We have had a lot of changes around here in the last month or so. Mykala started Kindergarten in August. She likes it but the all day every day was a big change for her. She has some good friends in her class and a good teacher. She is adjusting well to the schedule change. In the morning when I go in to wake her up she is just like her mommy, and pulls her covers over her head and rolls over! She loves her sleep! I asked her what she does at school and she says played outside at recess!! I think it is her favorite subject!

From 2010-09-11

This is Mykala ready for her first day!

From 2010-09-11

By her locker! Landon has also had some big change in his life. He started preschool after Labor Day. It was a little harder adjustment for him. He did not want mommy to leave him there. But after I left he watch the kids for about 10 minutes and then jumped in and started playing right away. He loves being home with mommy so this has rocked his world. But every day gets easier for him. He tells me about his snack and a the friends he is making.

From 2010-09-11

Landon ready for the first day of preschool. He had to show everyone his Spiderman bag!!

From Drop Box

Getting ready to go in. Evan and Ben are home with me. We will run home and try to get something done, like the laundry or put the dishes away and then it is feeding time and then we usually have to get in the car to go and get landon! They are good boys and love to play and smile. They are starting to rollover on their own time though. They are starting to eat rice cereal and are growing like weeds.

From 2010-09-11

Playing in the bumbo's! ( Ben & Evan) It has also been a big change for me. Letting Myaka go to school all day was a big change. She was my BIG helper around the house with the boys. So the first couple of weeks was really a whole new thing for me as I learned the ropes all over agin. We are now into a routine...I think! With Landon going to school it was hard letting him go but I knew he needed the play time with other kids and I knew this was the best thing for him. So there has been a lot of "new" around here but we are getting into the groove again.

For the past four years my (Kelly's) side of the family gets together in some way to camp or stay in a cabin. This year we tried out the new camper cabins at Sibley State park. We went for 4 days and had a great time. We were a little worried about how the boys would handle the trip but they did really good. The cabins are not very big, but we fit all our stuff in them so they must be bigger than we thought!! they have a nice screened in porch on the front of them which was nice to have because the mosquitos were bad this year! We did a lot of things: went to the beach, swam, hiked Mt. Tom, relaxed with great company and ate a lot of food. They weather was nice and not to hot, one day it was windy but no storms or anything like that! Here are some pictures from our adventure!

From From 2010-07-15 Our Cabin for the week! From 2010-07-15 One of the beach picnics we had! From 2010-07-15 Had to have some s'mores...and they were good!! From 2010-07-15 At night the deer would come up right by the cabin...they were fun to watch! From 2010-07-15 Desirae was the babysitter while we made breakfast. From 2010-07-15 Getting ready for the BIG climb of mt. dew as the kids called it or was that Grandpa?! From 2010-07-15 All of us at the top of mt. Tom. From 2010-07-15 A picture of the inside of the cabin...I think the kids just woke up here. We had a great time and are looking forward to next years adventures! We will let you know when we know where we are going. Enjoy the rest of your summer...school around here starts in 2 weeks.

It has been a LONG time since I blogged last. The last year has been a big one on change for us. We found out in October that we were having a baby. We were so excited and could not wait to meet the new one. We had a dr. appointment at the end of October and the dr. thought I looked bigger or farther along then I should be, so they did an ultrasound! We found out that we were expecting TWINS!!!! What a suprise!! Dave was with me and he had to sit down after hearing the news. I was laying on the table otherwise I would have been racing him for the only chair in the room! After a couple of days we warmed up to the news and were very excited and ready to meet them. But we had to wait until May 12. The whole pregnancy was very different than a single baby. I had to have ultrasounds at least once a month to check everything out. In Feb. they were watching and very conserned about the low birth weight of the babies. The dr. told me to eat more because I was not gaining enough and the babies need to have more meat on there bones. Soon after that I was put on bedrest. We had a lot of help from our family during this time. I was either going to the dr. or the hospital for check-ups or because I was having contractions! I got a steriod shot a day before I delevered the boys!! What a bless to have that in time. They were born 6 weeks early on March 31 but were totally healthy. They were born at 3 pounds each!!! They had to stay in the NICU for 11 days because of their low birth weight and just to keep a close eye on their stats. Dave's Mom lived with us for a month during this time in our lives. Which was such a blessing because the nurses liked to have the parents up to feed and hold the babies as much as possible! We named the boys Evan Dean (dean is after my Dad's middle name) and Benjamin Dewey (Benjamin is after Dave's Grandpa and Dewey is after his dad!) So here are a couple of pictures for you to enjoy!

From Evan and Benjamin Vander Leest

Evan

From Evan and Benjamin Vander Leest

Benjamin

From Evan and Benjamin Vander Leest

The kids looking at the video of the babies because they were not old enough to go in and meet them.

From Evan and Benjamin Vander Leest

The four of us after a feeding!

From Evan and Benjamin Vander Leest

Little boys in BIG carseats. (Evan & Ben)

From Evan and Benjamin Vander Leest

Easter w/ the boys!

From Evan and Benjamin Vander Leest

Easter w/ Mykala & Landon! I will try to do a little better with keeping up this year to let you know what exciting things are going on around here!

It is special when a family gets to do something and it turns out to be a great time. On Saturday it turned out to be a really nice day. So while Landon was napping he took Mykala fishing. I decided that I would pack a lunch and meet them down by the river and play at the park. Landon woke up and we got in the car to meet up with Mykala and Dave. We ate our picnic lunch and played at the park. But after that we took a stroll down the pier by the Missouri River. We were all talking and laughing and really enjoying ourselves as a family. It was a great time and we really needed to get out of the house. It is those special times that you really get to look at your family and really enjoy each person for who they are and what they bring to the table as a person. We are all different but we are a family unit and we have to love and laugh in life. It is so fun to see the kids personalities come out and watch them be who God created them to be. I love each member of my family so much. And the privilege to be a mother and wife to them is incredible. God has blessed me so much! I guess I am having a moment, hang with me!! Many of you have families as well, and you know what I am talking about, or you are working on building your family. What a treasure to see children grow up! I am so happy and blessed to be a part of it! I pray that I am doing the best that I can do with the children around me, not only my owe, but all that I come in contact with on a daily bases!

Finally I got around to calling on Swimming lessons for Mykala!! I know a little behind! I called a place called Siouxland Aquatics, where the swimming lessons are inside. a couple of years ago Mykala took swimming lessons, the ones where Mommy swims with the child, and they were outside ones and it was FREEZING!! So we were going to do things right this year! Even Mykala said to me, "mom I would like to be inside where it is warm." When I called they also told me about a 2 year old program that they have which Landon could do. I ask them if I could have a trial run at it with him. They agreed and we had the first lesson on Wednesday. I went well until Landon figured out that if he would cry a little bit the lady would let him crawl out of the pool and sit by me. Keep in mind the kid has a swimmer on, and he want to sit on my lap. Everytime he sat on me I had a gush of water crawl down my leg. But at the same time I had to comfort my son, so I let it happen!! I do not think Landon is ready for his swimming lessons yet. He loves the water but wants the comfort of being with Mommy or Daddy. Mykala on the other hand was a pro. She was kicking and learning the strokes with such ease. SHe even jumped off the block all by herself!!!!

From 2009-06-10

From 2009-06-10

From 2009-06-10

From 2009-06-10

From 2009-06-10

From 2009-06-10

From 2009-06-10

From 2009-06-10

I SEE A FUTURE SWIMMER!!!!

We celebrated Dave's BIG 3-0! in style this year!! Every day when he came home we had a present waiting for him to open the week before his birthday. By the end or maybe middle of the week he would walk in the house saying, where's my birthday gift!! He loved it! His mom even got to be a prat of the celebration this year. What a treat for him as well as the whole family! We also took him out to Texas Roadhouse for supper and had Dairy Queen Ice Cream cake!! We had a great time celebrating with Dave. I was thinking today that I, Kelly has known him for 8 of the 30 years. Pretty good thinking we met in college!

During the week we went to an Sioux City Explorers game. They lost but it was fun. We had free tickets from a local radio station in town and they gave us 20 of them so we invitied some friends to join us.
One of the days Mom was here we headed to Orange City, IA. There is a cute little Dutch store there, The old Mill, that she likes to go to and there is also a great park. So lanae and her kids met us there for play and food!
We also had to pick Dave up from work and go for a picnic with him. It was nice weather, but a little on the cool side when she was here. But the sun always seem to warm things up so we could got outside and run some energy off!!
From 2009-06-06

From 2009-06-06

From 2009-06-06

From 2009-06-09

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From 2009-06-09

From 2009-06-09

This picture should have had Dad and Donna in it but my dad became very ill before they left and come to find out he had Vertigo. He is doing better now, but it was not good for about 24 hours.

From 2009-06-09

From 2009-06-09

This past weekend we headed to Orange City, IA for Tulip Festival! Actually Dave took the day off on Friday so we could go on a day which was less busy than on the weekend. We met Lanae, Damian, and Desirae there. We got there and had packed a picnic lunch. We spread out our blanket on the courthouse lawn and had a nice picnic lunch together!

From 2009-05-17

Lanae and Desirae enjoying the picnic!

After lunch we walked around to see all of the tulips, they were in full bloom and so full of color this year. It was fun to see them all. We went to a house that sells them the tulip bulbs straight from Holland. We walked through the garden and picked out the ones that we thought would look good in our garden and bought some bulbs!

From 2009-05-17

These are the ones we picked. We thought we better have a couple of tulips since we are Dutch! Mykala liked the pink and white!

After our walk we made our way to the parade route! we had to get front row seats to the parade! First they have all the people from town sweep and clean the streets so they are clean for the royal court to come down and then the parade starts!

From 2009-05-17

Even the little ones help with the street cleaning!

From 2009-05-17

the kids loved the parade! We had to get out our umbrellas a couple of times because it started to sprinkle a little bit, but we did not get wet until we were heading to our cars, which is a good time for it to rain!

Here are a couple of pictures for you to enjoy of the kids by the tulips!

From 2009-05-17

From 2009-05-17

From 2009-05-17

Notice how they are holding hands. Landon LOVES his cousin Rae-Rae!!

From 2009-05-17

The kids found a dog to pet at the gardens where we bought our tulips. He did not care one bit that they wanted to pet him, he loved the people!




After the festival we went over to Lanae's house and had pizza with the whole fam. I took some cute pictures of Desirae, I thought I would share!! She is too cute not too!

From 2009-05-17

From 2009-05-17

Mykala's preschool class had there winter program in March. It was so cute. They sang a couple of songs, recited "Going On A Bear Hunt" and a couple other rythms! I was a proud mother! She looked so grown up for her big debut! Grandma and Grandpa Mulder got to come down and see the big show. After we went to Dairy Queen to celebrate the big performance!

From 2009-03-07

From 2009-03-07

Julie has been here and gone and I have not even wrote about our time together. Sorry Julie. She came in early Feb. We loved every minute with her and hated to see her go. But while she was here we had a bleast and did a lot of different things!
The first day she was here it was about 34 degrees. We still had snow on the ground. So Dave decided to take her and Mykala sledding. The week was supposed to be warmer and we did not know how long the snow would be on the ground!

From 2009-02-14

From 2009-02-14

From 2009-02-14

By the time they got home the were pretty wet and ready for some hot cocoa!

We went to Mykala's preschool Valentine's party. They did an opstacle course and made a necklace. It was great that Aunt Julie could come and see her school. Living in Ca she does not get to do that a whole lot, so it was a good treat!

From 2009-02-14

From 2009-02-14

From 2009-02-14

In town they have a center that they open up to the kids during the day, so we took the kids there to run off some energy. We played all sorts of things with the kids. I think Julie and I came home more tired than the kids. Oh well, it was worth it.

From 2009-02-14

From 2009-02-14

From 2009-02-14

From 2009-02-14

One night Dave and I got to go on a date while Julie watched the kids, oh, what a treat. We went to Texas Road house and to Gran Torino! (Very good, lots of swearing though!)

From 2009-02-14

From 2009-02-14

Dave, Julie and Mykala went to a local hockey game on Friday night. It was Julie's and Mykala's first and they both seemed to like it. There were a lot of fights. We had a great time with her and hated to see her go. Come again anytime Julie!

There is a new play area in Sioux City for kids to go and have fun for the day. It was free for kids to try it out on Monday, so I took the kids and they loved it!! Lanae brought Damian and Desirae down to join in the morning fun. There are a lot of things to do with the kids, bouncy play area, arts and crafts, kitchen area, and many other things for the little ones. Here is the link if you want more info. (http://playsiouxland.com/) I guess this is a little advertisement for them. But the kids tested it out and they loved it!!

From 2009-02-03

From 2009-02-03

From 2009-02-03

From 2009-02-03

From 2009-02-03