Sampler

(WARNING: This is long, you may just wanna look at the pictures)

I've been meaning to blog about various subjects for quite some time, but haven't gotten around to it till now. Here is a sampler of the recent happenings:

First off, Matt and I found out in late October that we're moving to Korea. He'll be headed out a few weeks in advance to scope the scene out and meet people that he'll be working with on the project. He'll come back for Christmas and then we'll all ship out after New Year's some time. We'll be there for roughly two years. Matt and I have started trying to learn Korean, but unfortunately, it's not as closely related to Chinese as we had imagined it might be.

So, the winds of change are blowing. I have to admit, I haven't been as excited about the move as Matt would have hoped or as I would have imagined I would be. I've been trying to cling to anything I can, as I must leave house and home and all that is familiar. In my college years, I was all about change, moving and traveling, but now that we have a home, two dogs and a baby, I'm not as adventuresome as in times past. Matt really would like to give Lady away. We can take dogs with us, but two dogs in a high rise apartment seems too much for Matt (and probably for most other people besides myself). Our neighbors thought that their parents may want Lady, so they took her for a trial visit. I cried most the day thinking that my little buddy was gone for good. I know... I'm being ridiculous and overly emotional, but Matt is gonna be working long hours and I will spend the majority of each day alone in a foreign country. The least I could do is bring along a few friends, right? To my delight, our neighbor's parents didn't want her. My compromise would be to have someone dog sit for two years. Any takers? I'm trying to convince one of my two sisters that they want to. We'll see. I think Lucy would miss her most of all. Look how cute they are looking for squirrels in the backyard:

In preparation for potentially renting our house out to someone, I've felt an urgency to take care of a lot of things around the house that I've been meaning to do pretty much ever since we moved here. Matt has filled in all the holes that Lucy has dug in the backyard and spread grass seed over the many barren patches of earth. Some where there was a swing set, and some where there was a large compost pile of sorts. He has also installed a poor man's sprinkler system by burying some hoses.

I have also taken upon myself the task of stripping the wall paper in our kitchen. There were three layers as seen below. The top layer is the cream layer with fake cursive writing on it and grape stems and leaves. Layer two is the lovely fruit and flowers with the gold stripes and the border as seen on the top left. Layer three is the original look for our kitchen. The cream with pink flowers shown on top of layer one. Wall paper should be outlawed.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to be careful on the last layer cause it takes the outer layer of the sheet rock with it leaving a cardboard layer exposed. Despite my best efforts, it was still happening so I threw in the towel and just started ripping it off as fast as I could, believing that my time would be better spent replastering/texturing. So here it is in all it's glory:

I can't do a post without featuring Lincoln's latest tricks. Lincoln loves sleeping on his stomach face down on his hands. This is a picture of when we woke him up early so I could take Matt somewhere... maybe the airport. You can see his hand prints on his forehead.

He has also increased in his mobility quite a bit lately. Although he is still kind of like a beached whale, he is able to do 360's with his belly as the center of the circle. He's also been rocking back and forth on his hands and knees thinking about crawling. Here is a funny video of him trying to grab the ever illusive Lucy tail. He laughs so hard when the dogs are running around play-fighting.