Christmas Lights

What is it about lights at Christmas time? I love Christmas lights. If it were up to me, our house would have thousands of little glowing bulbs, but I'm afraid of the ladder.

Kyla loves lights too. "oooo, pretty!" she'll say.

Tonight Greg, Kyla, Mason, and I got in our PJ's and loaded into the car at about 8pm. We drove around Sioux Falls for an hour looking at lights. Such a weird thing, but amazing. Family time and Christmas beauty. I would recommend it, especially Falls Park. I've never seen so many lights in my life. It was heavenly, I would say.

Christmas is this week?

We're still getting ready for Christmas even though half of our parties are over. We still have the Van Veldhuizen party which we are hosting on Christmas Day, then we have the Wallenburg party on Sunday at my grandma's house in Inwood. On Sunday, we are also opening gifts with my siblings and parents.
It's been much to fun shopping for Kyla this year. I know she will love everything and gets really excited, especially about ELMO! She's a riot right now.
Hopefully I can get the last few items bought tomorrow, since I have been avoiding weekend shopping around here. Greg's parents are coming for a couple days this week from Montana. I'm sure they will babysit if they're not up for shopping :)
On Friday, we had an "Ugly Sweater Party." It was a lot of fun and very interesting. Lots of friends and family came over. I think we might make it a Christmas tradition.

Trip to Washington

We left Thanksgiving morning and flew with Greg's brother and his family to Seattle, Washington. Greg's sister, Becky lives with her husband and 2 kids in Burlington, Washington. Greg's parents drove from Montana.
Kyla did very well on the plane (mostly thanks to her cousin, Hannah, who is 6 years old and is Kyla's new best friend!)
While in Washington, we got to stay in a wonderful house on Camano Island (compliments of our brother-in-law's family), celebrate Thanksgiving, witness the baptism of our new nephew, Dillon, celebrate an early Christmas, and spend lots of family time with Greg's entire family, which doesn't happen often enough.
On the day after Thanksgiving, grandma and grandpa babysat while we did some crazy shopping. I love doing this and we got some good bargains... (a Garmin GPS, a label maker, some random clothes, and a Coach purse for me :-)
On Saturday, we took a ferry to San Juan Island. Greg, Kyla and I had done this last year, which we loved. There are some amazing sites from the boat.
On Sunday, we went to Dillon's baptism and spend the day at the Cabin. In the evening we celebrated Christmas with pizza and presents. Kyla loves her new blocks, "Laptop", and Elmo!
On Monday, we spend the day in Seattle. We rode the Tram and went to a Children's museum. I was thoroughly impressed and all the kids loved it!
Tuesday we travelled home, and Wednesday it was back to work. (Hard to go back after almost a week off!)

Now we have the rest of the holiday celebrations to look forward to. I love Christmas shopping and am doing a little here and there whenever I am off work. This is a huge benefit of living in the "city." Although, it's probably not healthy for our bank account!?

Smarty Pants

Kyla is becoming slightly less naughty and definately more smart. I think that she is getting to the point where she understands and we can somewhat reason with her. For example, she is learning the concept of "Time Out". Tonight she was climbing on a shelf in the kitchen. I said "Kyla, do you want time out?" She says, "yes." and wanders over to her Time Out corner in the living room, sits, and starts pouting. I just started busting up laughing.
Only about a half hour earlier she got put in time out for pulling Ziplock bags out of a drawer. She sits pretty well in her corner and knows she can't get up. Though, she cries the whole time.
She is also learning to answer yes/no questions, usually appropriately, but sometimes funny. Like I'll ask "Kyla, were you good for daddy today?" She, as seriously as can be will say, "No."
Another funny, but slightly annoying habit she is getting into is screaming "Mommy!... Mommy!" if she wants my attention. Or "Daddy!... Daddy!" And if you don't answer the first time or two, she'll get louder and more demanding! The other afternoon, she apparently was awake from her nap, happy, but yelling "Mommy!... Mommy!" from her room. I go in there and she smiles.
One more silly Kyla story: me and her went to Gordman's this morning and were walking past the sparkling christmas decorations and she, every two seconds is saying "Ooooo Pretty!" "Ooooo Pretty!" Greg says that Kyla learned that from me. This is what I'll say to her when something is pretty.
She's getting to smart for her own britches, but we're loving it!

Happy Fall!

We are enjoying every last minute of this nice weather! Today we went to one of our new favorite Sunday afternoon spots- The Dog Park in Sioux Falls. It is a large fenced-in area with benches where people can let their dogs run with each other. Mason and Kyla love it! There's usually 20ish dogs there and lotsa people. Mason is a little bit of an outcast, sniffing around and wandering, but he does wear himself out with the other dogs. Kyla gets overwhelmed, but loves chasing all the little dogs. She pretty much ignores the big ones. Except for the huge Great Dane that is always there whom she calls "Horsh!" (aka horse) Haha
Greg started a new venture this weekend- the night shift. I think it is going well. We'll wait and see if it catches up to him.
Otherwise, we are waiting for our next vacation- a Thanksgiving/Christmas/Baptism trip to Burlington, Washington with Greg's family. We are leaving on Thanksgiving day for 5 days. It will be very interesting to see how Kyla does on the plane...

Happy Halloween!

It's been quite a while since I've had the chance to blog! We just finally got cable and Internet in our new house, so I have some catching up to do!
We've gotten pretty well settled into our new house, we got everything done just in time to celebrate me and my friend, Katy's, 25th birthdays! We had a bunch of people over on October 16 to celebrate!
Since then, Greg, Kyla, and I also took off to Pella for a weekend to see old friends and a new daughter to our friends, Luke and Jean. It was great seeing everyone after being gone for 6 months, but different not being able to go to our old house! Thanks to Greg's aunt and uncle for hosting us!
Tonight Kyla and I went to Inwood to do some trick-or-treating and visit "Mamma." Kyla is pictured above in front of Mamma's giant pumpkin. Kyla was even on the front page of the West Lyon Herald a couple weeks ago sitting atop of the 440-pound pumpkin! It's quite the talk in the small town of Inwood.
It was a nice night to walk around tonight and Kyla and Mason were both a big hit in their costumes. Sioux Falls celebrates Halloween and trick-or-treating tomorrow night, so should be a good time again!
Greg has been working this weekend... next weekend he switches to night shift, which will be yet another adventure for us. Kyla has been going to an in-home daycare on our side of town. Andrea is the babysitter's name, and Kyla loves it there! She gets to play with four other one-year old girls who all appear to have tons of fun together. Kyla will continue to go there two days a week when Greg switches to nights. This way he will get some sleep and Kyla will get out and socialize with other kids.
We are loving Sioux Falls. I think it's the perfect sized small city with everything we need. There are lots of things to do and places to go. But yet, our neighborhood is on the very edge of town with cornfields in sight, so it seems nice and quaint.

Home, Sweet New Home

Closing went well on our house, just signed our names 500 times, then got handed the keys! We took Kyla and Mason along to check out our new home together for the first time. Kyla and Mason both love the yard and all the "puppies" in the neighborhood!
The previous owner left us some muffins on the kitchen counter along with a diagram of the yard which shows all the names of the plants in the yard and included a letter about who the neighbors were, how nice they are, etc. She also explained some of her plants in detail including when they bloom and how to fertilize them. (She apparently knows I will probably kill them all within the first year-- I do NOT have a green thumb!) But anyway, this was so sweet and I will probably cherish that letter for a long time, and hopefully I do all those beautiful plants justice!
We painted all day yesterday and my mom, sister, and I painted this evening. We still don't have the bedrooms complete, but tomorrow we will work some more and also move some of the big furniture. We have suckered a few guys into helping!
Kyla is having fun exploring new things and new places and playing on the nice carpet stairs, which she is doing well with. She has checked out all the kitchen cupboards and has even climbed in a few! (When they have stuff in them, they will be child-proofed!)
It's an exciting process and I'm having fun envisioning how this will all go!