This past year has flown by!  It is hard to believe that we are already in 2012 and my sweet baby will be three in less than four months!  Looking back on this year I think that the theme would be trips and experiences!  It seems that we took a lot of trips and did a lot of things with family and friends in 2011.  Here is a quick picture recap of our last year.

January

We played in a lot of snow and savored every minute of the cold since it would be our last for awhile!

February

We played in more snow.  We actually had a decent snow season for Kentucky last year.  We ended the month with a breakfast themed birthday party for myself since that happens to be my favorite meal.

March

We celebrated Dr. Seuss’s birthday in style this year.  My sister got Mikayla an early birthday gift of a the cutest Dr. Seuss dress and I made a couple of clips (Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 and 2) and we went to the library to see the Cat in the Hat.  We also did lots of fun Dr. Seuss activities at home.  Ben left for two weeks in Swaziland and Mikayla and I hit the road to Atlanta for some fun with our friends Catherine and Molly.  Ben also "stopped" working at Corsair this month. 

April

At the beginning of the month I joined my mom and my sister and her kids for a circus in Bowling Green. Mikayla slept in her big girl bed for the first time and got her first hair cut this month.  We went to Dinosaur World with my mom and sister and her kids.  We also hosted an Easter lunch with some family and friends.  Mikayla really got into looking for the eggs this year.  For Mikayla’s birthday this year we chose to give her an experience rather than an actual birthday gift.  So we once again loaded up the car and headed to Chattanooga. 

May

We hosted a candy themed birthday party in honor of Mikayla’s 2nd birthday.  I turned in my letter of resignation to my school home of the last six years, T. C. Cherry Elementary.  I said goodbye to all my loving students and packed up all my teaching belongings.  Ben took Mikayla hiking a couple of times while I was at work.  Ben is not big on birthdays, but we managed to have a pizza themed birthday party for him anyway!  Ben also slaughtered a chicken in our garage!

June

We went strawberry picking at a local patch.  We visited a lot of parks in Bowling Green.  Mikayla and I took a final vacation with our friends Lara and Lylah.  We went swimming in her parents pool and hit up the Evansville Zoo.  Some of my sweet college friends and their kids (those that have them) came to Bowling Green for some fun at Chik-fil-A.  I also got to spend some quality time with my dear friend Catherine and her daughter Molly (same friends we went to Atlanta with).  We also took Mikayla fishing for the first time at my grandparents farm.

July

We went camping with some of our favorite people from Bowling Green.  We moved out of our house and in with Ben’s brother (Tim) and sister-in-law (Chelsea).  We packed up, gave away or sold all of our belongings, said final goodbyes to our family and friends and got on an airplane for the biggest adventure of our lives – we moved to Swaziland, Africa.  After an adventure in getting there we finally arrived!

August

We spent a lot of time outside playing in the cooler weather.  We hosted two malnourished, TB positive twins (Nosipho and Simo) for a month and helped to nurse them back to health.

September

We continue to watch our "three kids" grow and play together.  Then we sent the twins back to the hostel after the school break was over.  We took our first "bush walk" through the bush in our backyard.  I also began teaching Mikayla Toddler School where we focus mostly on letters and numbers.  We went on our first safari drive and bought a handcrafted kitchen table.  We also started our obsession with bird watching!

October

Mikayla and I spent a lot of time learning during our Toddler Time, baked a lot, tried out some new recipes and enjoyed family time.  We also celebrated St. Phillips with the St. Phillips Day Feast.  We went on another safari drive and saw a lot of giraffes!  We also got to experience what it was like to have your house swarmed by hundreds of flying termites.

November

We went on a second "bush walk", which was quite different than the first.  Everything was green and grown!  We hosted our first Swazi Thanksgiving with a bunch of the staff members of Cabrini.  We also celebrated with the Cabrini staff for the Feast of Mother Cabrini.

December

We did some holiday baking, including the famous cinnamon rolls!  We made cinnamon ornaments, gingerbread cookies and much more.  We drove through one of the nature reserves and messed up our new vehicle we had just purchased.  I joined the staff for an all staff overnight training in town while Ben stayed at home with Mikayla.  We traveled to South Africa for our first African Christmas.  Saw lots of animals at Kruger and enjoyed some tasty meals with Sister Barbara and Sister Diane.  We even did some swimming!  We got back home and hosted the twins (mentioned above) for another week.  We ended the year by celebrating New Year’s Eve with some new friends we almost bought a car from – Peter, Callista and their daughter Aviva.  We played Settler’s of Catan, ate some yummy food and watched some fireworks at midnight!

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 8th, 2012 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.