The True Friend Test and lots of high-quality (sarcasm) photos

• Yesterday someone woke me up entirely too early with a peppy, "Ma, can you wipe my bottom? I pewped." Naturally my knee-jerk reaction was to tell the poopy child that there is no time like the present to learn how to wipe your own crack, and then texted Aggie about how my kids are trying to kill me by way of waking up too early. Except her kids woke up throughout the night so we commiserated about our children's overall lack of sleep love and then I talked her into letting us kidnap them from Seoul for the day.
• Luckily, she agreed. We skedaddled on down to Seoul and then proceeded to sweat our mother-lovin' guts out while rearranging carseats in the airless parking garage. Because we are nothing if not safety-conscious. And packed like sardines.

• After a car picnic where Aggie somehow maneuvered over three rows of seats to dish out jelly sandwiches and veggie sticks while I was slinging her through traffic, we arrived at our favorite kids cafe in town. Trampolines, juice, sand box, toys- these kids were in HEAVEN.

They also never stopped moving.

• We headed back to our house with the bribe promise of watching a movie (which we secretly hoped would turn into a big group nap, but I'm sure you can guess that that didn't come to fruition). Aggie went to put Cece down for a nap and I swept up the ungodly amount of Cheerios that had accumulated on my floor. I threw the swept-up Cheerios in the trash and that's when I saw it. On the inside of my trash can lid were hundreds of maggots. MAGGOTS YOU GUYS. Aggie came out at this moment and I showed her. This is The True Friend Test- 
• Show your friend your maggot-infested trash can.
• Watch her reaction.
• Tell her that you are not a filthy person and that these were not there when you left your (overly warm and humid) house that morning.
• Let her tell you about that one time she had maggots in her trashcan. (She may or may not be making this entire story up to make you feel better. The validity of the story is not important, it's the thought that counts on this one.)
• See if she helps you drag your trashcan outside and leave it in the hallway for your husband to deal with later.
• Watch to see if her face turns into a horrified expression once you show her that OMG there is an entire colony behind the trashcan as well, I SWEAR TO YOU WE ARE NOT DIRTY PEOPLE AND WET FOOD DOESN'T EVEN GO IN THIS TRASHCAN WHAT IN THE FRICKETY FRICK?!
• Listen as she tells you that she enjoys the bleach smell that is now filling the kitchen since we decided that was the best way to kill anything and everything back there. 

Post-bleach splattering and some trash that never made it in the can.

• If your friend is in fact, still your friend after this experience, this person has passed The True Friend Test. Congratulations, these people are hard to find and you'll want to hold onto them for life.
• (The maggot situation has been rectified with a lot of disinfectant and lysol wipes, for those of you who are curious. Amen.)
• After the kids lost interest in the movie, we headed out to the playground where other people mostly pushed my kids on the swings and I held a sleeping baby Cece and someone actually asked if she was mine, so watch out Aggie, I might just keep her if she can get used to formula and living with a pack of wild (mostly) gingers.
• After my hair officially blew out into an afro thanks to the humidity, we packed up the clown car and headed back down to Seoul. Four out of the five kids konked out at one time or another for a nice 5pm nap. 

Can you guess who was the 1/5 that didn't nap?

• Some, ok kidding, ALL of them woke up angry. The eldest were occupied with ipads and the back-backseat babies were temporarily soothed with iphones. Cece was eventually soothed by riding like the locals. She just wants to assimilate, for cryin' out loud!
• After making it through some ridiculous rush hour traffic (the best laid plans....), we dropped our BFFs off at their house. We headed onto post to let Sam "water some flowers" (pee on a bush outside Burger King) and get dinner. The promise of a cookie kept the troops in line until I was close enough to our house to make believable threats. After the quickest bath in the history of ever, the kids went to bed and so did I. Steve came home around 10 and we talked in bed until we both crashed from exhaustion.

We kept their carseats too.

• Everyone woke up today wondering when we were leaving to go pick up our "frans" again. Oy. Why isn't Seoul closer?