Engrish

Being the mommy of a 3 year old it's fun to watch language develop. He still gets some words/concepts wrong, here are some of my favorites from this week.

"When my older, I can drink onion juice just like daddy" (communion juice)

"My eyes are running" (I'm crying)

"Let's go to the couch room" (livingroom.... hey its a bathroom and a bedroom, why wouldn't it be a couch room?)

"Mommy, where's the cows gutter, I can't see it?" (udder)

"Mommy I feld (past tense of fell, makes sense!) and I'm dying, can I have some special medicine?"

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to my hubby who always sacrificially cares for our kiddos, and reads them countless stories, and for our dads who did the same when we were little :)

Winter

Wintertime in Durban tends to sneak up on me. May is absolutely beautiful with warm sun and clear skies, and then one day it hits in June, and the air has this bone chilling waft that seems to enter into your inner being. In LA you have the "warning" signs of Thanksgiving and Christmas music lulling you into the cold. But here its suddenly upon you with seemingly no warning.
This is the first year I haven't felt this overwhelming sense that the seasons are "backwards." There are no thoughts of BBQ's in summer and beach trips this time of year. Since no one has central heating here, the warmth can be found in most houses from hot baths, electric hot blankets, hot coffee, and small oil heaters. I love it, its quite cozy. My mornings are usually spent reading with my kids under a warm blanket for about an hour, sipping hot coffee. They sit there happily knowing that its the warmest place to be. Tobi finds her warmth from our little red blanket.
This winter I'm going to save the seeds from our little vine so that it can cover our whole fence.

Attack of the Tickle Monster

Moms and Tots

For the last month or so I've been taking Noah to a weekly Moms and Tots. We have one through HBC but its once a month, and once Noah turned 3 it seemed like he needed a bit more stimulation weekly. At first he was quite shy of the other kids, but now he loves it and is starting to do all the hand motions to the songs and really get into it and have fun. His favorite thing to do is the craft/paint table.

And the "messy play"

And the big ball play where they just throw around a ton of beach balls and kick them. Autumn has started coming with and she loves it too!

Moms and Tots has taken a break for the 2010 world cup soccer, which was good timing cause my kiddos have been sick off and on for 2 weeks. It's been freezing outside, and I haven't been able to go anywhere with sicky kids, so we've had a bit of cabin fever. So I found this book in our church bookstore and have slowly started going through it. It's perfect for Noah's age cause its a NT Bible lesson with a little (super easy) craft you do with them. He looks forward to it every day!

Jesus loves me

So what you'll learn from this video is that my son is rather tone deaf, but loves loves to sing. It's awesome to watch his heart understand the things of God every day.

One Brave Boy! (And one super cute little girl)

Ever have one of those days that you've got a smile on your face the whole time? That was this Saturday! Winter is the season for schools in the Hillcrest area to have fairs, since its dry and warm in Durbs just before the chill of winter sets in. We went to the biggest fair (at Noah's possible future school, Hillcrest Christian Academy) and Noah was SO SO brave. I couldn't believe my own eyes. Last year he didn't even want to go in the jumping castle or on the rides meant for one year olds. And this year, he wanted to do EVERYTHING! He's normally quite cautious, so it was fun to see him come out of his shell.

First of all, he's been asking me for the last month if he could please please ride on a tractor. I had no idea how I could even make this happen, and he asks me every single day.

Well, they had quad bikes at the fair, and he thought it was a tractor, so there you go! Most moms with kids Noah's age would ride on the big "tractor" with their kid, but Noah was super brave and wanted to ride on the little one "all by myself".
Then he saw this monstorous slide, and just had to slide down it. Wow. So here's the littlest boy in the world on the world's biggest slide!

Then there was the little train that last year he cried at the thought of, but this year he wanted to go twice, and said "wow mom that was so so much fun!"

We met up with his friend Keenan (and I had fun with Keenan's mommy Mindie), and they rode together.

Then Autumn saw the little airplanes that went round and round, and well, she smiled the whole time.
They played a little kid version of "hakuna matata" and she'd dance and dance while going around.

The joy on her face was pretty priceless.

Then on the way to the car Noah begged me to ride the "tractor" again! So here we go!

Pretoria

This last week we got to fly to Pretoria and enjoy the Shepherd's Conference. Pat Abendroth was the main speaker this year, and we were blessed to hear great sermons on the importance of keeping the gospel pure, and warnings about the emergent church movement. Clint got to preach one of the sessions, and I was listening and forgot to take a pic of him preaching! But here's one of Pat Abendroth.

We were so blessed to have Clint's sister Bronwyn look after my kiddos while I got to go to the conference. She runs a creche that looks after kids from 3 mo to 5 years, so it was perfect for my kids to play with other little kids for the day. Here's Autumn with her Aunty Helen and Aunty Bronwyn.

And Noah's Granny threw him ANOTHER birthday party at the creche (how spoiled is my kid to have two birthday parties?) :)

It was a Thomas the train party, and he loved it!

Cutting the cake with Aunty Bronwyn.

Eating the cake. yum yum!

He even got presents from his Aunty's and Uncles and Granny. He loves his new train set!

Grandpa (or as Noah says it "Crapper"....we still laugh out loud every time he says this) was in the hospital in ICU recovering from surgery, so we'd take turns looking after the kids so we could visit him and would often pop into Granny's shop to say hi. Crapper says thank you for all your prayers!

Aunty Helen babysat the kiddos so we could go out and see the play Grease (I forgot my Camera, but it was such a good show!) So we AND my kiddos were spoiled the last week, thank you! :)

The fair

For the last week all of us had a bad case of the stomach flu since we came back from Pretoria, which has lead to a LOT of laundry, and many grateful thanksgivings for the fact that we have wood floors and not carpet (how to people have kids and carpet? I still don't see how this would work). Anyway, Noah's beloved giraffe (who's name is Giraffe, in case you wanted to know) has always been in dire need of a good bath. After Giraffe took a brunt of Noah's stomach flu one morning, he decided it was a good idea to give Mr. Giraffe a bath...he looked so cute on the line with all my other laundry....

To start my little catch up since the stomach flu, a few weeks ago we went to our church's preschool fair. It was such a fun day for the kids, and we had lots of fun too...Noah's first request was for ice cream, since every other kid was licking a cone on an Indian Summer day. It was the best ice cream I've had in SA. Ice cream at the grocery store is REALLY milky...but this one was more like I'm used to, super flavor intense. Yum.

Then we went fishing for prizes, Noah loved this and did it twice. He got some toy dinosaurs and a yo yo. He was really good at it.

We had a fun family date and had some tea and cake

Autumn won a prize of some jewelry which she loved. She now puts them on her babies and walks around the house looking like Mr. T.

She also tried fishing after Noah was done, but just liked the sound of the crinkling paper the best :)