Time-traveling

• So we went back in America! We arrived last Thursday. We got word on Tuesday that Steve's granddad's health was declining rapidly and so on Wednesday morning, we got leave approved, bought plane tickets, and on Thursday morning, we were leaving Seoul on a jet plane. It was (and still is) a surreal experience. And I am going to use this blog post to straighten out my thoughts on the matter. Welcome to muh brain.

• As soon as we heard that his granddad wasn't doing well, we had planned to wait it out a bit and see how he was doing after his initial five days in hospice. But I had this awful feeling in my stomach all day and couldn't stop thinking about him. Steve's mom emailed the next day letting us know that the sooner we could come, the better. My neighbor was great on Wednesday with taking the kids out to a kids' cafe so I could pack and clean my apartment (not sure why that felt like such an urgent priority, but it was one of the things I could control, so I did it). Then we flew out on Thursday.

• The kids stayed awake for the entire flight. Well, Molly took a two hour nap at the very end, and while I'm thankful that she slept at all (instead of, you know, screaming her face off the entire flight), two hours out of twelve kinda felt like a drop in the bucket. Sam was intent on not missing one minute of having a screen attached to the back of the seat in front of him and did not so much as blink for the first (12 hour) flight. We arrived in Detroit in the morning (despite leaving Seoul in the morning) and ran around and killed time at the airport. The flight from Detroit to Philly was only an hour, but everyone crashed HARD. At that point, we were coming up on 20-something hours of being awake and all that white noise just zzzzzzzzzz.....

• Upon landing in Philly, Sam lost his shit. And I mean, he needed a tranquilizer. Or I needed a tranquilizer. Or a stiff drink. Maybe both. And yet my mother-in-law (God bless her) reacted as if this was the most normal behavior and was very nice to Sam, offering him juice, his socks that he'd thrown on the floorboard, a monster truck, etc. The kind of nice I could never be if someone was kicking my seat every second while flailing about and screaming like a chimpanzee that escaped a mental institution.
• We went straight to the hospice center since his granddad's prognosis was a bit unknown at that point and we wanted to be sure to see him just in case. 
• We left the psycho in the car with my (God bless her again) saintly MIL. Molly had taken that whopping two hour plane nap and was in an agreeable mood (or was scared straight by all the screaming next to her) and she came along with us. She gave Pop pop hugs and kisses and squeaked out her "I wuh yew Poh-poh" a few times. He was so happy to see her. I leaned over to give him a hug and a kiss and he gave me the sweetest series of butterfly kisses on my cheek. Instantly, the trip, the screaming, the last-minute stresses of packing and cleaning, the long flight, and the sudden reintroduction to America melted away. Oh I love that man.
• We told Pop pop we'd be back in the morning to visit (with a well-rested Sam) and went to my in-laws' house. That night, the hospice nurses gave Pop pop some medicine to help him sleep since he was restless and agitated, and unfortunately, we never got to see him awake again after that. Two days later, he passed away, surrounded by family and holding a picture of Sam and Molly. I was parked in my MIL's garage at the time with the sleeping (formerly screaming) kids. I was relieved for him that he was no longer in any pain and that we were able to hug him and kiss him one last time. I can't help but miss him already though. 
• I know he's in heaven now, and I'm so happy about that, but he left a pretty humongous hole here on earth, so if you wouldn't mind saying a few prayers for his family, I know they would appreciate it. 

• The next few days were spent preparing for the funeral and on Thursday, he was laid to rest. 

walking the dog at a painfully slow pace // passed out after watching 101 Dalmations // throwing won into the wishing well- probably wishing we'd find the playplace Steve and I made up so that they'd run through the mall and burn energy (Molly of course stuck her hand in the water and then licked her fingers)

"playing" with Marci // "playing" with Daddy // eating the best cereal he's ever tasted and playing with "Daddy's old toys"

These kids watched omgsomuch tv/movies/ipads. I think that might be their main memory from this trip- unlimited ipads, pajamas, and cereal for every meal. This first week home will be like boot camp for them.

• It was good seeing all of Steve's family, despite the circumstances. We were able to hang out and make pizza and build fires and watch Steve's bar mitzvah tape from 2001. (highly entertaining)

Hard to see, but that's a younger Steve on the screen! How cute is he?!

• Steve and I were able to leave the house for bits of time here and there to run errands (it's really nice to ditch the kids without having to arrange a sitter!) and Target just did not have the same allure that it once held for me. I mean, don't get me wrong, everything in there is beautiful (if not extremely overpriced), but we have no clue where we're going after this. I can't buy anything there. And kids' clothes were just meh and everything else wouldn't fit in our suitcases home. Very underwhelming, I guess.
• I should backtrack and say that the first American store we entered upon our return was Trader Joe's and THAT had me shaking (literally!) I was so overwhelmed. All of the produce- fresh, not rotted, plentiful, variety. And everything written in English to boot! It was just an overload. As a mother told her children that the strawberries were too expensive, I grabbed two pints of them and exclaimed to Steve that these were so cheap! (We pay about $10/pint of strawberries here while the TJ's strawberries were under $3.50. But in Korea's defense, theirs are much tastier.) We stood in the cheese section and just marveled. Didn't buy any cheese, but definitely spent a lot of time gawking. The fresh flowers, the delicious-smelling breads, the yogurt that didn't expire two days after today's date! It was probably not the smartest place to stop first. 

• Our Chick-fil-A experience was similar to Target. I know, I know, don't crucify me! It just didn't taste as good as I remembered and the kids were all "Are you serious right now?" with the playplace. Pretty sure Korea has set some unrealistic expectations for playplaces in their minds. We found a trampoline place online that we wanted to take the kids to so they could burn some energy but it was $16 per hour per kid and do you know that our kids' cafe here charges us $3 per hour per kid and there is also a sandbox and a bunch of toys and people to play with your kids and good coffee? So you can envision how much my eyes were bugging out upon hearing of this jump place. 
• Anyways, let me just say that outside of friends and family, I have no desire to go back to the States. So why don't y'all just move here instead? I know this great little kids' cafe....
• On Valentine's Day, we loaded up and headed back to the airport for the long flight home. 

found a fun playplace at the Philly airport- go figure

pre-flight donut // scared selfie // praise Jesus for electronics and kid-sized headphones // the nap that ended before we ever got on the runway

• We had a layover in Detroit but found a very nice soldier service center there (kinda like the USO) and hung out there until our flight was ready to board. Right before we went to our gate, I was taking Sam out walking around the airport and he wanted to go see this fountain. I told him he could look but not touch since there was nothing blocking it from the general public. And naturally he goes up and leans all up on it and not only soaks his entire shirt, but his beloved bear (aptly named "Brown Bear") too. I drug him back to the soldier center and Steve took him out to buy him a new shirt (a little Detroit memorabilia...). I then took Molly out walking and to the bathroom with me. As soon as she saw the toilet, she loudly declared that she wanted to pee too, and even though she just needed a diaper change, she wanted to sit on the seat as well. So I take her diaper off and then she grabs the toilet seat with both hands. Then I stick her on the seat and she does nothing. She tells me she's done and I tell her I'm going to wipe her. Seeing as the only time I wipe Sam is when he's gone #2, she assumed this was the same and bent straight over and laid her hands right on the floor. I tell her to please just stand right there while I go to the bathroom and don't touch anything. Definitely don't touch your face. That includes picking your nose. Why are you still touching your face??? This is how you got that weird flesh-eating bacterial infection last time we flew to Korea! WHERE IS THE BLEACH?!
• We finally get our hands washed and head back to the soldier center. I immediately forget about Molly's lack of diaper because Sam is now asking me where his wet bear is and showing me his new fancy Detroit shirt that is about two sizes too big for him. After a few minutes, Molly (who is sitting on a nice leather couch) says to me, "I pee pee, Muwmmy." Well shit. Steve looks at me like I have lost my mind because who forgets to put a diaper back on a non-potty-trained child? Me, that's who, ok? I've lost my mind. I let one child hug a fountain and another child pee on a leather couch. I am not winning any awards today. We then hustle to our gate and board with all of the rich first-class folks who will get to fly to Korea in BEDS on the top floor (yes, the plane has two floors!). We made our way to the second-to-last row of the cattle car section and sit down. Ah. Finally. We made it.
• Then the captain comes on and tells us that there is a bit of a delay with an engine something-or-other and then we'll have to go de-ice the plane because it was snowing and then we need to reboot the computers and hopefully we won't be too late and blah blah blah. We sat on the plane for 2.5 hours before it ever even saw the runway. Sam took a nap and woke up before we even taxied to take off. Everyone on the plane was hot, thirsty, hungry, and mighty irritable. We finally took off and everything went well. Although I must say that seeing the flight tracker showing that we have 13 hours and 33 minutes until landing is easily one of the most depressing things I have ever seen in my entire life. The kids weren't terrible, but I still don't recommend taking kids on a flight like that for fun. They actually slept quite a bit on the way back so that was nice. We finally (!!!) arrived in Korea and made our way to customs. Apparently a large chunk of the country was also returning with us because we stood in line at customs for WELL over an hour. With two kids that were "so hungwee!" "so fuwstee!" "so sweepy!" It was SO FUN, YOU GUYS. (eye roll, eye roll, eye roll)

just 400 of our closest friends waiting in line for customs, nbd

• After more than a little crying, we finally got through customs, got our bags, and attempted to figure out how to get all the way out to long-term parking. We had taken a taxi from the parking lot on our way in (running late, freezing, short legs, you know the drill) and it looked like the train wasn't running so late at night, so we just started walking. In the rain. Dragging Molly. You can imagine this was a slow, painful stroll to a car that we weren't quite sure where was parked. Eventually we found it and Molly passed out shortly thereafter. While a normal person would have fallen asleep at the wheel and driven straight into the ocean, Steve and I were raging at the lack of efficiency in the customs department (someone might just write a letter!), eating candy we were hiding from the kids, and talking about how good it felt to be home. The kids woke up right as we got into town and we scrubbed the airplane funk off of everyone and fed them snacks. Then they went to bed around 2am and Steve and I drank wine and celebrated surviving that trip again. We went to bed at 3am and got the least restorative four hours of sleep a person could get. Back to the grind today- sorting through rotten produce at the commi, wondering when (if?) they'll ever have meat in stock again (looks like we will be putting the canned tuna back in rotation this week!), and trying to get unpacked and settled in again.
• Thank you for all of the travel prayers and the prayers for Steve's granddad and family. I appreciate them more than you know!