed milk. Yup. They'll kill ya. But oh, they were good.

Here's the plates all assembled. I hope that my friends here in Korea that received them enjoyed them. I love to bake and I love sharing all my favorite holiday goodies with my dear friends. It's my way to say thank you for their friendship. I've done it every year since I was a little girl helping my mom with her Christmas plates and it's something I hope to continue to do with my kids. Because Christmas is just not Christmas without Christmas cookies.

If anyone would like any of the recipes I didn't post, let me know and I'll share them. And if you've got some good recipes you love, please share! I'm always on the look-out for new cookie recipes.

Year of the Tiger

Holy cow....the new year is upon us. Of course, here in Korea, the lunar new year is celebrated more than the calendar new year. When we were in China, a woman reminded us that Zara (as yet unborn at that point) would be born in the year of the tiger. She even gave us a little stuffed tiger when we purchased a fan from her. I was very excited about that since anyone who knows me knows that I love cats of all shapes and sizes and it seemed appropriate that one of my children should be a tiger. (One should also be a monkey too which means I'll have to have a baby in 2016. Huh. It's weird to think that far ahead.) Anyway, when we were in Insadong last, I picked up this scroll of a tiger to cemmemorate Zara's zodiac sign.

It's now hanging in her nursery.

Being curious, I looked up the common character traits of tigers. These are the parts that most interested me (taken from a variety of sources) :

"Travel is very therapeutic for Year of the Tiger people. They appreciate time spent at home and always try to create an open, bright and somewhat colorful atmosphere, but travel reinvigorates them. They are more likely to choose an action-packed destination for vacation rather than spending a day reading on the beach.

One of the most dynamic signs in the Chinese zodiac, Tigers are by turns fascinating, commanding, and exasperating. They are patient but short-tempered, calm but rebellious, petty but noble, fearsome but affectionate, free spirits but fiercely territorial. What makes them magnetic and commanding figures is the absolute loyalty and affection they show for those they love. With a natural air of authority, Tigers easily earn the respect and admiration of those who love them in return. While domesticated Tigers are quite happy among familiar surroundings, they are just as apt to fly off on an adventure at a moment's notice. Unpredictable and emotional, they can become quite fearless when standing up for themselves or others, and often hold definitive views on how to right the wrongs of society.

The female tiger is a friendly, outgoing sort but with a streak of ambition that is hard to miss. She is a born leader, brave and strong. She enjoys expensive, fashionable clothing and takes pride in her appearance.

People born in the year of the tiger are tolerant, staunch, valiant, and respected. In their middle age, their fate may be uneven, but afterwards will enjoy a bright prospect. Their shortcoming is to project themselves before others. But most women under the tiger sign are intelligent, faithful and virtuous."

I love that last line, especially because at Zara's blessing, David specifically blessed Zara with a keen mind and intellect, integrity, honesty and that she would be a woman of virture and a good example to those around her.

I've said it many times, but I just can't wait to see Zara's personality take form and to watch her grow and learn. I'm so anxious to get to know her. I already know some things about her but there's so much that's still a mystery. But it sure sounds that with a tiger daughter, I'll never be bored.

Christmas 2010!

It's been a long time since I've felt that same feeling of wonder, excitement, and anticipation that I used to feel as a kid during Christmas. I really do miss that feeling. The last three Christmases have been hard for me since I've spent them so far away from home and family. I definitely think there's Christmas magic at my parent's house since my Mom goes all out with the decorating. But I think we actually captured some of that old feeling of Christmas this year, especially since we have Zara now. It was so much fun to watch Zara open her presents and I can't wait until she gets older and understands more about Christmas and Santa Claus and presents. But David and I also really tried hard to find ways to help others this Christmas season and I really do think that that made a huge difference. It's amazing how serving and helping others can really help create that feeling of Christmas love and spirit.

Thankfully, David had both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off from work. (He had to work both days last year which made for a very unhappy Liz.) Zara and I both had colds (though thankfully not bad ones) but we're both on the mend now.

I was in a bit of a funk on Christmas Eve. I don't know why. I think it was a combination of being sick, away from family (again), and missing home. We went out to deliver the rest of the Christmas cookie plates I had made (more on those later) in the afternoon and checked the mail, hoping that the rest of our Christmas presents had arrived (they hadn't, even though we had ordered them in plenty of time). It was absolutely frigid outside so David left Zara and I warm in our home while he went to pick up our pizza. In grand Hayman tradition, we had pizza for Christmas Eve dinner. Last year we payed an exorbitant fee for Papa John's pizza but this year, we decided to go with a cheap Korean option, Pizza School. Their pizzas are between 5,000 - 8,000 won apiece and they've got.....rather interesting pizzas. And since they are so cheap, we decided to try a bunch.

We bought four pizzas. We got a regular pepperoni pizza and a sweet potato pizza. That one was interesting, especially since they put chunks of sweet potato on it drizzle it with a honey mustard sauce. I didn't like it at first, but it kind of grew on me over time.

We also got a bulgogi pizza which was pretty good (though I would have liked more bulgogi)....

...and the "carbone" pizza. Another strange concotion. This one has an alfredo sauce with spaghetti and ham. So strange and yet strangely good.

After dinner, we watched It's a Wonderful Life which I had never seen before. Crazy, right? Then David read A Night Before Christmas (both of which I bought him this year) and then we went to bed, expecting to wake up early the next morning.

Zara is unsure of what's going on. This face totally makes me laugh.

Christmas morning found Zara bright and happy.

We woke up around 8am on Christmas morning and took showers and got ready to talk to David's family via Skype at 9am. David's family opens all their gifts on Christmas Eve (blasphemy!) and so we watched them open their gifts and we opened the gifts that they had sent us.



Here's Zara opening up her first gift from David's parents. I was surprised that she was actually able to open gifts but she definitely liked the wrapping paper more than the gift inside.

After talking to David's family, we opened up the rest of our gifts. Zara got this stuffed monkey, a doll, a set of blocks, and several sets of books (Dr. Suess and "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" series) and clothes. I bought David clothes and a few games and movies and David bought me a new blender, a beautiful blue Kitchenaid 5-speed. It's glorious. We also received several movies and games.
I then made scones for breakfast, which we always ate on Christmas morning growing up. (Ignore the few burned ones. I've never actually made scones myself before and I got the oil too hot.) After breakfast I talked to my sister and my niece and nephews on Skype.

Zara then preceded to take a 3 hour nap (a rarity) while David and I played games the rest of the day. We played Uno, Skip-bo, Trivial Pursuit, and Minotaurus, a Lego game which David got from his sister. It was actually a really fun game. We ate pizza for lunch, and had pot roast for dinner and played games the rest of the time. It was a great, relaxing day and David and I greatly enjoyed ourselves. I am really looking forward to next year, when we'll be back in America and Zara will be old enough to play with her toys and be excited to open her presents. I really do love Christmastime.

I hope everyone else had a very merry Christmas!

Snow Day!

This is what I woke up to this morning.

I went to bed around 11pm last night with no snow on the ground. At 3am, a huge crack of thunder woke me up and the snow was thick on the ground and still coming down. I took this photo at 8am.

It's a good thing I don't have anywhere to go today. I just drank a nice cup of hot chocolate and now Zara and I are going to cuddle close and watch some movies, read a book, and maybe even clean a little. And I might just bundle her up and take her outside to experience her first winter snow. Otherwise, I'm just going to stay warm inside and look at the beauty of the outside world from the inside. Sounds like a great snow day to me.

Seoul Lantern Festival

Last month, our friend Kimberly came for a visit. She and David were good friends at DLI (she's a Chinese linguist) and she also lived in Hawaii while we were there. She just got out of the Navy and decided to come visit us before she heads to Massachusetts to start school. We're so glad she came. She was a great house guest and we just love showing off our baby to all our friends.

The last full day that Kimberly was here we went to the Korean Folk Village (which I've written about before) during the day and then to the Seoul Lantern Festival that night. I guess they do this every year, but this year they brought out the lanterns earlier than usual in honor of the G20 Summit which was held here in Seoul.
It was simply amazing. I'm so glad we went. (Especially since it was one of the last nights it was open.)
The lanterns, all made of paper, were breathtaking all lit up. (I wonder how they protect them if it rains.) Some were quite intricate and others were just amusing.

The Cheonggye Stream runs through much of downtown Seoul. It used to be boarded up and was the site of an elevated highway but when Lee Myung-bak (Korea's current President) was mayor of Seoul, he had the highway torn down and the river area was re-vitalized. Now, the river has several bridges and walk-ways spanning it on all sides and is a beautiful and pleasant place to visit.

Here's a guardian, typical of what you see in most Buddhist temples.

And here's the temple with giant koi. Seriously, that fish is just as big as the building.

And in honor of the G20 Summit, they had lanterns representing countries from around the world. Like the Christ statue in Brazil.

And Big Ben.

And Lady Liberty herself.

The lanterns stretched down several blocks. There were so many more than I was expecting.


And there were several which looked like many of the things we'd seen at the Folk Village earlier that day like water wheels and dancers and a traditional wedding party.

Lotus flowers are always fashionable in Asia.

And star-crossed lovers, apparently.

This was the coolest lantern. Koreans are insanely proud Yi Soon-Shin's turtle ships. You see replicas of these supposedly impregnable ships everywhere you go in Korea. The sails on this lantern moved up and down, the oars rowed from side to side and the cannons spurted fire. Of course, my camera didn't really capture all of that.

And tigers, of course. I think they had all the animals from the zodiac signs, but I like the tigers best. (Even though I'm a dog.) Zara was born in the year of the tiger, after all. :-)

After walking along the river to the end of the exhibit, we then walked to Insadong, a long street which is famous for its authentic Korean crafts like celadon pottery, scrolls, calligraphy, and fans. It's become one of my favorite places in Seoul. Plus, we found an absolutely delicious Chinese restaurant above one of the shops there. I can't wait to eat there again. Their sweet and sour pork was the best I've ever had. I only wish they delivered to our house, but I think we're a little outside their typical delivery range. Pity. I could really go for some Chinese food right now.

O Christmas Tree

Putting up the Christmas tree after Thanksgiving is one of my favorite things to do in order to usher in the feeling and spirit of Christmas. Of course I'd much prefer to have a real tree but our fake one has served us well through these last three Christmases. Before we left Hawaii, I bought a ton of Christmas ornaments at Wal-Mart so we could continue to decorate our tree in many different colors and ways. Our first Christmas together, we decorated our tree in red and silver. Last year, we chose purple. And this year.....
....well, this year we went patriotic. Red, blue, and silver. David and I have been missing home quite a bit these last few months.

My mother started collecting ornaments from all the places we visited, and it's a tradition that David and I have also adopted. It's a great way to commemorate all the places we've visited and to bring home a memento from each country or city without having to resort to some tacky little knick-knack. Of course, some places we've visited haven't had ornaments so we've had to improvise with some. I wrote little blurbs about when and where we purchased each ornament, so when we unwrap them to put them on the tree, we read the story and reminisce about all our many wonderful adventures together. Here are a few of my favorites (sorry, some of these aren't great photos):

Teddy bear from the National Museum of American History. We have several ornaments from my days in D.C. but I had to buy one to represent my tenure at the Smithsonian.

George Washington's Windsor chair from Mt. Vernon. For one of my projects in grad school (a museum exhibition for my public history class), I created an exhibit all about Windsor chairs, one of the most ubitiquous and longest lasting chair designs in history. (You see them everywhere. They're still manufactured today.) I love Windor chairs and so I had to buy this ornament to proclaim my devotion.

Jade carving from China. Not surprisingly, we couldn't find a proper Christmas ornament in China. So David and I bought this jade piece as a subsitute ornament. It's one of our more expensive ornaments. :-)

The white egg-shaped ceramic ornament was purchased at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, America's premier museum of decorative arts and Dream Job #2 (#1 being the Smithsonian, of course). The gold one was purchased at a Buddhist temple in Taiwan. Normally, patrons buy the trinket as a sort of prayer for themselves or someone else. They write the name of person on it and then hang it somewhere on the temple grounds. David and I asked if we could buy one and take it home with us which the man selling them said we could, so now it's our Christmas ornament from Taiwan.

This ornament, from Shenandoah National Park (gorgeous place, by the way) was one of the first ornaments that David and I bought together, before we were officially engaged.

This is our makeshift Korean ornament from Seoul Tower. It's really supposed to be one of those decorations you stick on a window or something but it works just as well as an ornament.

Purchased in Georgia, naturally, at Stone Mountain. I consider the Confederate flag an emblem of America's past (and don't see it as a symbol of racism) and well, David's from the South. He still calls everyone else Yankees.

This is from Volcanoes National Park from the Big Island of Hawaii. We purchased this on our honeymoon.

And this adorable little sea otter is from Monterey, where David and I met. Of all the places I've lived, Monterey is one of my absolute favorites. I'd move back there in a heartbeat if we could actually afford it.

Zara is getting excited for her first Christmas. Here she is modeling her new Christmas dress and Christmas outfit.

Okay, so she really has no idea what Christmas is or when it's coming, but it's still fun nonetheless. I can't wait until she's a bit older and can really get excited for it. It's fun to carry on old family traditions (like eating pizza on Christmas Eve) and to create our own new ones.

Zara's First Thanksgiving

Yup, I'm way behind on my blogging. While I love the Christmas season, it does tend to take up a lot of your time what with the shopping and the baking and the general merriment. I wish I knew a better way to make it a more calming and spiritual holiday.

In any case, I'm not here to talk about Christmas, I'm here to talk about one of my other favorite holidays, Thanksgiving. Like last year, we celebrated our delicious meal with our friends the Bartletts and the Cottrells and hosted two sets of missionaries (all American) who were excited for American food. I love Thanksgiving. I love the food and the friends and family and the reminder that we need to be grateful for what we have been blessed with. I'm truly grateful this year for all the things I mentioned before in my gratitude posts and so much more. This has been a wonderful year for my little family.

Here are a bunch of photos from the day:

Homemade apple pie. The filling is still not where I'd like it to be, but the crust is awesome.

Pumpkin maple cheesecake.

Turkey. You know what's a good idea? To make sure that you've properly removed ALL the bags they stuff inside the body cavity. Because I kinda didn't do that this year. I thought I had, but apparently not. Still didn't ruin the deliciousness of the turkey, though. Just made me feel like an idiot.

Zara loves to hold onto her rattle.

Being held by our friend Spencer.

Zara is tired too after a big day of eating.



But she just doesn't want to let go of her rattle.

After our delicious meal, David and I went to the base movie theater to see Harry Potter because we're big, huge, Harry Potter-loving nerds. And Zara, being the awesome baby that she is, slept through the whole movie. So a great end to a great day and I can't wait for the last Harry Potter movie. It's going to be awesome.