We had a big year in 2013 and 2014 is looking to be just as busy and promising! Here is a quick recap of what our year looked like.
January
We spent a lot of our January hanging as a family of three, growing a baby and playing with some awesome Christmas toys. Mikayla played princess soccer quite a bit this month.
February
February marked our first official visitors with a visit from Ben’s cousin Jana and her friend Olivia. We had a blast showing them around our neck of the woods and prepping for our March visitors (Ben’s parents). I also celebrated the big 30!
March
Ben took a trip to Ethiopia for work and Mikayla and I hung back at St. Philips. We had fun learning about Dr. Seuss and prepping some more for Ben’s parents. We spent a couple of weeks hosting his parents and showing them around Swaziland and South Africa. We also had a pig roast in honor of Sr. Diane’s birthday (70), my birthday (30) and Mikayla’s birthday (4). We even threw in a princess theme for Mikayla!
April
In April we dyed Easter eggs with some friends and went on a hunt around the yard with the eggs. We also celebrated a very special girls fourth birthday. Since we had her party when Ben’s parents were here we just had a mini celebration at the house. She was very excited about her big present which was her first bike!
May
In May we worked on making the final preparations for Baby Kickert. Mikayla also got creative in the kitchen and made a very special birthday cake for her daddy who turned 31 this year.
June
June was pretty quiet and I was pretty large! We laid low this month and did a lot of creative play at the house. You can see Mikayla hanging out in the laundry baskets pretending to be a animals in a cage! That girl has some serious imagination!! We spent this month anticipating and guessing when Baby Kickert would make his grand debut.
July
This was probably the biggest month for us as a family as we welcomed Maxwell Simo Kickert into the world on July 4! Mikayla was so excited to be a big sister.
August
We didn’t do much of anything in August except snuggle with our kiddos and try to get some sleep here and there between feeding and wake cycles! It went by so fast and so slow all at the same time.
September
We took Max on his first hike up Execution Rock this month. He slept most of the time so not sure how impressed he was. Mikayla continue to amaze us with her ability to hike to the top and bottom all by herself. She is getting so big!! Speaking of Mikayla, she also started her second year of preschool at home this month. It took us awhile to get back in the school routine once Max was born. Mikayla, Max and I took advantage of a holiday with Katie, Bravo and his boys and took a walk to the river for a picnic one day. Everyone had a blast.
October
Mikayla practiced her photography skills this month by shooting some pictures of her brother and taking a special walk with daddy to take pictures in the bush. We also busted out the pool because we had some hot spells. Max was not so impressed with the pool! And of course there were lots of snuggle sessions with Max!
November
We hosted another Thanksgiving meal with some of the Cabrini staff members. This year we had maintenance and transportation staff over for the big holiday. The picture below was the highlight of my day. Fodo, a maintenance staff member, took Max and was really engaging with him. This is unusual for a Swazi man to take interest in a young child. Typically, the father won’t really look at the baby until they are around six months old. So this was huge!!
December
We took a family vacation, with Katie in tow, to Nelspruit for a week. We spent the week eating lots of food, shopping and enjoying some time away from work. And of course, we had a great Christmas. We spent this year at our house, which was a bit unusual for us! Typically we are away or traveling during Christmas day. We also had another pig roast on Christmas Eve which was a lot of fun.
There you have it folks, a quick look back at our year! Like I said earlier, it was a busy one!
