Kitchen Kitchen

Autumn gets in these "pretend pretend" moods where she plays for hours cooking up a storm. You'll often hear her say things like "I'm making soup, don't eat your cupcake until your done with your soup"

 And she'll often make you an awesome toasted sandwich

 And hot cups of tea...with sugar that must be heated up "just so"

 We love our little chef in the making

OCTOBER

So after chasing after my walking 1 year old I haven't blogged in a while...here's a month in a flash!

Since all the grandparents came to visit Jude for his 1st birthday we pulled out the mattress and the kids had "Archer Olympics" every day where they would do somersaults and rolls and jumps for hours (it rains in October, so yay for inside activities!)

 Lots of giggles and hugs

 And fun rolls and loves

 My parents came and we went to see some African animals and stayed in a tree house!

 The game drives were long...so Jude didn't hold up but Jude and Autumn loved seeing all the animals

 We saw a heard of like 50 elephant

 And stayed in a fun treehouse where all the cottages were up on stilts with Grandma and Grandpa

 Grandma and Grandpa came and visited for 3 weeks from America, we had lots of fun with them

 BOTH grandparents came for Jude's birthday...so special

 Noah went to his firs karate competition and won a bronze medal..he was so excited.

 Jude is walking everywhere and doesn't crawl at all anymore, he climbs everything and keeps me on my toes. I found my cellphone outside my bedroom window and my favorite shoes in the trash. We love our little mischeif guy

 Autumn loves loves dress up and wants to wear a dress up dress everyday...and sometimes wears them to ballet practice. She skipped for the first time a few weeks ago after months of hopping, so ballet has really improved her coordination we love our little ballerina!

 The local shops were having a halloween trick or treat so we got all dressed up, two Spidermans and a Tangled

 When we got there it was freezing cold and raining...and my kids were crying...so we went to a special chocolate restaurant and had hot chocolate and cake instead

 Special hot chocolate mmm

 Jude dressed as a pumpkin for Halloween..all 3 of my kids wore this for their first Halloween

 And we carved pumpkins the kids really love this every year

 Autumn wanted to carve a butterfly

 And we got to go trick or treating with a friend...they got tons of candy

 And Noah lost his first tooth at 5! He's lost his second tooth too now and got special money from the tooth mouse (cause the tooth fairy is too girly!

And that was our October :)

Jude's First Birthday "Little Mister" Party

Our little guy Jude turned ONE this last week, and we had a "little mister" party for him!

 Did I mention that this year FLEW by and I can't believe he's one? I know I know I always say that but seriously with 3 kids no 3 just flys by!

 Since I love creating party printables it was so so fun creating ones for my own little guys party! And they are up in my etsy shop www.littlebirdieprints.etsy.com as well :)

 His little cake

 Having fun with the mustaches

 I got chocolate molds of mustaches on Amazon, they turned out so cute!

 Grandma and Grandpa from America AND Pretoria came for the party!

Wow there is so much I want to say about our little guy.....he's just SO happy all the time, he walked 2 weeks before his first birthday, he can make the sound of a duck, and an elephant, he loves chasing Noah around and pushing him on his car, he loves wooden puzzles (mostly for the chewing factor) and mommies keys.  He likes animals the most out of my 3 kiddies at this age and just lights up when he sees one. He likes to clap his hands to music.  I just can't believe the Lord has blessed our family with 3 little ones...He is so good!

beach holiday

A few weeks ago someone in our church let us have their timeshare for the week. It was down by the ocean, and in the JUNGLE. The kids thought it was the coolest thing that it was a "real jungle." There were these bridges so you could walk through it without getting wet

 And it was about a 10 minute walk over those bridges to a beach.....A private beach with NO one on it. Pretty amazing. Jude just LOVED the beach, his first time going where he knew he was somewhere pretty cool

 Running from the waves

 Jude kept smiling at the ocean like it was the coolest thing ever. He was laughing outloud the whole time

 Our "private beach"

 Jude for the first time felt sand, and he just couldn't get enough, he kept "grasping it" over and over

 Oh yes, and like a real boy some ended up in his mouth, silly guy

 The beach was pretty cold, but we couldn't NOT go right? My kids ended up with colds, like I knew they would, but we couldn't go on holiday by the beach and not go every day :)

 Making a sand castle

 The boys

My favorite moment with our family was going on a "star walk" at night, you could see the milky way SO clear, and we showed the kids Mars and we lie on our backs for over an hour just staring at them. We found 4 satellites and Noah even found one all by himself. So thankful for special time with my fam!