Babilon Family Adventures: June 2014

Kenley turned five yesterday! We cannot believe that the tiny little two year old that we brought over here to South Africa is now five years old. She has officially spent more of her life in South Africa than America. And believe us, she is very Afrikaans. From her accent, to her language, to her habits, she has picked up more from this culture than all three of us combined. We have already been prepping her for the fact that children have to wear shoes at school and everywhere else in the US. Here, most kids and some adults go barefoot, just about anywhere. As soon as the kids get into school, the first thing they do is take their shoes off, even in Winter. Then there are the Afrikaans terms for things that we must teach her, so that things are not lost in translation in the US. They other day, her class was doing a unit on caves, and the teacher asked each child to bring in a torch for the cave that they made in their classroom. Luckily, I have been here long enough to know that a torch is a flashlight. Can you imagine what I would have thought had I not known, lol? She was also very excited that students are aloud to wear their civvies on their birthday to school instead of their uniform. Civvies, means her civilian or normal clothes. Our little girl has a lot to learn from the states and we look forward to seeing America through her eyes.

We had an Ariel birthday party to celebrate. Since we are moving 8,000 miles in about 10 days, I hired (rented) all of the party supplies and entertainment for her party to make as little stress/work for us as possible and still make a special day for her. She loved everything and had so much fun with her little friends. On her actual birthday we also went out to dinner with some friends who are also leaving at our favorite place, Mo-Zam-Bik! We hope that she enjoyed her day.

Happy 5th Birthday to our little Mermaid!