Philip and Jaime Connor

Dallin turned one and we decided to go to Grandmother Barksdale's house to celebrate. She told us that Phil had also celebrated his first birthday at her house, so that was cool. I made him a chocolate cake in the shape of a racetrack and put a car on top. It was a big hit and he happily dug into the cake and ice cream with relish. It was so fun to be able to be there with the kids' great grandmother. What a great memory they will have of our time in Texas.

Hiking is very popular here in Korea, which makes it the perfect place for us. We also love hiking, although we don't get into the matching hiking outfits etc. that are so popular with the hikers here. One of the first activities we did as a family was to hike up the mountain behind our apartment building. We had a lot of fun, although it was not without some moaning and groaning from our older children. AHHH! WORK, EFFORT! Nathan informed me that he didn't like to do things that "build character". That tune changed as soon as we got to the top. Suddenly everything was so cool and amazing that you could see so far from up there! On our way down the mountain, we took a different path so that we could go into the town and get something to eat. The kids picked McDonald's, as they were feeling especially daring that day. After lunch we walked all around down town Okpo, which was a lot of fun. The kids especially like the tanks in front of all the restua...

While we are here in Korea my kids will attend private school. In Okpo they attend OIS otherwise known as the Okpo International School. It is a small school that caters mostly to Expatriots from all over the world. They speak English at the school, although the kids do have Korean classes. It has been a good experience so far for the three that are attending school there. They have made friends from all over the world. Jocelyn and Caleb both have teachers from England, and Nathan's teach was American, but he recently got a new teacher and I don't know where she is from. Next year they will attend a different school, in Busan, and they will take the bus. I am driving them for the rest of this year, but the school is fairly close to our apartment, so it doesn't take too much time out of my day to drop them off and pick them up.

Part of our new job means overseas assignments. Phil and I were really excited about this, as it is something we have wanted to do with our family ever since we got married. We found out that we would be moving to South Korea shortly after we got back to Texas from our Christmas travels. It was going to be a fairly quick move, which was fine with us. The less time we have apart, the happier we are. Phil made one trip to Korea without us to start working on the project, but after a month he was able to come home and get our move going. We got out of our lease, moved most of our stuff into storage, shipped the things that were to accompany us, and headed off to a hotel to await our flight. This is where our story really starts. On a Friday morning (very early in the morning) we arrived at the airport with our five kids in tow, oh and the 14 bags and three car seats, can't forget those. We approached the Delta counter only to discover that we were missing a passport, Phil'...