And the winner is...

South Korea. I should have expected that decision all along. Since my wife was born in South Korea and grew up her whole life there, what other choice could there be? My wife's father has a Hyundai, her sister has a Hyundai and now so do we. It is not like we have plenty of other choices! It really came down to what vehicle cost the least and had the most features and drive the best. We found three different used Hyundai Santa Fe vehicles. I want to saw cars but they are not cars. Some people say they are SUVs, but they are not the typical SUV in size. For now it will have to be vehicle. The nicest thing is they don't drive like an SUV, but more like a car so my wife will enjoy that after having driven our huge Ford custom van for almost 10 years now. I am happy we only buy a vehicle every ten years as the whole process wore me out. I dislike shopping in general but car shopping and messing with car dealers is right at the bottom of my fun list. One last thing I have to comment about. It sure is strange how a Korea vehicle would be named after a city in New Mexico and the similar yet smaller model named after the city where my mother lives in Arizona. Pure intelligent marketing I think.

food and family

It is almost impossible to get our whole family together at this stage in every one's lives, but for my wife's birthday we came close. Since my wife was born and grew up her whole life in South Korea, she really likes Asian food, so we went to P.F. Chang's. I had always heard that it was a very expensive Chinese restaurant, which it was, but the atmosphere was really great for such special occasions, plus I did not have to pay for the bill so it was even more special! My wife's parents, my wife's sister and a really good friend of theirs as well as our children were all present. My oldest son is currently a waiter at another lesser food establishment so he could appreciate the high cost which means high tips and even said he would like to work at a place this nice. This is the first event in the series of landmarks for this year and hopefully they will all be as nice as this one. The older you get, the more the events themselves are not the focal point, but who is present to share them with you and this is why this one was so special.

Speaking of my waiter son, he rode is the car with us and as we talked I realized how much he has become responsible in the last four months. Can I dare say matured? For me, the idea of becoming mature means taking the responsibility you have been given and using it wisely. I see in the American Heritage Dictionary they define maturity as "The state or quality of being fully grown or developed". I am not sure when I can say any of my kids are fully grown mentally, but he is definitely on the path to getting there. I think life should be about getting better with age and learning new things all along the way, so I guess I will never fully achieve this goal either, which is good. The other good thing about my son is that is he learning what he is not good at doing, which is just as important as knowing what you like to do. This for me also is maturing.

To end the day, our two youngest children huddled on the floor in our bedroom to watch a 2004 Bollywood movie called Bride & Prejudice with us. We had all four watched this together before and the kids liked the line "no life without wife" so they did not mind seeing it again. It was nice to have them watch it with us as who knows how many more times this will happen as it is not "cool" to watch Indian movies with your parents.