Thursday, February 11, 2016

Asian Love

Eric and I got to celebrate Asia 2 weekends in a row! We had our monthly in-home date to Japan and then the next week was Lunar New Year so we had our annual Korean feast!

Japanese in-home date night. We are poor with no extra vacation flexibility but we both LOVE the idea of international travel! So we decided this year to have a monthly "trip" to a place of interest! We get take out, plan small activities for our date, and then enjoy our evening as though we took a quick vacation! For our kickoff date, Eric chose Japan! We had delicious sushi (not pictured) before we put the kids to bed. 
We made some fancy but sweet origami flowers together.
I put up some gorgeous light posters given to me by my mom's Japanese friend, Yoko, back when I was in 4th grade. I love them! 
We had a great evening of delicious food, music, movies, and entertainment and I am loving our travel dates! Some day we'll go there for real, but in the mean time, this was a ton of fun and nicely romantic. 

We had a great dinner celebration for Lunar New Year this past weekend!

Emmett loved the japchae noodles. He had a pile of them in his lap by the end of his efforts!
kimbap and ddeokbokki
Kasia was a natural at rolling the kimbaps!


Stacey's hubby was a missionary in Korea like I was (just different place and years), so she came along for the Korean market shopping and food prep. It was so much fun to have a friend in the kitchen with me! Thanks Stacey!
Caroline wasn't feeling so well. She fell asleep right there WHILE everyone was running around her!
an impromptu blanket peek-a-boo game was warmly received by all the kidlets!

Our lively game of Yutnori went down in favor of guys... TWICE... but we're saying that we just let them win. Twice. :)
I made Hoddeok for the first time and it was a smashing success! Adding it to the yearly menu for sure! Why have we never done it before? Oh yeah: because there is already so much food and we are always stuffed. Though it is traditionally essential for Lunar New Year, I think I'm going to remove ddeok guk from the menu. No one really enjoys that soup as much as the rest of the food. I'd rather have more room for other foods. Would that be heresy if I left it out? :)
We had a wonderful time! Thanks for celebrating Lunar New Year with us, folks!

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