Big city, little family: Family

A little bit of back information.

I remember when I first moved here Collin had the computer room in the spare bedroom. There was a full size bed in the corner of one of our 3 bedrooms on the 10th floor. I on the other hand, had other plans. My dream for my baby girl was to have a large nursery with all the amazing furniture, and a separate play room with more toys and gadgets that a girl could ever want. Although I still have a lot of those items, living in a 3 bedroom apartment made me have to severely downsized and the guest room with the bed, in my eyes, needed to become the playroom. With that, the bed had to go, the computer was now in the living room, and the toys took over.

Fast forward to the present.

We now live in a 4 bedroom apartment. There is a nice master bedroom that of course we take over, and a hallway connects to a tiny room with no closets. There is a large room that has been separated with wooden sliding doors to make 2 rooms, each room having closets. The rooms were taken up by our room, the baby's bedroom, a computer room with workout equipment and a closet full of photography equipment and a playroom. All this and no guest room or bed because I thought it would be better not to have one. I remember telling Collin, "Who is ever going to visit us in Korea that we will need a bed? If local friends stay over or your son comes to visit, they can sleep on the couch!" I never thought we would actually get family here!

Last week was amazing. Collins brother and his brothers youngest son who he hadn't seen in 6 years, and his brothers wife, who he had never met, came to visit. I was suddenly regretting not having that spare bed. However we did have 2 air mattress set up, that seemed to work just fine for them. With a little shuffling around of the playroom, all had a comfortable room to sleep in.

The long weekend was so busy, short and wonderful all at the same time. It was such a pleasure meeting this part of the family for the first time. I chuckled every time I heard Collins brother say the same things Collin does like when we part ways with my step son Collin likes to say, "Make good choices." Well wouldn't you know as we were turning to leave our son Collin's brother said, "Make good choices!" It was so perfect. In fact I didn't even realize it wasn't Collin until I truly processed the voice in my head, and our son said, "Wow they are brothers."

They arrived early early in the morning and unfortunately their first sight of me was just crawling out of bed with Audrey to great them. I am sure a horrible sight for them. So much for first impressions mean everything. Although I guess they got a glimpse of the real me, and to be honest in made picking out my clothing for the rest of the week more relaxed. I mean they already saw me at my worst lol! After they went down for a early morning nap we headed off to lunch and then got caught in the rain walking home. The rest of the day was easy and relaxed. Friday we were out and about all day and went to an old Korean village that we had never seen before, so it made it a first for everyone. We also hit up a great lunch in Myeongdong, walked through the shopping, which I found a fabulous store to do clothing shopping for me even though I am considered very large in this Country, went to Nagwon Music mall (which I have never seen so many music stores in my soon to be 31 years of living, and I thought of my music teacher in high school almost the whole time). Then we went to visit our son! It was a long busy day and by the time we got home we were out for 11 hours that day!

Our second day, was much more low key. We went to a park where there was a lot of music things going on. We even saw John Park perform for an woman's Adidas event in the park. Many of you probably don't know, but he was a finalist on one of the American Idols. My brother in law actually got a picture with him so it was kind of cool. We took a stroll in Itewan, walked home and a few hours later enjoyed fireworks on the roof of our apartment complex.

After Church on Sunday, we stayed in the house and visited until the sad hour came for them to pack up and head home. A wonderful, but fast weekend, with many awesome memories made!