Christmas Day

Christmas started with a bang when we overslept from our late night caroling and awoke at the time we were supposed to have been at our destination for the day. We'd told Dave & Laurette we'd be there by 11am. We woke up at 11:15. Soon after, my mom and family called from Kendra's house and so we were even more late. But it was wonderful to talk with them and we were thankful to hear they'd made the trip safely. Instead of waiting for the bus, we decided to take a taxi. We called to let them know we would be late, but were just leaving the house. They also urged us to take a taxi. What we weren't prepared for though, was how to go about finding a taxi on Christmas Day! They weren't just everywhere like usual. I was shaking my head in disbelief...how pitiful! - we weren't even able to "just take a cab." It had sounded so easy to do!!! But getting it done was turning out to be another thing entirely!
As we were searching desperately to find a cab, we bumped into a group of girls from school. They offered to lead us up to the taxi place and help get us a cab. And so it was that 30 minutes after we'd left the house, we were finally on our way!
This is us trekking up to the taxi place(above), then waving good-bye to the girls.(below)

Ahhhhh!!! Arrived at last! And just in time for our 1pm reservation at a Chinese restaurant. They tried leading us to the Korean style tables, but I must say I was quite happy when Laurette spied the western style tables and asked if we could sit there instead! We had sweet & sour pork, fried rice with black sauce, and....

...whatever the dish below is called. It looked very good and they let us order it. I tried ordering it before from our restaurant in DaeSan and they wouldn't take me seriously. I was told that it is a dish to be ordered with Soju (alcohol). Apparently this dish must help absorb the alcohol or something. Anyway, we did not have any alcohol, but we certainly enjoyed the food! It is usually mixed together after coming to the table, but we preferred to taste each thing individually. Can you see the perfectly thinly-sliced carrots and cucumbers? Amazes me how they go to this much trouble for beautiful arrangements just to have it all destroyed in a mix-up moments later.

Back at Dave & Laurette's, she had a lot of goodies she set out for the afternoon - among them, two cakes! She couldn't decide between the two since they were both so beautiful! We'd brought one of our own to eat, so now we had three! We put ours and one of hers out initially. Then, we had snacks like peanuts, bugles, and cheetos(not American!) along with watermelon, Asian pear, pomogranate, dried persimmons (which she'd thought were figs when she bought them), strawberries, and juice. The cups were quite the deal, too. See how tiny they are? You never know exactly what you're buying here! I provided the candle for the table. :)

Here are closer-ups of the two cakes:

I couldn't resist taking a picture of the pomegranate we bought here in DaeSan...the sticker says it was grown in the good old US of A, right in California! :) :)

As we laid out the table, the kids got to open a gift from Dave and Laurette. They were very excited and the toys occupied them most of the afternoon.
Joy got a purse which plays music when it is opened.

Jesse got some of those crank-up cars that you pull backwards and then let them fly! But the first thing he did with them was to play "pit-stop" and change all their tires.

James got something that resembled one of those old viewfinders, except it was shaped like a camera and it snaps a "picture" every time you push the button for the next slide.

And here are Dave and Laurette themselves! They were good enough to let us photograph them since I knew you'd all like to see who we're talking about. In fact, we ended up with 3 pictures before getting this one since they were laughing so hard getting ready to take it!