The Invitations

Although we were inviting mostly people right next door, I still wanted to create some invitations and couldn’t pass up these cuties.

The Decorations

These were made from Styrofoam balls painted black and then glued to make a Mickey head.  I also painted her initials on them because I had three.

Mickey head plates and party hats.  I hot glued two small black plates to a larger one. They weren’t very sturdy, but were cute!  The party hats were made from white cardstock (I would have used red if I had it) and then I glued on two circles for the ears, attached a string and was finished.  I added a little red polka dot bow to the cups to add a little color to the table.

The door sign – it is no Lara Mattingly banner, but it worked okay! I  replaced the "a’s" and dots on the "i’s" with Mickey heads.

She was excited about her party!  This shirt was made by Emily Gilliland to raise funds for her adoption (you can have one too, check out her blog for details).

The food

Yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting.  We also dipped Oreos and another round cookie in chocolate to make Mickey heads.

Close up of the chocolate dipped Mickey heads.

Minnie’s lavender cocktail courtesy of Joe.  So pretty and tasty too!

We had a Hot Diggity Dog Hot Dog bar.  Complete with homemade hot dog buns, mustard, ketchup, onions, jalapenos, cheese and chili. 

Goofy’s Garden Veggie with guacamole and Minnie’s Mac and Cheese.

Chip and Dale Chips and Dip

Pluto’s Potato Salad

Pete’s Punch, which was really just homemade lemonade made from lemons straight off the tree!

Party favors were homemade caramel corn in Mickey bags.

The Guests

Guest of honor grabbing a quick snack before dinner started.

Ben!

Sister Diane

Sister Barbara
(Joe was here too but I don’t have a solo picture of him or me!)

The Games

We had two games.  The first was to see how many words you could make out of the letters in "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse".  Sister Barbara is a Scrabble fanatic so she blew everyone else out of the water!  We also had a drawing contest to see who could draw the best character from the show.  Mikayla was the judge.

Hard at work making some words.

Look at that concentrations!

Mikayla even joined in on the fun and wrote some letters.

Judging the drawing contest.

She chose Joe’s drawing and he was really excited about it!

Some party Snapshots

Enjoying her Mickey cupcake!

During present time she would open the gift and then run over to Joe and put it on his lap.  By the time she was finished his lap was piled high with gifts.  Then of course she went back over and studied each one individually!

She got lots of clothes from Mimi and Poppy so she played a little dress up game.  This is the outfit she ended the day in!

I think everyone enjoyed themselves and most importantly Mikayla had a blast!  It is still hard to believe that she is three!  Thanks to everyone who came out to the party, sent presents or called to wish her a Happy Birthday.  It was a great week of celebrating!

She got into the stamp pad without us looking!  See that big thing of stickers there…it is already halfway gone!

Playing her version of Candy Land – the gingerbread men characters visit the different "candy stores" and eat all the candy!

This was a craft sent from her aunts and uncles and cousins.  She has named it Aunt Christa and plays with it like it is a doll.

On Monday evening two people from Switzerland arrived to visit Cabrini for a couple of days.  We hosted them, along with several other staff members for dinner on Monday night and breakfast on Tuesday morning.  For dinner we had lasagna, spaghetti, salad, homemade bread and a Snickerdoodle cake for dessert.  After spending the majority of the day prepping for dinner I was exhausted after our guests left.  Then we got up the next day and made a fabulous breakfast of fresh squeezed OJ, eggs, bacon (both grilled and fried), fried potatoes and more fresh bread!  It was delicious but we were so full we couldn’t find it in ourselves to eat much for lunch or dinner!  The best part about our guests (at least for Mikayla the best part) was that the girl’s name was Michaela!  She thought it was really silly to say her name for someone else!

We have converted Joe to being a Settlers of Catan player, so we had a fun evening of Settlers after Mikayla went to bed on Friday.  I won of course, which made the evening even more enjoyable!

We have officially entered "winter" here, but it didn’t feel much like it!  It warmed back up again this week after a quick cold spell last week so we spent some time in Mikayla’s swimming pool playing.  We played with both princess dolls and her tea set.  And she spent a lot of time riding her rocking horse swing, despite the heat.  She also spent some time playing in the mango tree with her Super Mikayla cape (thanks Cat, Dave and Molly) trying to save Flounder who was supposedly at the top of the tree!  Her imagination never ceases to amaze me.

Where is Flounder, Super Mikayla?

Tea party in the swimming pool…doesn’t get much better than this!

At night when it cools off some Mikayla enjoys sitting and staring at stuff on her rocking horse swing.  I think it is really precious.

On Saturday we had Mikayla’s Mickey themed birthday party, more on that later.

But most exciting news of the week is that we bought plane tickets to head back to the US for a visit from August 19-September 24.  Plans while we are there are still up in the air and Ben will be working for most of that, but we were excited to get the tickets out of the way!   We will keep you posted of details as the time gets closer (and we have them of course)!

Step 1 – Gather your supplies.  You will need dirt, water, a pail or bowl to mix in and a pan to use as your pie pan.

Step 2 – Gather some dirt (or sand) and mix in some water.

Step 3 – Pour into pie pan (or other container you deem as your pie pan).

Step 4 – Add "berries" or extras to your pie if you want (i.e. rocks, leaves, stems, grass, pretty much anything you can find outside).

Mikayla kept calling this her cherry mud pie!

Step 5 – Enjoy and repeat!

She had a lot of fun, although I must say she wasn’t a fan of actually touching the mud with her fingers.  If she got mud on them, she wanted to immediately wipe it off.  We are working on that though!f  If you have kids and you haven’t made a mud pie with them yet, I suggest you go out and do it today!  So much fun and great for the imagination!

Birth

Year One

Year 2

Year 3

And just for reference here is a picture of her growth chart.

Ben’s finger is showing how tall she was when we got to Africa and the banana leaves above the three are how tall she is now.  She has grown almost three inches since July!  Crazy!

Mikayla woke up to find her floor filled with balloons and "streamers" on her door.  We looked all over for streamers and couldn’t find any so I glued some newspapers together and cut them into strips.  Not quite a festive as colored streamers, but she loved them anyway!

Then we made donuts and of course we had to put sprinkles.  I used this recipe for the  donuts and they were delicious!  Best the day they were made and well worth the effort it required!

Then she got down to opening her presents.  The first is from us and was a toolbox filled with art supplies.  She loves "crafting" things and so this was a hit. 

She also opened gifts from her aunts and uncles.  Here you can see her playing with her Candy Land game (thanks Aunt Chelsea and Uncle Tim) in her rocking new Toms (thanks Aunt Christa, Aunt Sarah, Uncle Christopher, Uncle Kris, Tyson, Tanner and Taylor).  There were other games and craft items included in these gifts, but I didn’t get pictures of them all.

After our donut breakfast and packages we hit up a park about thirty minutes down the road.  She ran and played and had a great time.  After some time at the park we went and grabbed lunch.  While at lunch Mikayla met an older couple (with a granddaughter her age) who she proudly told it was her birthday.  They then called in the owner and told him to go to the store and buy her a birthday cake…which he did!  They ended up inviting us to their house for coffee afterwards.  They had a ton of geese, rabbits, chickens, and dogs that Mikayla got to interact with.  She had so much fun.

After the park and animals we headed home for a dinner of cheeseburgers and french fries and of course some Funfetti cake! 

Daddy continued the cake smashing tradition him and our friend Rod always had, but this year Mikayla took the brunt of it. 

She didn’t seem to mind though, and I helped her to get him back!

We had a great day celebrating with her and she will now proudly tell anyone who listens that she is three!

This is not a K specific activity, but I try to throw in whole alphabet activities whenever I can.  This was originally intended as an interactive letter line to hang on the wall, but I never got around to hanging it so we turned it into a game.  On each clothespin is a sticker of a letter.  She had to match the lettered clothespin to the correct letter card.  Both phonics and fine motor practice in this game.  She loved it so much I think we ended up laying it three times this day!

We made a letter K king by gluing a king crown on top an then of course she had to have her very own king crown!

She has really love typing letters lately and has recently asked for me to spell certain words for her to type.  As you can see, her number one is her friend Lylah’s name!

This is a color by number picture I made of a kite and the sun.  She did great at finding the right number and coloring it, but she still hasn’t caught on to color the whole area and not just the number.

Letter K kite picture.

Kite with her last name (which also starts with a K) down the string.

Kangaroo letter game.  I drew out a kangaroo and cut up different letter cards.  She had to look at the letter cards and fill his pouch with only the letter K.

We also glued kernels of corn onto the letter K, but I didn’t get a picture.  We did some counting with the kernels as well.  We move on to the letter N next since we did M a few months back!

5 – She got a small notebook and several pages of stickers.  She loves to stick stickers inside a notebook so this was a hit.  Unfortunately, she used most of her stickers that day!

4 – Popcorn and movie night.  Ben said up a projector to project the movie on our living room wall.  We popped a big bowl of popcorn and let her go to town!  She thought it was really neat watching a movie that big and sat really nicely for the whole thing.  I think she might be ready for a real theater experience!

3 – Campfire complete with roasting marshmallows and hotdogs.  Sister Diane walked over during this "event" and Mikayla told her all about what was happening!

In her bag I put a felt hot dog, a marshmallow and fire made with pipe cleaners.  Here she is "starting a fire" with her pipe cleaner fire.

2 – Felt finger puppets.  I whipped these out during her nap one day.  She hasn’t quite figured out what to do with them and how to put them on, but she plays with them like they are stuffed animals or babies!

1- Mickey Mouse dress up kit made from a little felt and some hot glue!  This one was placed in a special purse made from our friend Dacia back home.  She is loving some Mickey Mouse lately and so I thought this would be perfect and it was a HIT as was the purse!  Now when she watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse she wants to put on her Mickey outfit.  So cute!  I wonder if she will want to wear it to her Mickey birthday party next week?

We did lots of fun things on her actual birthday, more to come soon when I am not so tired!

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

January

February

March

April

Happy Birthday Mikayla!  I hope your fourth year of life is just as exciting as your third!

We collected leaves and then did some leave rubbings.  She had a hard time with this because she is still not pressing down very hard when she writes.

Then we painted with leaves!

She had some leftover paint, so we practiced writing the Letter L using our fingers.

Handprint lion!

Bead balancing – I made a mound of clay and stuck an uncooked spaghetti noodle in it and then she slid on the beans.  Great fine motor practice!

While she was working, I made a lady bug out of the leftover clay.

A special lion lunch.  I served with a PB sandwich!

Letter L lion

Hand and footprint lobster.  I goofed and put her footprint upside down, but you get the idea!

Ladybug fun.  We made the paper plate lady bug and then rolled dice to see how many spots to put on him.  When we were finished we just glued the spots on.  This would be easy to adapt to addition by rolling a dice for each side, laying the spots on both sides and then counting them all together.  Then we made a Letter L ladybug by coloring an L red and then gluing on spots.

Since Mikayla’s middle name starts with an L, I decided to work on spelling it this week.  So, I made some letter cards and put them on binder clips upside down and had her put them in order.  We will continue to work on her middle name in weeks to come.

Next week we will move backwards to the letter K, although I am still struggling with activities for this one…

After work on Friday we packed up the car and headed to Nelspruit, South Africa.  We visited here at Christmas time and it is a great place to go to get away and enjoy some "western" time.  On Saturday we did some shopping and picked up some goodies.  We of course stocked up on tortilla chips and salsa!  I also found a small craft store inside a store called Mica.  It was beautiful.  It was like going in a miniature Hobby Lobby.  I didn’t get much (besides a few supplies for Mikayla’s Mickey Mouse Birthday Party coming up in a few weeks), but it is nice to know that it is there.  Now I can start thinking crafts again and actually have somewhere to pick up the supplies.

On Sunday we loaded up the car and headed to Blyde River Canyon, which is about an hour away.  We experienced some of the most beautiful scenery we had ever seen.  The pictures don’t do it justice (you can see Ben’s full album here), but if you ever find yourself in South Africa, you should check it out.  We basically drove around and stopped at different viewpoints.  Some of the viewpoints you had to walk to (although not very far) and others were right beside the car.  Amazing!

Obligatory tree pictures!  I am always on the lookout for good trees to snap some pictures in.  I LOVE this picture of Mikayla!  She is such a ham sometimes!

We saw several waterfalls on this trip, but this one was my favorite! 

Skipping rocks with daddy!

And of course, what would a Kickert family trip be without Ben being a little goofy!

Another Adkins Family Tree shot. 

We want to go camping down by this lake.

Another amazing waterfall!

On Monday we laid low and did a bit more shopping.  We had planned to take Mikayla swimming, but it was windy which made it a little too cool for swimming.  She did go "swimming" in the bathtub that evening though!  On Tuesday Ben got up and did a little repair work on the vehicle, then we packed the car and headed back to Kruger National Park.  At first we didn’t see much of anything besides impala and a couple of elephants way off in the distance.  We were getting a little discouraged and then out of the corner of my eyes I saw these guys.

That’s right folks, we have two cheetahs.  Beautiful creatures and we were so close to them.  When we saw them, we immediately turned around and "stalked" them for a bit.  There were times when we were less than ten feet from them.  One of the best animal sightings we have seen to date.  Here are some more shots of the cheetahs (forgive us we took a lot) and some other animals we spotted.  (More pictures can be found here).

Some more impala, these guys are seriously everywhere in the park!

We saw lots of these guys flying around too.

These are the first hippos we have seen out of water.  Of course it was from a distance, so it is hard to tell what they are.

I think this guys lashes were beautiful.  We watched him eating for a bit and Mikayla kept calling him Horton!

The weather is starting to cool off a little at night time so we decided that we should build a fire pit in the back yard this week.  The other night we got out our new camp chairs (even Mikayla has one) and sat around the new fire pit enjoying some chili.  Felt a little like a fall evening!

Doesn’t Mikayla look so grown up in her "Junior" Camp chair?  Please ignore Ben’s combination of shorts, dress socks and hiking boots.

This stubborn goat ended up on our porch one afternoon and we couldn’t get rid of him.  He fell on the porch at one time and because of the wax couldn’t get up and was stuck on his side for several minutes.  He was scared of the dogs, so he just froze.  Ben tried to chase him off with a broom, but we eventually had to pull him by the horns.  Unfortunately, I think the dogs got the better of him because we found him dead outside the fence in the morning.

I also managed to do a little baking and cooking in the last few weeks.  I made some pretty tasty chocolate chip cookie bars one day.  I really wanted cookies, but didn’t want to invest the time in making them, so I made bars instead.  The next best thing!  While in Nelspruit I found some recipes I want to try in the next few weeks.

This is the Piña Colada Cake I mentioned making for Easter dinner.  It was good, but not my favorite dessert.  If I make it again I will make a lot of changes and alterations to enhance the flavor.

For part of my birthday Rita made me this fabulous bowl.  She mentioned she uses one similar to it for making bread, so I gave it a go.  Look how pretty it is!  I would love to try it as a Deep Dish Chicken Pot Pie.