In case you hadn’t noticed it has been awhile since I have done a "This Week’s Happenings". There are several reasons for this, but I won’t go into them for now. What I will do though is give a quick rundown on what we have been up to for the last two months.
We celebrated the Feast of Mother Cabrini.
Joe all decked out in traditional gear for the feast day with Mikayla.
The kids marching in for the mass in celebration of Mother Cabrini.
Mikayla and I got to go see the Queen Mother.
We also took some pictures of the whole Cabrini staff.
I hosted lots of baking classes with some of the high school students. We made anything from pancakes to cookies to cakes to pizza. It was a lot of fun getting to know the kids better and sharing with them my love for baking. I think they enjoyed eating everything the most! They also enjoyed taking lots of pictures of themselves!
Played with sidewalk chalk a lot and enjoyed eating fresh mangos from our yard. She is becoming quite the little artist!
We hosted Thanksgiving for 20+ of our staff members. People were coming and going all afternoon and evening. It was fun, but I will say I slept really well that evening!
The Feast!
We had each of our guest complete a leaf for our Thankful tree. It was quite full when everyone left!
During school time Mikayla wrote a really cool story in her journal. See if you can figure out what it was about! She has also been doing some great artwork in her journal.
We let Mikayla decorate our Christmas tree. She was really into Christmas this year and enjoyed every aspect of it. She is actually still celebrating. Today (December 30) she wrote a letter to Santa!
We did lots of fun family activities as part of our Christmas countdown. Including making salt dough ornaments, gingerbread cookies, and crafts!
Making salt dough ornaments.
Gingerbread cookies!
I baked over 500 cookies and popped popcorn for 150 as part of the hostel Christmas party.
We turned an old nightstand into a doll house for Mikayla’s Christmas gift. I am pretty sure she loves it!
We packed up the car (including our tree this year) and headed to Nelspruit, South Africa for a week long vacation and the Christmas holiday. We ate a lot and relaxed even more!
We made cinnamon rolls…can’t have Christmas without them!
We took our traditional Christmas jammies pictures with cocoa!
We headed to Kruger Park with the Sister Barbara and Sister Diane for a little game drive. We saw a lot including elephants, zebras, giraffe, leopard, hyenas, monkeys, a really cool chameleon and lots of others. It was rainy and muddy, but we still had fun. Mikayla even got to use her adventure pack her grandparents got her for Christmas!
We Skyped and chatted with a lot of family and friends.
We went to the doctor and found out I was pregnant! Baby Kickert #2 is due July 4th!
We rang in the new year with our friends Peter and Callista and their daughter Aviva. I hope to get back to doing our weekly updates soon.
Tags: animals, Christmas, Cinnamon rolls, Traditions, travel, weeks happenings
Pictures of your cooking class and the feast remind me that teenagers ar so much the same the world over. loved the pic of mikayla’s profile by the tree.