The Ankle Verdict

Well it is not broken. I am really surprised.

Here is what happened...
I was taking Gavin to school this morning. I had just got to the bottem step put Abby down, stepped off the landing and my left ankle bnt outwards and I heard and felt POP! So I sat down for a few and felt ok so stood up and walked slowly towards school using the stroller to walk with. Took a few slow steps and was good to go then out of no where my ankle gave out and did it again. I felt a crunch like I have never felt before and instant shooting pain that made me yell some bad words very louding and I started to cry. Told Gavin to go on to school without me but he refused and I cried some more. Saw a lady that works with Court and asked her if she could let him know I was hurt. Got back to the bottom steps and had Gavin get Dee. She came down and stayed with the kids while I went up 4 floors to our apartment to get my phone and ID. Then walked back down the stairs. This took a good 20 minutes or so. Got to Dee's van and to the Clinic on Camp Walker. About a 10 minute drive away. Court called and then came. We finished up there and then back home.

Went back to Walker around 2 ish. Took the girls with me (Gavin was in school by this time) got my x-ray and waited and waited and waited. Finally saw the doctor and it is just a very wicked bad sprain. Going up four flights of stairs is sure tough and I have bruises under my arms from the crutches. I have to stay off my foot totally for 4 days and then start bearing some weight but still use the crutches.

Abby keeps trying to pull my crutches out from under me and keeps messing with my foot making me cry out in pain. Ouch! Of all the things to happen...

Hurt my ankle

Here is my ankle. Not the best shot but it was hard to do it myself. I will update later on how it happened. Not sure if it is broke or just a bad sprain. I am leaning towards sprain. I go back in for x-rays at 2 pm my time...so mignight Indiana time. It really really really hurts! :(

Squash Juice??

Last week Dee and I went out shopping for Abby's birthday. We went to the big Walmart here which is near the World Cup stadium. I was so proud of Dee because she drove there on her own!!

As we went into Walmart there was a drink machine selling Squash Orange Juice. Now I have to wonder...is it Orange Juice and they just translated it weird? You know...fresh squeezed=squashed. Or is it really squash juice. Yuck if it is!This picture above is of some sort of drinkable yogurt. Dee's kids love it so I bought some for Maddie and Abby. Maddie would not have anything to do with it but Abby enjoys it. It is not thick and creamy like the drinkable yogurt I have bought for the kids in the states. I tasted it and it tasted like pineapple juice.
Legos! Only I do not think these are "real Legos" and I know some people out there would never dream of buying any thing but the real deal. I however do not have issues with non-lego Legos so I will probably be getting this for Miss Madeline for Christmas.
I took this one in the parking garage. Does this rock or what?! I am not sure why they have a ladies only parking level. Maybe for safety? Anyway I saw plenty of men parking and walking inside...so guess it is like maternity parking back home. No one pays any attention.

Some other exciting news.....

I FOUND DONUTS!!!!
Yep there you are...these are the real deal too. Only they just put the glaze on one side but heck who cares at this point. I should have gotten a few more. They were sooooooo gooooood!

Here is Maddie modeling the latest fashion in home refridgerators. When I saw this I had no idea what it was but Dee knew and pointed it out.

doesn't this sexy fella just make you want to buy some Air Wick?

As we were leaving Walmart this was right out front. They are Hermit crabs in designer shells. After all you can dye your dogs ears orange/green/purple so why not have a designer shell for your pet hermit crab?

Here they are up close. You can also buy the shells separately and change your hermit crab to suit your moods and the seasons. Does anyone else find it odd that you can get a designer hermit crab shell for a pet...yet there are no cats to be found???

Dee asked how much and for the crab, shell and aquarium it was around $35. When asked what they eat the guy told us they don't eat and you just spray water on them. Maybe he was confused? So we asked again and he told us the same thing again. So I had to take a second look...maybe they were not real crabs...just wind up ones? Nope they were the real thing. So I came home and had to look just to make sure I was not crazy...that hermit crabs do indeed need to eat and found this site . HA! They do eat food...I just knew it! LOL

Last but not least is a picture of some coffee I bought. I cannot remember the flavor but it was goooood! And it was cold.

Abby's Birthday

Well my baby is now two years old. It is so hard to believe and the last two years have gone by sooo fast.

Thursday Abby got up and opened one present. She got a My First Disney Princess set complete with musical lipstick. It was a hit! I made a Chocolate Bundt cake with chocolate frosting and flower sprinkles to dress it up. I had hoped to find some Dora figures or something to put on top but no Dora here.
Our tradition for birthdays is the birthday girl/boy gets to pick what ever they want for dinner and Abby wanted pizza. After Dinner it was present time. There she is above. She really wanted to get her hands on the presents wrapped in the Dora paper.

Here she is opening a Dora video that I am already sick of watching...over and over and over and over....

Here Abby is sitting on her new potty seat. It is a Dora seat that goes on a regular toilet and let me tell you it is a HIT! Thanks Grandma and Papa for this great gift. She loves it and sat on it and would not get up. I should have saved this one for last because she was not interested in the rest of her gifts after seeing her new seat.

We finally convinced her to get back into it. Here Abby is opening another Disney my first princess toys. She got 3 in all. The PX does not have a lot of selection here. See the little people? I was ecstatic to see that it is a NEW SET!

The other kids get unbirthday presents as it is hard to watch someone open up gifts when you are little and I like to spoil my kids. Gavin got a bow and arrow set which is already destroyed. Maddie got a Cinderella playset which she loves and has played with almost continuously since getting it.

The birthday cake....I got the Boyd's Bear #2 off Ebay.

Yay we have candles this time!

Here she is blowing out the candles. She had a little bit of help but otherwise did a pretty good job on her own.

All in all it was a pretty good event. Not our usual celebration but still a pretty good one.

Our playground

Thad asked for some pictures of the playground near our apartment. It is between 4 or 5 of the buildings and during the week Dee and I take the kids there everyday after school for an hour or so. Abby Doodle loves to play at the play ground. I just let the kids run loose! Usually this is ok but lately there have been a lot of kids at the playground playing unsupervised and they get really rough. Abby and Maddie have both been hit in the head with foot balls causing me to go psycho mom on the kids.

Thursday some of the people that work at the apartment buildings were sweeping and left their broom while they took a break. A kids walked up to it and kicked it for no reason other than it was there. Of course his mom was not there to watch him as she should be. Kids under 12 are not to be unsupervised at the playground. So I yelled at him and made him put the broom back up. Then he was climbing into the cart and messing with the brooms and Gavin decided that would be fun to. I could feel psycho mom coming out again but I held her back and just did a little screaming to make them stop. I should really try and take my meds on a regular basis.

Also on Thursday was this one devil child. I think he must be 3 or 4 but he is sooo aggressive. Abby had her little riding toy out at the play ground and was not on it at the time. So this little boy got on it. This made Abby upset and she told him it was her bike. He opened his mouth tried to bite her and then head butted her and knocked her down. WTF? And of course the parents do nothing. So he was there again and kept hitting her with a car so we left.

Here is Maddie on the swings. She really likes to swing a lot.
Those are all the pictures I have of the actual playground but these are the buildings that surround it.

There is a picnic/BBQ area also. Dee and I sit there and have snack with the kids since you cannot have food at the playground. A rule no one else seems to pay attention to but us.

Shopping with Dee

I am really getting close to my neighbor. I really like her a lot. She is so nice and friendly. I feel very lucky to have met her! She has a van and usually will just drive between the three camps (George, Henry and Walker) but she said she would attempt to go to this toy store she had seen with her husband. She told me she would be willing to go out and leave post more often if she had someone to go with. There are a lot of stay at home mom's here and we talk to them almost daily when taking the boys to school but no one wants to go anywhere. I guess they would just rather stay at home?

Anyways..Friday we set out right about 9 am to find the Toy Store and to go to Walmart. She said there was a McDonald's in it. First we got some money and meant to go to the money changer to get won but totally forgot to do it. While driving towards where she thought the store was we passed Home Plus. This one is much closer than the one I have been to previously. Dee said it is new. So we decided what the heck and went.

I was really excited to see a bunch of toys! And Dee (unlike Court) loves to walk about and look at everything! WOOHOO found a shopping buddy at last! There were a lot of toys I wanted to buy for Abby's birthday (it's on the 20th) but since I had only 15,000 in won I could not really do much shopping. Here is what one of the floors looked like.

I am glad we have the commissary and PX to shop at but the good thing is if we didn't or if I wanted to I could still get some familiar brands. Here is some Pantene shampoo.

Here is Miss Maddie Patty. She really really wanted to go down the escalators and was waiting for me so she could go.

I know I have mentioned the escalators before but I must say...they are just AWESOME! The U.S. really needs to borrow this idea. You push your cart onto the escalator and on the wheels are magnets that stick you to the ramp and away you go. Here is a better view of the up and down escalators. Since space is so precious here all of the stores build up instead of out. So you can do all of your shopping on the various floors and then check out and go.

We went down the escalator to my favorite place to take pictures in a store...the grocery area. And since Dee likes to look we went up and down every single aisle! YAY! I am getting braver about taking pictures. So this time I got a lot of the various fish available. The smell can be really really overwhelming and I am an anti-fish person so sometimes it bothers me.

Here is Maddie looking at the live sea food for sale. This picture has clams. Not pictured were a shark, some funky fish that did not look so healthy and some sort of an eel.

I have no idea what those are in the picture above.

Octopus...or is that octopi?? I remember seeing the Amazing Race episode where they were in Seoul. One of the challenges was to eat live octopus that was chopped up and still wriggling about. I guess the suckers were sticking to their cheeks and tongue. Personally I prefer my food dead, cooked and not moving when I eat it. But to each his own eh?

More fish. These were kind of interesting looking because their tails were really long.

Here is Maddie near the same fish and not at all happy about being that close!

Here are some squid. It is really popular here. A lot of people eat it dried as a snack.

Various little fishies and other items for sale.

This guy was making patties to cook up. Not sure what kind of patties they were.

They had a small food area so I snapped a picture of this.

Here is Dee posing with some coffee in a little bag. I should have gotten some. I really really have been enjoying the various brands of iced coffee. They just don't serve it in large enough containers for me so I end up buying two.

Here we go onto some familiar brands. Kelloggs cereal above. Oreos below.

Above..I am pretty sure this is "Gogurt" which my girls love to eat.

This picture above is for Sun chips. Now I know we have Sun Chips back home. I am not sure if these are the same or not. Can you guess the brand of chips below?

We paid for our purchases. I ended up with some gum called Xylotol (or something like that) and some drinks for the girls. Headed out to the parking garage and bought 2 coffees for myself from this machine. They are iced coffee and soooooo good but really tiny. I have tried the Chilsung cider and it is ok. It is like sprite but 100 times sweeter.

We left Home Plus and made our way back to the Camp George area to change money for shopping. Dee tried to do an illegal U-turn and about 4 cars were honking at her so we drove on ahead for awhile and turned around and came back. I went to the money changer all by myself. Handed the guy $80 and got back around 82,000 won. We decided to go to the Dong-A shopping center. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But...it was lunch time and there was a ton of traffic. By the time we got in there we did not have much time to shop. The girls were hungry. We just went to the food court area. I am a little afraid to make Maddie try much in the way of Korean food since I have no idea what the ingredients are and she is allergic to so many things. I decided to get her some chips and a drink to last her until we got home. I got a bag of Bugles (finger chips as we call them) and some Apple juice. I bought 2 corn (?) dogs for myself and Abby. The breading was questionable so just pulled that off and offered the hot dog (?). No one ate them so I just tossed them and we had some chips.

I took this picture for Mom because it is chocolate. I have no idea if it tastes good or not but it was very pretty to look at.

Can you guess what these are?

Here is the last picture for this adventure. The sign in the parking garage.

After leaving the food court area Dee and I decided we had better head back home since we had to pick the boys up from school. I am glad we did since traffic was pretty heavy. We had enough time to go home and unload and head to the school.

Later that evening Dee came up and changed my finger nail polish.

Monday we are planning on trying to get to Walmart again and this time I have won to spend. I still have to get Abby's birthday gifts. So stay tuned for more pictures!