{"id":3093,"date":"2012-02-05T10:09:49","date_gmt":"2012-02-05T16:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/2012\/02\/05\/this-weeks-happenings-130-25\/"},"modified":"2012-02-05T10:09:49","modified_gmt":"2012-02-05T16:09:49","slug":"this-weeks-happenings-130-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/2012\/02\/05\/this-weeks-happenings-130-25\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week&#8217;s Happenings 1\/30-2\/5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is it really already February?&#160; Time seems to be flying by.&#160; We have been in Swaziland now for over six months and seem to be in a pretty good routine and feel 100% confident about our decision to move here.<\/p>\n<p>And six months in, Ben is already prepping for his first trip back to the United States.&#160; It will be mostly business, but he will get to see some family in Chicago so he is excited about that.&#160; He will be gone March 5-24.&#160; If you want more details on his trip just let us know.&#160; We will miss him for sure, but will keep ourselves busy while he is away!<\/p>\n<p>The puppies are growing each day and every once in awhile we will find them sneaking into our house to take a break from the heat.&#160; Here is a shot from them the other day.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; margin: 0px auto; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: block; float: none; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"Pumpkin seeds, puppies and hopping 015\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Pumpkin seeds, puppies and hopping 015\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Pumpkin-seeds-puppies-and-hopping-015.jpg\" width=\"444\" height=\"267\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Mikayla got a couple of Signing Time DVD&#8217;s from her grandparents for Christmas and has really been loving them lately.&#160; She is getting really good at signing along and really focuses on getting her hands in the right positioning to make the signs.&#160; The other day I was watching her while she was watching a Signing Time and she was signing right along to the video and songs and was even signing words that hadn&#8217;t been taught, just shown.&#160; So precious!<\/p>\n<p>On Saturday night Joe (the new volunteer) came over and cooked a fabulous dinner for us.&#160; He made braised rabbit, mashed potatoes and gravy.&#160; We paired it with focaccia bread I had made Friday and some butternut squash chocolate chip cookies.&#160; The rabbit actually tasted a lot like chicken and Mikayla ate it up.&#160; Delicious!<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday we had folks over for lunch to complete our mango chili pepper challenge.&#160; I made crepes with a mango pepper marmalade and homemade whipped cream (super easy by the way).&#160; Ben made grilled chicken breast strips marinated with a ginger infused mango heat glaze.&#160; And Joe made a mango\/pepper cocktail with Rum.&#160; The sisters contributed a chili dish.&#160; It was a tasty meal and we had a lot of fun experimenting with different flavors.&#160; I love that I have more time to do stuff like that now!<\/p>\n<p>Tonight, as most of you in the states know, is the Super Bowl.&#160; Our satellite is actually broadcasting it live, so we decided to watch it.&#160; The only downside is that live means 1:00am.&#160; I guess we will just be tired tomorrow.&#160; I told the guys I would be willing to watch it if we had appetizers, so appetizers it is at 1:00am!&#160; I will contributing a homemade ranch dip with veggies and potato skins.&#160; Can&#8217;t wait!<\/p>\n<p>On a downside, my driver&#8217;s license is set to expire at the end of the month.&#160; We tried to get this taken care of before we left but the courthouse wouldn&#8217;t let us renew it because it was too far out and hadn&#8217;t expired yet.&#160; There is no way to renew overseas, so I have to get a Swazi driver&#8217;s license.&#160; Unless we can figure something else out I will have to go through the whole shebang&#8230;written test and driving test.&#160; Should be fun!&#160; To say the least I am not looking forward to it at all.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s about it in news from the Kickert&#8217;s for this week.&#160; Hope everyone had a good week.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; margin: 0px auto; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: block; float: none; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"Pumpkin seeds, puppies and hopping 009\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Pumpkin seeds, puppies and hopping 009\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Pumpkin-seeds-puppies-and-hopping-009.jpg\" width=\"444\" height=\"297\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><em>Mikayla enjoying some toasted pumpkin seeds!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is it really already February?&#160; Time seems to be flying by.&#160; We have been in Swaziland now for over six months and seem to be in a pretty good routine and feel 100% confident about our decision to move here. And six months in, Ben is already prepping for his first trip back to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,3],"tags":[161,116],"class_list":["post-3093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooking","category-life","category-parenting","tag-cooking","tag-weeks-happenings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}