A Butcher, A Baker, A Cowboy boot vase maker!

I wish I took more pictures.  I have really good intentions, but I always fall short!

THE BUTCHER
We had a Memphis BBQ at our house last weekend.  We wanted to show our South African friends what smoked pork tasted like!  He smoked 3 pork shoulders and 3 chickens. I didnt get pics of the pork, but I got Lee putting the beer chicken on the smoker! So that is good enough. And everything was TASTY!

THE BAKER
There is a website that gives you different activities to do with your kids for each week of their life.  For the 9th month, 3rd week the activity was to let them play with flour!  AHHH!  I was a little stressed out about this.  I am not a clean freak, but things like this make me feel very OCD.  But its nothing that cant be cleaned up, right?  So I laid a plastic bag on the kitchen floor and put flour in some measuring cups.  Then away she went!  It was probably the best day of her life. 

THE COWBOY BOOT VASE MAKER
There are rarely pics of me, which is fine.  So I didnt have a "part" in this little tale!  So I thought I would show the centerpieces I did for the BBQ.  They didnt turn out exactly as I wanted, but they were still pretty cute!

Our next post is...

PARAGUAY

Better late than never

So when we were in Memphis and Tulsa over Christmas, we had some pictures taken of Kinley.  We had booked a professional photographer in Tulsa, but Lee's mom also booked an appointment at a place in Memphis and we thought we could get some cute Christmas themed pictures there.  So needless to say, we have LOTS of pictures of Kinley! Not quite sure what to do with them all, but we are glad to have them! It was hard for me to narrow them down for this post, but this gives a good sampling.

Here she is in Memphis at Portrait Innovations:

This is her little Santa outfit that Mimi gave her!

Giving cookies to Santa (Daddy)

Just relaxing in the rocker

This is the owl hat I made for her.  I wish the other ear stood up, but oh well

Our little wrinkled nose girl

Then here she is in Tulsa.  The photographer was Erin from Artsy Phartsy!

I love this one of her and Lee

And since we were all there for Christmas we had Erin take a big Turner family picture

Dirt!

Today Kinley and I met up with some other moms and babies at a cute little restaurant called Jam and Daisies.  We went last week and are trying to make it a weekly tradition.  They put us at a table out in the garden so we would have enough room with all of our strollers and junk!  One of the babies is just 11 days younger than Kinley (you cant tell by their head size! You know the HUGE Carnell head)!

Kinley's little friend from Australia

As soon as I put her on the blanket, she immediately went for the grass.  She does this every time she is around grass.  And it was kind of wet so the dirt was a bit muddy.  She made a big mess and I had to constantly try to keep the grass and dirt out of her mouth.  Lee thinks I am a horrible mom that I didnt catch all the dirt.  Oh well.  I freaked out at first, but then tried to relax.  We all ate dirt when we were little, right? 

Check out all the grass she pulled on the blanket

Look, as stick in my hand

Now a stick in my mouth!

Ok, I will admit I was stressed, but really tried to get over it.  How do I become that mom that just doesnt care?  Should I care?  I dont know!  She survived.  All is well.  We will see what happens next time.

Fun family time

I dont brag about Lee enough.  But I must say that I have been super impressed with him lately.  He has become somewhat of a Pork Master!  He decided to build a smoker, since they dont exist her in SA and he was missing ribs. 

Pretty impressive, right?

The first night he tried it out I forgot to take pictures.  But he made a great pork shoulder that cooked overnight for 12 hours!  Then a few days later he made me a wonderful grilled pork tenderloin for V-day (obviously not on the smoker, but this still works in with the Pork Master bit).  And then yesterday he smoked some ribs!

He has been researching and reading on the best way to do it and it has been really fun for us as a family.  And here is the finished product:

If my dad had cooked those my mom would definitely yell at him that they were burnt!  But they werent!  Just dark with yummy smoky flavor! Cant wait to see what he makes next.

Then today, since Lee had off for Presidents Day, we decided to check out the Pretoria Zoo.  All in all, it was good.  Kinley was very tired and didnt last long, so we didnt get to see everything.  But it was nice to get out and do something together.  But the funniest part of the entire trip was that as we were driving to the zoo to see animals, we saw Giraffe and Zebra about 5 minutes from our house.  Sometimes I forget I live in Africa!  But I am grateful for moments like that to remind me.

Kinley with the Scarlett Ibis' in the background

Watching the elephant roll around

With the giraffes

MESSY

Mommy gave me a teething biscuit today!

I am pretty sure they are my favorite now!

I even like to share them with Rugby

Uh-oh!  What have I done?

I am MESSY, MESSY, MESSY!!

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day!  No, Kinley will not remember this holiday.  And she didnt even get to have any good Valentines Day treats or chocolate.  But I couldnt let the day go by without dressing her in pink and red hearts!  I had to sew the heart onto her shirt because they dont really have V-day clothes here.  Although she looks happy in these pictures, it was a pretty bad day.  She got a fever in the afternoon and then the next day threw up.  :(  I of course freaked out because it was the first time she had been sick.  But all is well.  We survived.

She loves the giant bear Nana sent her!

 On a side note, we got 11 boxes in the mail this day.  It was like Christmas.  Some were packages from people, like the enormous bear you see above!  But most of it was stuff we ordered from Amazon.  A lot of times we forget what we ordered by the time it gets here.  And sometimes we remember what we ordered, but obviously we didnt realize how MUCH we ordered.  I give you Exhibit A:

 Yep, thats 22 containers of Crystal Light, each containing 6-8 packets!  I think we are set for the rest of our time here.