Dance, Love, Wings and Always Dream: January 2017

Back in October I wanted to take simple family pictures in order to have one for Christmas cards. December came, it was less money to order them from Walmart so I thought I would just do that when we got back to the states. With all of the chaos from our visit that definitely did not happen, so here are our intended Christmas card pictures that may or may not get sent with Christmas Thank yous and Valentines cards. The realist inside me is just like, that probably wont happen either. I am glad we have them though, Ely had just turned 2, we just found out we were expecting our second baby, and we are at our favorite beach in a home we have come to love. Photo credit: Eric Anderson

My favorite, look at her cheesy smile!

When we were looking for tickets to fly back to the states, we noticed certain trends when looking at prices. We noticed tickets that had a 24 hour or longer layover were less money, and tickets that landed on a Holiday were even less. We decided to take advantage of this and to stay in Seoul on New Years Eve. The cost of getting a decent hotel and food was about the same as if we had just purchased normal tickets, but this way we could see a new country we wouldn't have otherwise visited. Once we landed we didn't have to get our excess baggage so that was nice, I wanted to try and take the subway into the city to save money, we spoke to a customer service representative at the airport and she told us what line to take. It was fairly easy. We were incredibly tired, when we landed it was 5 pm in Seoul but around midnight in the US which was the time we were accustomed to. Once we arrived at our hotel Ely and I went swimming in the pool which was a nice way to rejuvenate after our 11 hour flight. At about nine we dressed up best we could to go get ice cream. Ely would randomly ask for it on the flight and we promised her if she was good we would get her some. We were so tired at this point but wanted to do something festive for the New Year so we headed down to the cafe in our hotel and shared some ice cream and went to bed shortly after. I originally booked our hotel in an area near several of the celebrations but we were so tired we definitely did not make it to midnight. We did however wake up at about 5 am ready to go but nothing was open yet so we packed our bags and made sure everything was 100% ready to go to the airport. We had time for one tourist stop before our flight, I told Sean I wanted to see a palace, and he picked Geongbokgung Palace. It was beautiful and made the stop worth it.

The promised ice cream and Sean trying to stay awake.

And the cafe gave her a sucker after her ice cream. How we party on New Years.

We arrived an hour before the palace opened. Not many people around and we explored for a while. Early morning tourism has been some of my most favorite memories from traveling.

The detail in these designs are mesmerizing.

I can not even begin to imagine how long this creative process took. A picture simply can not capture it.

I love the two perspectives in these photos, one shows the mountain in the background and the other the city.

Once we were done it took us a while to find a good spot to wave down a taxi. I always hate doing that in big cities! That is the one cultural norm I always fail to look up when visiting a new place and usually always need to use it. We saw some neat things in the process, and we eventually had one stop for us!