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.

Kinley's 7 & 8 month pics

Once again I am behind on blogging.  Surprise!  Here is Kinley on her 7th and 8th month.

This first picture was when Kinley turned 7 months.  You might see some similarities from a previous post!  This is Barbara, my maid Magdeline's 10 year old daughter.  She came to work with Mag one day and loved playing with Kinley.  I left them playing for a bit to do some things around the house, and then when I found them again... Kinley was on her back! I guess they start teaching them young.

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Bidding again already

OK, last post for today, I PROMISE!  Sorry to those of you that get email notifications of every new post.  Your inbox has been inundated today!

We have been in Pretoria almost exactly a year now, which is hard to believe.  It has flown by and we can’t believe we only have one more year left.  So now comes the time to start bidding on our next post.  We got the list and are pretty excited about most of the places.  Of course there are some that I would rather not even think about the possibility of having to move there.  But we got in this for the adventure, right?!

So here it is!  Let the voting begin.

Algiers, Algeria

Asuncion, Paraguay

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Dubai, UAE

Dushanbe, Tajikistan

Frankfurt, Germany

Guangzhou, China

Karachi, Pakistan

Kingston, Jamaica

La Paz, Bolivia

Monterrey, Mexico

New Delhi, India

Stockholm, Sweden

As of now, our Top 5 (in no particular order) are:

1.     Asuncion, Paraguay (Lee’s first choice)

2.     La Paz, Bolivia

3.     Stockholm, Sweden (My first choice)

4.     Frankfurt, Germany

5.     Dubai, UAE

Peek-a Boo and Pools

Kinley just now started thinking Peek-a-boo was funny!  She had just gotten out of the bath one night and I was getting her ready for bed in her crib.  Lee was standing there and started hiding behind a blanket and popping out each side.  As soon as he would hide, she would look to the other side and wait for him to pop out!  It was so cute.  Yes, something all babies do.  But when its your own baby, you think its something special!  So we took a video.

Then today she started floating lessons.  She loves the water, so I thought it would be something fun to do.  The two babies that were in before her screamed the entire time.  But she loved it.  She was calm the entire time.  I am sure she will get her freak out moment at some point, but today she was great.  It is a salt water pool, and she thought that tasty funny, but she still stuck her tongue out every time the teacher put water on her face.