Kaelyn's Baptism

We had a great weekend with lots of family and friends celebrating Kaelyn's baptism.  What a special day of giving our daughter to God and being blessed by all those who support us and love us!  Here are some pictures that show some of the special moments of our day (and a few from later in the week too!):

 Meeting Pake and Beppe for the first time

 Talking with Great-Aunt Sylvia

 Anneke wanted Pake to help her with her soup

 Hanging out with Uncle Nan, Aunt Rachel, and baby VandenDool :)

 

 In the beautiful dress that has been worn by her daddy, uncles, and cousins.

 Anneke saw all the goodies on the table and pulled her chair right up!

 At the front of the church.

Meeting cousins 

 Enjoying a yummy Christmas treat from Sinterklaas!

Chilling out in the swing for a bit.

Beautiful Eyes

It's been hard to catch a glimpse of Kaelyn's eyes because she's been sleeping pretty steadily.  But we finally got a picture of them!

Welcome, Kaelyn!

Well it has most definitely been a whirlwind of a week! 
It's hard to believe, but last week was my last week of work.  And while I didn't quite make it to the end, I made it much further than I did when I was pregnant with Anneke!  Friday was supposed to be my last day of work, but someone else had other plans!  So needless to say I didn't get done all the things I planned to around the house before the baby came!
Friday was a pretty crazy day.  The midwives recommended I not go to work since, even though they weren't convinced it was the real deal, I hadn't slept much the night before.  Dave still went in, but I called him at 11:30 and told him that he needed to come home.  Luckily he left right away because things progressed really quickly.  We made it to the hospital for 1:00 and Kaelyn was born at 1:52!  She was 7lbs 10 oz and 20.5 inches long (almost the same as Anneke who was 7lb 12 oz and 21 inches long).  We were home by noon on Saturday and since then we've just been trying to figure out a new routine and adjust to having our new little girl!
Overall everything is going well.  Anneke loves her new baby!  Every time she hears Kaelyn make a noise she says "Happy!", we're not sure if she thinks that Kaelyn is always happy or if she wants Kaelyn to be happy all the time....but it's cute!  Anneke likes to hold her and makes sure that Kaelyn has all the things she needs (her blanket, elephant, hat, etc.). 
So here begins our adventure with two little girls!  Here are some pictures of Kaelyn, enjoy!

October

Wow for me--two posts in two days!  Gotta get caught up sometime and what better time than when I'm procrastinating with my report cards!  Oh boy. 
Well, October has been pretty crazy here--lots of meetings, parent teacher interviews, Thanksgiving, getting ready for baby (lots of laundry!), and who knows what else.  And with 5 days of school left I'm feeling the pressure of a crazy week and looking forward to being done! 
So Anneke has just been tagging along this month.  She's still doing great at the babysitters, loves playing with her friends.  She's still growing like crazy!  She's putting together a lot of two-word phrases, with the most recent being "No, Now!".  But it's fun to hear all the new words she's learning and copying.  She's continuing on with her stubborn streak (I can't imagine where she gets that from) and when she decides not to do something, she won't.  For example, she is currently refusing to sit on any kind of a booster seat at the table (only at home, of course, at the babysitters there's no problem!).  She's getting into drawing lately--or rather having us draw the things she dictates, which lately is involving hearts, apples, and circles.  But she did pretty well on her own circles today!
Here are a couple of pictures from this month:

 Licking off the beaters after Mommy made some pumpkin spice bread.

 Playing with "Bear" and her car.

Saying hi to the baby and she was also giving it kisses, but Dave wasn't fast enough to catch any of them.....
So the next month will be a whole new ball game!  Hopefully everyone adjusts well, but we'll see what it brings!

Our Pumpkin Turns 2!

So being way behind the times here I figured it was time to update the blog....Here are some pictures from Anneke's second birthday:

On her actual birthday we celebrated with Grandma who was babysitting Anneke that week.  She also spent the morning "celebrating" with her friend Jolene, which didn't go that well.  It turns out Anneke doesn't like sharing her own toys....she's fine with sharing Jolene's everyday, but not her own.  So Mom said there was a lot of crying on Anneke's part.  We'll have to work on the sharing thing.....

 We had some cake with candles, which Anneke really liked this year.  She blew them out all by herself!

 Then on Saturday we had a little birthday party with Grandma and Grandpa, Oma and Opa, and Uncle Nan and Aunt Rachel.  Anneke had a great time spending time with everyone and playing with all her new toys.  Dave and I got her a train set which she is still playing with, thankfully!  She opened some of the trains first and had to drive them all the way around the table before opening her next present!

 We tried a sparkler on her cupcakes which she was not such a fan of.  After the sparkler we put some candles on one and she liked that a lot more.  Unfortunately she was not at all interested in eating one of the Minnie cupcakes that Mommy made for her!  She was too full on M&Ms, jelly beans and chips with dip-dip!



And here's our big two-year old!  Anneke we are so proud of you and can't believe all the things you've learned this year!  You've learned so many words in the last year:  animals and their sounds, colours, and so many others.  You've learned to run and jump and dance.  You love to play outside and have been such a big girl at your friend Jolene's house everyday!  You've become such a big girl!  We love you as big as the sky, our princess pumpkin!

August

So again, it's been a while!  August ended up being quite busy for us and updating the blog clearly wasn't on the top of our list! 

We started off the month with some visitors.  Grandma and Grandpa came for a few days and Oma and Opa came for a few days.

 We went to the Toronto Zoo for a day with our good friends, Tom and Sarah.  It's a good thing we had four adults to chase after one almost-2 year old!  Anneke loved seeing all the animals and making their sounds!  She also loved running all over the place!

 Then we went to a cottage for a week with Mom and Dad V.  We had a great week!  Anneke loved the water and going for boat rides in all the various options!

 And an early Halloween picture:  Anneke figured out how to open my mascara and came downstairs looking like this.  What a little mischevious face!

And now we're back at school and whirlwind has begun again.  I'm only back for 8 more weeks, which makes it a little easier to drop Anneke off every day knowing that it won't be for the whole year.  That's about all we've got going on for now!

Summer @ Home

This was our first week of summer vacation at home.  There were a few moments during the week when we felt bored, but mostly because we don't want to start our bigger house projects until after this next camping trip when we'll have more time.  So there was lots of playing outside, Daddy and Anneke bike rides, playdoh playing, and playing in the pool.  Here are some pics from our week.

Playing with Playdoh....She's starting to get the hang of what to do with it.  She did at one point try to eat it--but it's Kool-Aid flavour, so it probably tastes good.....

 On Tuesday it was quite hot.  So the clothes came off entirely and she was totally satisfied with sitting in this bucket that was a quarter full of water.

 Of course mommy and daddy also had to put their feet into the bucket.

 And then she progressed to riding her tricycle (really all she can do is sit on it unless we push her around) and here I think she's looking for the plane she heard.  This week she's become very attentive to the sounds she's hearing and is very quick to point out hearing a "p" (plane).

We tried corn on the cob this week.  She did pretty well with it.  She got about half of the corn off of it and then we cut the rest off and she was content to eat it off her plate.

 Yesterday daddy decided to put the slide into her pool.  She's not always so sure what to think of it and prefers to put her ball down the slide rather than going down it herself.

 She really likes going on bike rides with daddy.  On this particular day she really wanted to go on the bike, but we had errands to run, so she ended up wearing her helmet in the car and into the Christian Book Store!

 And this is from a few weeks ago, but I haven't posted it yet.  It's from Geertsema family camping.  Anneke was helping us set up the tent!

So that's been our week.  This week we're off on camping trip #2 and hopefully it's as successful as the first one was!