Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Little Things
I (and many people I know) live in a self centered world. It's very "woe's me, woe's me". I watch the news and all I see is tragedy after tragedy happening to good people, honest people, innocent people. Babies, women, elderly, brave, the list goes on and on. How lucky are we to be born in a country where we don't have to fear for our lives. The vast majority of us are free to be what we choose, believe what we choose. I look at my precious boy, and I think of all the children around the world that don't know what it's like to be safe or to be loved by their mothers. To not have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. I thank God for my life. My wonderful husband, my perfect son, my selfless parents. How am I SO BLESSED?! Think about how your life is. Think about how a person on the other side of the world lives and how your life compares to theirs. Before you begin to gripe about how crappy your life is, think about the people that have REAL problems and thank your lucky stars that you are sitting where you are reading this blog entry... ok maybe not thankful to be reading this blog entry because it ain't all that :) Hug your loved ones, tell them you love them and thank them for how they've contributed to your life.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Baby, it's cold outside!
I was not expecting this. It is SO COLD outside! The low will be 29 degrees F tonight. There have been some predictions for snow flurries a little more inland. Of course we are on the coast so... no snow for us. That's fine with me! We have seen more than our fair share of snow in Maryland!
Oh a totally different note. Why must children wait until they have just been changed into a fresh diaper to make a number 2?
Oh a totally different note. Why must children wait until they have just been changed into a fresh diaper to make a number 2?
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Change and an update...
Well I have really been bad about upkeeping this blog... BAD. Lo siento mis amigos.
Here's an update:
WE'RE IN TEXAS! Christopher got his dream job and we are now residents of Corpus Christi, Texas. It's a lovely city with a lively heritage. The Mexican food is great, the best I've ever had. I had my first handmade flour tortilla and even made some of my own from scratch! I'm very sad that there are no Korean restaurants. NONE, but there are "Asian/Oriental" restaurants that boast a medley of Oriental cuisine, including Korean. I'm so desperate for good Korean food that I might go to Korean church just to get a good meal like Um-ma used to make.
We are adjusting everyday to our lives. It amazes me to think of how much our lives have changed in the few short years we've been a family. We started as two in love on an island, married, 9 months later had our beautiful perfect son, 3 months after that moved to Maryland, 1 year later Christopher is out of the military and a government contractor, 6 months after that we transition to a half-way cross country move to Texas. Now that we are here, it feels like we can breathe now. We can plant our roots in one spot to call our own. We are home. Finally.
Here's an update:
WE'RE IN TEXAS! Christopher got his dream job and we are now residents of Corpus Christi, Texas. It's a lovely city with a lively heritage. The Mexican food is great, the best I've ever had. I had my first handmade flour tortilla and even made some of my own from scratch! I'm very sad that there are no Korean restaurants. NONE, but there are "Asian/Oriental" restaurants that boast a medley of Oriental cuisine, including Korean. I'm so desperate for good Korean food that I might go to Korean church just to get a good meal like Um-ma used to make.
We are adjusting everyday to our lives. It amazes me to think of how much our lives have changed in the few short years we've been a family. We started as two in love on an island, married, 9 months later had our beautiful perfect son, 3 months after that moved to Maryland, 1 year later Christopher is out of the military and a government contractor, 6 months after that we transition to a half-way cross country move to Texas. Now that we are here, it feels like we can breathe now. We can plant our roots in one spot to call our own. We are home. Finally.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Word of the day is... RECYCLE! Do it for you and your children's children.
Take the time to look over these recycling facts. The numbers are surprising and will hopefully inspire you to start recycling. It won't hurt!
Aluminum Recycling Facts
A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can, in as little as 60 days. That's closed loop recycling at its finest!
Used aluminum beverage cans are the most recycled item in the U.S., but other types of aluminum, such as siding, gutters, car components, storm window frames, and lawn furniture can also be recycled.
Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.
More aluminum goes into beverage cans than any other product.
Because so many of them are recycled, aluminum cans account for less than 1% of the total U.S. waste stream, according to EPA estimates.
An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!
There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum can be recycled.
We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year.
At one time, aluminum was more valuable than gold!
A 60-watt light bulb can be run for over a day on the amount of energy saved by recycling 1 pound of steel. In one year in the United States, the recycling of steel saves enough energy to heat and light 18,000,000 homes!
Paper Recycling Facts
To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.
Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!
If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year.
If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery bags, you'd get about 700 of them. A busy supermarket could use all of them in under an hour! This means in one year, one supermarket can go through over 6 million paper bags! Imagine how many supermarkets there are just in the United States!!!
The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year!
The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.
Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person.
The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.
In 1993, U.S. paper recovery saved more than 90,000,000 cubic yards of landfill space.
Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution!
The 17 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.
The construction costs of a paper mill designed to use waste paper is 50 to 80% less than the cost of a mill using new pulp.
Plastic Recycling Facts
Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away!
Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year!
Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam coffee cups every year.
Glass Recycling Facts
Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!
The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours or a compact fluorescent bulb for 20 hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.
A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill.
Mining and transporting raw materials for glass produces about 385 pounds of waste for every ton of glass that is made. If recycled glass is substituted for half of the raw materials, the waste is cut by more than 80%.
Solid Waste and Landfills
About one-third of an average dump is made up of packaging material!
Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that can be composted.
The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year. This means that 5% of the world's people generate 40% of the world's waste.
The highest point in Hamilton County, Ohio (near Cincinnati) is "Mount Rumpke." It is actually a mountain of trash at the Rumpke sanitary landfill towering 1045 ft. above sea level.
The US population discards each year 16,000,000,000 diapers, 1,600,000,000 pens, 2,000,000,000 razor blades, 220,000,000 car tires, and enough aluminum to rebuild the US commercial air fleet four times over.
Out of every $10 spent buying things, $1 (10%) goes for packaging that is thrown away. Packaging represents about 65% of household trash.
On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill, and $65 to $75 to incinerate it.
Miscellaneous Recycling Facts
An estimated 80,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using enough aluminum foil to cover over 50 acres of space -- that's almost 40 football fields. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.
Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute!
A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
Motor oil never wears out, it just gets dirty. Oil can be recycled, re-refined and used again, reducing our reliance on imported oil.
On average, each one of us produces 4.4 pounds of solid waste each day. This adds up to almost a ton of trash per person, per year.
A typical family consumes 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers -- make sure they're recycled!
Aluminum Recycling Facts
A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can, in as little as 60 days. That's closed loop recycling at its finest!
Used aluminum beverage cans are the most recycled item in the U.S., but other types of aluminum, such as siding, gutters, car components, storm window frames, and lawn furniture can also be recycled.
Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.
More aluminum goes into beverage cans than any other product.
Because so many of them are recycled, aluminum cans account for less than 1% of the total U.S. waste stream, according to EPA estimates.
An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!
There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum can be recycled.
We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year.
At one time, aluminum was more valuable than gold!
A 60-watt light bulb can be run for over a day on the amount of energy saved by recycling 1 pound of steel. In one year in the United States, the recycling of steel saves enough energy to heat and light 18,000,000 homes!
Paper Recycling Facts
To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.
Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!
If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year.
If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery bags, you'd get about 700 of them. A busy supermarket could use all of them in under an hour! This means in one year, one supermarket can go through over 6 million paper bags! Imagine how many supermarkets there are just in the United States!!!
The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year!
The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.
Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person.
The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.
In 1993, U.S. paper recovery saved more than 90,000,000 cubic yards of landfill space.
Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution!
The 17 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.
The construction costs of a paper mill designed to use waste paper is 50 to 80% less than the cost of a mill using new pulp.
Plastic Recycling Facts
Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away!
Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year!
Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam coffee cups every year.
Glass Recycling Facts
Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!
The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours or a compact fluorescent bulb for 20 hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.
A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill.
Mining and transporting raw materials for glass produces about 385 pounds of waste for every ton of glass that is made. If recycled glass is substituted for half of the raw materials, the waste is cut by more than 80%.
Solid Waste and Landfills
About one-third of an average dump is made up of packaging material!
Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that can be composted.
The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year. This means that 5% of the world's people generate 40% of the world's waste.
The highest point in Hamilton County, Ohio (near Cincinnati) is "Mount Rumpke." It is actually a mountain of trash at the Rumpke sanitary landfill towering 1045 ft. above sea level.
The US population discards each year 16,000,000,000 diapers, 1,600,000,000 pens, 2,000,000,000 razor blades, 220,000,000 car tires, and enough aluminum to rebuild the US commercial air fleet four times over.
Out of every $10 spent buying things, $1 (10%) goes for packaging that is thrown away. Packaging represents about 65% of household trash.
On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill, and $65 to $75 to incinerate it.
Miscellaneous Recycling Facts
An estimated 80,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using enough aluminum foil to cover over 50 acres of space -- that's almost 40 football fields. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.
Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute!
A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
Motor oil never wears out, it just gets dirty. Oil can be recycled, re-refined and used again, reducing our reliance on imported oil.
On average, each one of us produces 4.4 pounds of solid waste each day. This adds up to almost a ton of trash per person, per year.
A typical family consumes 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers -- make sure they're recycled!
Monday, March 29, 2010
A few months later...
I'm not upholding my original promise of updating frequently. I'll do better... promise.
Here's what you've missed...
Hubs is no longer a military man and that's a good thing. He is the strong and confident man I fell in love with despite obstacles chucked in his path. He makes it work.
Barrett is a lively and thriving 22 month old that surprises me and makes me laugh out loud everyday. He shows me that there are NO boundaries to my love for him. It is all consuming, and there is nothing he could do to change that.
I am adjusting to my role as Mom and Wife, and I get a little better at it everyday. It's odd to me that I am beginning to find joy in a sparkling kitchen, the way the bathtub shines after a good scrubbing or watching my boys scarf down a meal that I made from scratch. This same joy I felt for completing projects at my pre-mommy job. Ok, not exactly the same, but along the same lines. You get what I mean... a sense of accomplishment.
We are eagerly awaiting spring and summer, Barrett's 2nd birthday party (you're all invited), and the future.
Wishing you all wonderful and blessed days!
Monday, October 26, 2009
What we've been up to...
Let the spoiling begin! Barrett's first ride. We need to get some 22s on that sucker.
The second best thing about visiting Savannah? Krispy Kreme.
Beef Carpaccio. It's raw beef. RAW... and it's oh so delicious. My good friend Christian and I went to a swanky restaurant in downtown Savannah and got this. Mmm.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Barrett's 1st Birthday (Dol)
On May 22nd 2008, our lives changed in ways we'd never imagine it could. God blessed us with our son, the joy and love of our lives.
Here's the story of his first birthday...
I'm half Korean so Barrett is a quarter Korean. We want Barrett to experience as many things as he can with his mixed heritage, and one of those things is a Korean first birthday celebration called a 'dol' (pronounced: dole).
In olden Korean days, infants didn't often survive their first year of life, and the infant survival rate soared after their first birthday, so the first birthday was one of joy and celebration for the child (that and most Koreans will look for any excuse to party).
Probably the most popular tradition of a dol is when the child's future is predicted. A table is laid in front of the child with an array of items placed on it. Barrett's table had money, yarn, fruit, rice cakes, an alarm clock, and a pen. Here's the significance: whatever item he picks up predicts his future.
Money: He will be wealthy
Yarn: He will live a long life
Pen: He will be scholarly
Rice cakes: He will never be hungry
Fruit: He will have many children
Alarm clock: this isn't traditional because, well obviously they didn't have alarm clocks in the olden days, but my mother threw it on the table so if he chose it he would be an electrical engineer. Yeah, I don't know.
Barrett was placed in front of this table of goodies and he grabbed...... THE MONEY! Okay, technically, my mom threw it at him and he happened to smack it with his hand so all the guests agreed that he did indeed choose the money first. I'm not going to complain.
Here are some pics from that night.
My mother and I with Barrett in our Hanboks
The table with the goodies
Barrett, Christopher, me, and Trisha (my best good friend that came all the way from Hawaii to help Barrett celebrate his first birthday)
Korean food is so good
It was an informal party. Koreans typically sit on the floor.
Barrett was not interested in his birthday cake at all so one of his aunties kindly smashed some icing into his eye.
Barrett enjoying some dried squid while Grandma takes a shot of Soju
I told you Koreans like to party
Special thanks to Trisha for providing the pics.