Babymoon/Lunar New Year

Last weekend was a big holiday in Asia- even bigger than Christmas! Most know it as the Chinese New Year. Here in Korea they like to call it the Lunar New Year. We had Monday and Tuesday off of work so we decided to plan a trip somewhere. Instead of allocating a portion of our trip budget to transportation, we decided to stay right here in Seoul and spend 2 nights at 2 different hotels.

The first hotel we stayed at was the Sheraton Hotel at D-Cube City Mall. It was recently built so everything was really new. We left for the hotel mid-day on Sunday.

A screen comes down to separate the bathroom for privacy if you want it.

 My favorite part of the Sheraton was the bathroom. We only have a shower in our apartment, so I was finally able to take some baths!

View from our room

Screen Golf

In the D-Cube Mall looking down. Shortly after this photo a security guard
came rushing over and said "No Photos!"

 The biggest complaint we had with the Sheraton was that we were approached by an employee of the Sheraton while in the pool who didn't speak any English so she had to call someone on her cell phone and hand us the phone in the pool. The person on the phone told us that we must wear swim caps to be in the pool. Everyone in Korea wears swim caps at the public and gym pools- it's a must. But come on, Sheraton is an international brand....they shouldn't expect that of their international customers. Furthermore, nothing was posted on the pool rules about wearing a swim cap. When we transferred to the Hyatt Regency, there were lots of people in the pool without swim caps. Sheraton needs to get that memo.

The outside of the mall

 The next day we left for the Hyatt but we stopped on the way at our favorite breakfast place in Korea- Butterfinger Pancakes.

 The Hyatt was definitely a luxury hotel. Everything looked really nice and classy. We stayed on the club floor and even got upgraded, thanks to Taylor's dad's Platinum membership. He and his dad share the same name, so we were able to use the membership and get the extra perks. The club lounge was really nice- hors d'oeuvres, cocktail hour, snacks and drinks all day, and breakfast the next morning. 

My husband also treated me to a pregnancy massage at the Hyatt Spa. The massage was really nice...until later that night. I felt completely relaxed for a long time after the masssage, HOWEVER, I broke out in a rash all over my body. I guess my skin didn't like the special rose hip lotion they used which ironically was specially selected for pregnant women. Almost a week later, I still have a few rough patches on my skin leftover from the rash. :(

Lobby at the Hyatt

Checking out the spa packages

We also went ice skating on what I think was probably the coldest day of the entire winter so far!

 Don't worry- I held onto Taylor the whole time and didn't fall. :)

Korea has some weird quirks about exercise. Look at #2-
Please shower and exercise lightly before entering...what??

The view from our room at the Hyatt

Overall, we had a great weekend! And that could possibly be our last getaway for awhile.

Link to Baby Blog

I have added a button that links directly to our baby blog. It's at the top left corner of the blog. Any time you want to check out the baby blog, just click on the picture of the baby shoes.

Naked Run & Snow Festival

Last Sunday, we woke up at 5:30 AM and met up with a runner's club in Seoul called "Seoul Flyers" to make the 2 hour journey to Daegwallyeong.

Daegwallyeong is not far from Pyeongchang, which is where the 2018 Winter Olympics are going to be held.

The reason we made this journey is because Taylor signed up to do a naked run. Not entirely naked but a shirtless 10K race. If you wanted to qualify for a prize (only the top 10 finishers) you could not wear pants, you had to wear shorts. But the runners were allowed to wear hats and gloves.

Before the race

This guy was all ready to go in his little booty shorts

Taylor was trying to get in the top 3, which got a cash prize, so he decided to strip down to shorts.

It was pretty cold! I wore 2 layers of pants and 3 layers on top. Women who ran in the race were only allowed to wear a sports bra.

The Seoul Flyers were pretty much the only foreigners in the race
so of course the media wanted to film and interview them.

I know Taylor could have made that top 3...if they hadn't messed up the distance. He was pacing himself to sprint at the end, starting at the 9 km mark. The problem was that the race was shortened to 8.5 km so by the time he was ready to sprint, he was crossing the finish line. He ended up placing 8th in the individual runners. Not bad, right? There was well over 100 runners total but some of them were on teams, who didn't place in the individual rankings. One of the awards he got- a glass paper weight said "8th". The other award he got- a certificate- said 25th place- so maybe that was overall including all the team runners?

Taylor with Dan, one of the Seoul Flyers.
They did not run with their shirts on.

After the race, we walked over to check out some of the ice/snow sculptures. This run was all part of a snow festival that was taking place.

Not sure what Happy 700 means...maybe something to do with the
2018 Olympics?

Taylor getting his 8th place award

Baby Reaction Video

This was some of our family and friends' reactions to the baby news. 

Sad News

Remember Molly? She's the dog that we dog-sat for about 2 weeks.  We learned some sad news yesterday. Molly died from a mistake during her spaying surgery. You can read more about it here:

http://sansborders.blogspot.com/2011/12/rip-molly.html

Please pray for Mark and Liz...she was part of their family and they've lost a close companion.

Baby Video

In the next few posts, I'm going to try to put up videos of some of our families' and friends' reactions to the baby news. We got a video camera, so now I just have to have Taylor help me with getting those videos online.

I do have one video to share. We used this video to announce the baby to many of our family and friends and it was great. I'm pretty proud of it too because I made it all by myself. My first video...yay!

A lot of baby updates will continue to be on the "baby blog" I created. You can access it by going here:
http://loveyoubabytothemoon.blogspot.com/

Some of you have said "You HAVE to post belly pictures!" I'm still debating if I want to do this or not but if I do, they will be posted to that other blog.

Enjoy the video.

Prayer Requests

We have a couple of prayer requests.

1. The situation with North Korea.
-The tension and threat on this peninsula is real and there is a definite instability and unsurity coming from the other side of the border. Seoul is only 35 miles from the North Korean border. So, the threat is real, which is why we need to pray. But that doesn't mean focus on the danger that is there or the instability. That will only cause fear and anxiety in our hearts. I know we have a lot of family members that are worried (especially grandmas and grandpas...). We're not bringing this up to invoke fear in your hearts. Fear is not from God. We are not afraid. But we do need to be sober-minded and pray for the situation. We need peace, not panic, to pray.

This is something our pastor said in a recent message that I thought was so good- "Even in the face of real tension, the peace and hope we have is real. The purpose and protection of God is real. Have faith in God and his promises...have faith in what is true..not just in what is real."

Romans 10:11 says that anyone who trusts in God will never be put to shame.

2. The second prayer request we have is for wisdom in telling our employer about our pregnancy. A lot of things are changing at our school right now- our working hours will be changing, the new school year starts in March, so student enrollment is in question, and many other things. This has caused the management at our school to be very stressed during this time. Our school is a private academy so it's subject to different standards than regular schools. A lot of times academies like ours, called hogwans- Christian or not- are known for not abiding by laws and rules that are supposed to govern them. Legally, they are not allowed to fire me for being pregnant but that doesn't mean they won't. We just need wisdom on the right time to tell them. Our doula advised us to wait until as close to March (the new school year) as possible.

Thanks for the prayers.

Big Announcement

We have an announcement to make.................

Yes, it's true. That's not just news for Ricky and Lucy. We- Ashley and Taylor- are having a baby! We've been keeping this a secret for almost 4 months now! We just had to tell our family first before making the public announcement. Now that all the family knows, it's not a secret anymore.

I have been keeping a blog with updates on baby since October. Check it out here:

http://loveyoubabytothemoon.blogspot.com/