Thanksgiving 2009

Ahhhh we had a fantastic Thanksgiving with good friends and food

Jon making neat work of two of the chickens
What a beautiful bird all full of yummy stuffing:)
The Spread
Homemade rolls.. delish!
My plate, it stayed this full for about 1 minute before I inhaled it all!
The amazing pies Amanda made: apple, sweet potato, and blueberry creamcheese

It truly was a blessed weekend, and next year we'll get to celebrate it in the states!!! woo hoo!

Ladies and Gentlemen...

Let me present our House!!!!!!!!!!

These are the two houses, ours is the one on the right. We also have a little white picket fence, to completely identify the English Compound as we call it :)

These are both sides of the bathroom, one side is normal the other is the washer/dryer.

From the Kitchen looking into the Living Room
Living room into the Kitchen, oven and all! woo hoo!
View from the Bedroom door.
The Bedroom
Our Advent "wreath" ahhhh I love Christmas :)
Hope you all had a wonderful Turkey Day and long weekend! I'll be puttin' up some pictures from our little shindig soon!

Day O' Thanks

Thanksgiving is here, and I'm so thankful for how Jon and I have been blessed beyond measure this past year. I can't believe we are already celebrating Thanksgiving number 2 as a married couple and in Korea... again. Here are some pictures from last years' shin dig.

Jon peeling potatoes like nobody's business

Our delicious Chickens :)

The aftermath...

I hope everyone enjoys Thanksgiving Day with their family and friends! We are thinking of you all and are so thankful for each and every person in our lives!

lotsa' love-

The Stainbrooks

Jump!

We had some fun on the beach the other day...

It took a while for Jon to get the hang of it, it had nothing to do with my camera taking abilities... nothing whatsoever.

If any of you doubted his ninja abilities here's the picture to prove 'em

Jon's a little bit better at taking these

ROCK ON!

enjoy your Tuesday everyone...

Yum...

I'll let the delicious pictures speak for themselves... needless to say the pumpkin cookies turned out.

Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater!

So on a bit of an adventure the other day Jon and I were in search for pumpkins. I was in the mood to make pumpkin flavored things and recently I've been making pumpkin puree so I was in need of pumpkins to make the puree, to make some delicious treats! So we meandered around the islands trying buy a pumpkin and we came across a shop that had a ton of pumpkins out front. So I finally found the lady to buy from and she wouldn't let me pay her! She gave me 3 pretty large pumpkins and said they'd be great for cooking, I took her Korean word for it :)

So Saturday consisted of roasting, peeling, pureeing and bagging pumpkin. And this is what I ended up with :)

This is about 17 cups of pumpkin puree, and this isn't counting the 5 other cups in the refrigerator, so please any pumpkin recipes send them my way!

These are the amazing pumpkin spice muffins found on PioneerWoman.com. Seriously love that woman's blog and all of her amazing food!

Some pumpkin soup! I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I think it was a little too fancy for Jon's tastes :)

Next I'll be attempting some pumpkin cookies and we'll see what else, the possibilities are endless! Hope you are all having a fantastic day!

We've landed on the moon! Or ya know, slept in the house...

We we did it, we spent the night for the first time in our new house on the islands last night! It was FANTASTIC~ As we knew it would be :) I've also baked cheesy biscuits and a batch of cookies in the oven already. And I've made Jon hang Christmas lights, it's never to early to decorate for Christmas. I'd put some pictures up, but we still don't have 1/2 of our furniture and won't until next week. And I'm one of those people that just has to have everything set up perfectly to my liking before pictures are shown, one of those perfectionist things I suppose. So I'll let you see how absolutely perfect the islands are... seriously they are just gorgeous

Other news would detail that I am now officially 24... wow, 24. I kept telling myself that it wasn't that old (which in reality isn't). But it just hit me, I will be 25 next year, 25 holy smokes! Half way to 50, a quarter of the way to 100... out of control! But really the day was quite interesting. It was probably one of the best/worst birthday's I've had. I was really discouraged and brought down in the morning by a few negative words, but a few encouraging words from friends back home really showed that I do have people in my life that care about me, and care about understanding and appreciating me. I felt so much better by the end of the day, and almost free in a sense. It's amazing how the Lord can comfort you and reveal to you so many truths in just a few short hours. I almost felt a burden lift and a weight off of my shoulder and realized that I am the one who controls how others make me feel, and it's just not worth listening to some people's opinion. Especially when their words or criticisms are not coming from a place of love or caring. And those aren't words I need to allow in my life, so I'm not going to anymore! What a light and joyous feeling!

Ahhh... so with that being said, we've only got 35 days until Alaska. 5 weeks, that's it! I'm so excited to see my sister and her whole family, it's been 18 long months, and it'll be great to see my brother and his family as well. We got to see them for 24 short hours in September and it wasn't enough!

I'll post pictures of house when it's set up and ready.

Blessings to you all!

Moving Day...

Well it came, sort of. For those of you who don't know Jon and I have been living in a 3 bedroom pension for the past 6 weeks with the other couple that will be living out here with us. Needless to say 4 adults a 18th year old and a dog has gotten a bit crowded and we were given the go ahead to move in! I was ECSTATIC, seriously, you have no idea how on the verge of going crazy I am. It's been quite the learning and growing experience and honestly sometimes has felt like punishment, but God is good and he provides even when we don't see it. So we ran over to the house with our car brimming full of things to unload so excited about our first night in the new house, only to find that we had no water, or electricity. A slight problem. So we are still moving our things in and getting it set up and then hopefully by the end of this week we will be living there! Oh my goodness this day could not come quickly enough. I'm so ready to have our own space, our own routine and sleeping pattern. I'm just ready to live my hubby and ONLY him :) It'll be fantastic, so please pray for water and electricity and a smooth rest of the moving experience!

The Genesis Child

In Korea, you will often find many Koreans that are desperate to speak English with you. Even if they don't actually speak English, they will try. This can be funny, confusing, and sometimes really annoying if you are in a hurry or the person happens to be drunk. But try they do, and you have to give them credit for at least attempting it. In my Middle School the head teacher is also the Science teacher, and is married to Jon's English Co-teacher. Mr. Yoon is his name and he really is one of the nicest people we've met on the island. He's not the typical Korean male in authority. He is compassionate, funny, jokes around with everyone, and you can tell he isn't full of himself and power hungry, like a lot of other males in authority (for example... my ridiculous macho, misogynistic Elem school principal, but that's another story for another time).

Anyway... Mr. Yoon and I get along, and his English is better than most, except for the other day. We are sitting in the teacher's office/lounge and it is break time. Joanne (my co-t ) and I are sitting there talking and Mr. Yoon joins in. As we are talking one of the 1st grade students walks in to get something and leaves (he's one of the brightest students, ever). Mr. Yoon points to the student and says "Ahhh Genesis Student!" Thinking I mis heard him I'm like "huh??"

"Genesis student! Genesis Student!"

"Uhhhh, the beginning student? What?" I turn to Joanne thinking maybe it's a Konglish word I just don't know. Or is he really referring to the Bible? I'm racking my brain for every option. She has no clue either, so we wait to see if it becomes more clear.

So Mr Yoon gets frantic, and keeps repeating it and repeating it.

Finally Joanne asks him in Korean what he means, he answers and she starts laughing, hysterically and exclaims "GENIUS!"

Finally everything clicks, it's all coming together, poor Mr Yoon had been trying to say the Genius Student (which the student is).

The thing I love about Mr Yoon is he can laugh at himself so he starts laughing so hard he is crying, and we are all getting a good chuckle out of it.

So later in the day I see Mrs Yoon (his wife and Jon's co-t) and I explain the story to her. Her response was giggling and this little loving comment " Oh I'm going to make fun of him when we get home."

What a fantastic wife :)

Howdy

Ahhh my 3rd blog in almost a year. But the other two were just getting to be too much. With the Korean Adventure one I felt like I could only report on thing pertaining to Korea or traveling, and it got to be too much. And with my personal blog I felt it always had to be much more insightful than I was willing to really give. So, here it is a little bit of everyday life with the Stainbrook's. Silly happening's at school, travel, day to day randomness. And I'm really hoping to keep it up, however if I don't... well then I don't. So bare with me as I force myself to write. I'm horrible at journaling and such but feel that there needs to be some record of our lives for our kids (hopefully) to one day look back on and say "oh wow our parent's were crazy" not really were.. probably still are. So... here it is, the new blog. The word on our street. Enjoy