Rolls, scarves, and laying under the SOFA.

My bread machine is here! Duh duh DUH! So far I've made two pans of carmel rolls and some sweet dinner rolls. Mmm.

Look at those and tell me you don't want one. Don't really, that's mean.

 While the dinner rolls did taste good, I accidentally let them rise for a long time...plus I rolled them wrong so they ended up being about the size of my head. BUT, they were tasty.

This week, I also made a scarf for the Special Olympics. 

Of course, like anything I do, it had it's set-backs....

Hmmmm.....I wonder who made this mess??

This happened when I was only about 1/4 the way done, so for the rest of the time I was carrying this ball of chaos around and periodically stopping to untangle a few feet of yarn. Good grief.  At the mean time, Whit kept trying to get to it and play with it again. This is one of many signs that Whit is actually a cat. She sits on the back of the couch, swats with her paws, has excellent balance, and plays with yarn balls. I'm convinced she's a kitty.

Even after all of her naughtiness she still looks cute though...

Avery is just a little snuggle bug and HAS to be touching someone. He just makes himself at home.

I often wonder why my puppies are always so tired. Then I realize it's because they fiddle fart around all night. I am trying to break the habit of having Avery sleep with us. Whit digs a tunnel under the covers and hibernates until morning.  Unless of course she hears the slightest noise, then you see the tunnel gradually coming to the top, she sticks her head out, looks around...digs her way back to the bottom.  Avery on the other hand flops and flails and yawns and runs in his dreams. He's a crazy sleeper. I keep telling him he's gonna get bigger and he's not gonna be able to sleep on the bed anymore :P (now you really think I'm cooky) Anyways, all last night he would lay on his dog bed for a little bit and then decide he needed to get on the bed...which takes several tries. Then he remembers there is a sock on the other side of the room that he should probably get before he goes to bed...on the way back from getting the sock he notices another sock, which he obviously needs too. Then he runs to the side of the bed as an attempt to get on the bed which he usually fails at. So he's standing face to face with me as I'm sleeping and he's got two socks in his mouth looking at me with his sad beagle eyes. It's hard to resist, but I had to be mean and make him sleep on the dog bed. This continued the whole night. And now I know why he's sleeping right now...because he's a goober!

If you are stationed in Korea you are under the SOFA. Which I think sounds funny. I'm not sure what all that means, but I do know that in order for me to stay in the country past 90 days I have to have a SOFA stamp. The nearest office to get my passport stamped is in Osan, which is about 20-30 minutes away by car. Our friend, Carrie kindly offered to take us. All morning I kept reminding myself to take the certain paper needed for the stamp. You OBVIOUSLY can tell that I did NOT remember. Nope. We got to the office, Clinton looked at me and said, "wheres the paper?" I looked at him and said, "I thought you had it." Oh brother! So, back in the car we went to get the paper and then back to Osan.  It's not like driving from Urbandale to Ankeny, where you just hop on the interstate for a bit and take an exit. Korean road systems look like a slinky that got tangled in a ball.  The streets are circular, triangular, octagonal, and pentagonal. I just wanted to say pentagonal. They make no sense. Soo, poor Carrie had to drive back and forth, back and forth twice. We did get to stop for lunch on base at burger king. One of those times when I really want to laugh but shouldn't...Clinton wanted Zesty sauce. Mind you, even though we were on base, the workers are still Korean. Carrie told the lady we needed zesty sauce. "Lesty?"...ummm, "ZESTY"..."lesty?".....sure.

The lady was super nice, but had a weird way of saying zesty. Clinton then had to yell from the back seat, "KAMSAMNIDA!!" (thank you), to which she replied. 

Poor Carrie! having to put up with us for so long. I feel kinda like teenagers needing to catch a ride all the time and asking to stop at burger king. :P We make our parents proud. 

The good thing is that we we got to have burger king (in the car), we got to talk a lot (in the car) and we got to see the sites on the way to Osan, twice...all because of me! Wonderful. The other good thing is that I'm officially under the SOFA, which means they won't kick me out of the country next week when my visa is up! All good things.

Last night we ate at the KATUSA snack bar...it was pretty yummy. We had some shrimp fried rice and Yacky Mandu ( I have no idea how to spell that). It's basically the Korean version of an egg roll. They knock the socks off the Chinese egg roll though. Yacky Mandu is much much better. After dinner we headed to the gym. It was the first time I had been in the gym here. We played some b-ball...and I felt very much like a girl, in a bad way. I had zero coordination. It was okay though, because I was having fun just goofing off with Clinton. Then we ran on the treadmill...Hmmmm, who's idea do you think that was? Not mine. This was around 10 at night. I saw a P.T. class come in wearing there P.T. uniforms. For as snappy and sharp as they make military uniforms, they really let the ball drop on P.T.'s. I just think they are straight up ugly. It's like they looked at an 80"s style wind breaker suit and said, "hmmm, these are clearly not arrow dynamic and are not figure flattering, let's use this design. We'll make them black and grey with a huge V on the front. Be sure to make the jacket poofy and the pants too short on everyone so there white socks are showing at all times." They would make me self-conscous to work out in. That's my opinion. Anyways, I still am amazed by military stuff, so I enjoyed watching them get there workout going. They were all lined up and had to spread their arms out so they are equal length apart...like what you do in elementary P.E. They must have been night shifters since their PT was at 10. Icky.

I don't usually make fun of military stuff...just those dumb PT uniforms. 

**KATUSA= Korean Augmentee to United States Army (a Korean serving in the US Army basically)

Today, Clinton is off! yay! I think we just might go out tonight. That's just the best. Yep, he's a pretty cool guy. Even in his PT's. Okay, I'm done with the PT stuff. But, yes I like going out with him. It's nice. 

I'm sorry, I have to show you the PT's. See what I mean. The T-shirts are fine, I like the T's...but the rest of it....

Even as I was looking for a picture of them online, I found one that someone had labeled, but due to obscenities I chose not to post it. But, it just goes to show that I am not the only one who feels so strongly about them.

Okay, I'm done now. For real.  I should probably go finish the laundry and hide the yarn balls so we don't have anymore messes. Clinton has been killing zombies (yuck) on Xbox and Avery just walked away with a sock. Hmmm....seems like there was one other thing I was going to tell you....

Oh yeah, that's right...We are coming home! We are to come home May 8th. Our command sponsorship did not go through and it will not go through in time, which means we will be stationed in the States. It's bitter sweet. We are both ready to be back on American soil, especially Clinton, since he's been gone for so long. But, we also know that it probably means deployment. The dreaded "D" word. But we will take it a day at a time. For now, we are super excited to see our families and friends and can't wait to be back in the States.  Plus this means that we can FINALLY have our long awaited ceremony. Praise the Lord!

I hope this finds you well. Lots of love.