Rayce's Baptism

Yesterday was a special day in our family. Rayce chose to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It was a wonderful day!

It was also a busy day. We started out at the Rain Regatta. Since Rayce just turned 8 he can now go to scouts and they happened to have the regatta on the same day as his baptism.

The Rain Gutter Regatta is like the Pinewood Derby, except they race boats instead of cars.

Rayce's baptism was well attended by our friends here in Misawa. There are a lot of people that care about this kid!

It's awesome to see my kids developing their own testimonies and their own relationships with God. Rayce is a great kid, with a huge heart. We sure love him! I'm grateful for the choices my kids are making now and crossing my fingers that they stay on these paths of righteousness.

Seoul Zoo and DMZ

Days two and three of our trip were spent at the Seoul Zoo and the Demilitarized Zone with North Korea.
The Seoul Zoo was about a forty five minute ride on the subway, and it is an absolute spectacular spot for a zoo. It's very hilly but beautiful. I didn't take many pictures of the animals because the landscape was so incredible.

It was a pretty long walk just to get in the zoo, but very worth it.

Avie and the meerkats were friends.

It was COLD up there!

The next day was really cold so we thought it a good day to ride on a bus up the the DMZ or demilitarized zone. I was going to just send Dan because none of the rest of us really wanted to go but as usual I was wrong. It was really interesting...and now I can say I've seen North Korea, from a safe distance.
Our first stop on our tour was Imjingak (Nuri Peace Park).

Next, we went to the DMZ. We couldn't go into the room with guards from both North and South Korea because children are not allowed on that tour but we were able to go into the "Third Tunnel", one of the tunnel's discovered by South Korea for another planned invasion from the North. It was pretty cool.

Cameras were not allowed in the tunnel but it was pretty cool. We had to wear helmets and I understand why going in. The whole thing is pretty solid granite and one bonk on the head could probably be serious.
Finally, we went to the border!

Well, hello North Korea.

A Week in Seoul

Considering how amazing Seoul is, it's surprising that it's taken me this long to blog about our visit, but, it's Thanksgiving week and we're busy. Seoul is an amazing city, pretty you could say, reminded me of San Fransisco a bit with its hills. Seoul is usually more temperate than here in Misawa but the week we chose to go it was colder than here. It was high 40s to low 50s pretty much the entire time but the fall colors I think we're at their peak, so not a bad week considering.

We stayed at the Dragon Hill Lodge, it's on an army installment right in central Seoul.

The first place we visited was the war museum.

It is a really impressive building.

Rayce thought this place was pretty cool!

The inside was pretty impressive too, but the kids could probably pass and explore the outside all day. Next we went to a Buddhist temple and they had a chrysanthemum festival going on! I was so excited because we missed the one here in Hirosaki to go to the salmon festival.

This was day 1. More to come!