Happy Birthday Melissa!

I just got the kids off to school and they're excited to celebrate Melissa's birthday tonight. Last night we made her a cake and she had a good time helping. She told me the name of all the ingredients in Korean as we added them, which I had a fun time with!

In our house you get to choose what you want for dinner on her birthday, so I told Melissa to pick anything she wanted and she chose spaghetti. So tonight we'll be having spaghetti, which sounds good to me! We'll also open a few presents and eat cake and hopefully learn how to sing Happy Birthday in Korean. I'm looking forward to it!

I'm super excited about an e-mail I got from Melissa's parents this morning!! I've kind of struck up an e-mail friendship with her parents since she's been here. They are the nicest people and I love getting e-mail from them. This morning when I woke up there was an e-mail from her dad letting me know that they mailed a box of presents for Melissa's birthday and for our family!! One of the things I'm most excited about is that they sent us hanboks for Josh and Matthew!!

Hanboks are the traditional outfits that Koreans wear for special events, including the traditional Korean first birthday party that we're doing for Clarissa in a few weeks. Clarissa has a beautiful hanbok that her foster mother gave to us, but the boys don't have one. I'm absolutely THRILLED about them getting one!! How fun!! I can't wait to get them all dressed up in their hanboks so I can take their picture! :)

The e-mail said that they're also sending a birthday present for Clarissa and a Korean movie for me and Shawn!! I'm seriously going to be stalking the mailbox until the package arrives, lol. That's so incredibly nice of them, I have absolutely loved getting to know Melissa's family. I really hope that someday we can all meet in person. I love having friends in Korea, the next time we go back to visit we're going to have lot of people to see! Between Jin-Ha and her family, the foster parents, our awesome tourguide we've kept in touch with and Melissa's family, we have lots of friends to visit in Korea.

Oh! I have to tell this story! Here's your Korean culture lesson for the day. :) Last night we made Melissa's birthday cake and I'm planning to frost it and decorate it today while Melissa is at school. I got a tube of red frosting with a little tip on it to write "Happy Birthday Melissa" on the cake. When Melissa saw the tube of red frosting she got a concerned look on her face and said "in America does it mean anything when you write someone's name in red??" OOOPS!! I totally forgot about Koreans rule about red! In Korea red signifies death. You don't write someone's name in red unless you're wishing death on them, lol. Not exactly appropriate for her birthday cake!! I'm SO glad that she told me before she came home from school and found her name written in red on her cake. I'll be coming up with a different color before I decorate the cake. :)

For now I'm off to get the house cleaned up while Clarissa is taking her nap and then I've really got to start planning her birthday party! I can't believe that it's coming up in a few weeks! YAY! :)