Sheila came out this evening and asked me if I was ever going to update the Blog. I thought I was off the hook for a while because I had printed out all my Blog entries and put them in a nice folder for her. No such luck. So what you see below is the latest update. Hopefully it will make you smile at my kids and make you wish you were closer to us and make you come visit. First the verbal update, and then the pictures.

Sheila continues to spend most of her time shuttling Sarah and Joshua around and sees her future in it. She takes Sarah to Pre-school, then Joshua to the library story time and then get Sarah from school and then home for lunch nap and then dinner and then bedtime. Thursday is a little different in that she goes to dance class with Sarah instead of school. In between she takes care of the clothes, laundry, food and me. She worked on a project this fall for my mom, making her a quilt out of all my dad's old clothes. Needless to say it came out great and my mom loved it. I am pretty sure she like it as much as the Buttercup Audioanimatronic pony she got herself for Christmas. Sheila said this was her best Christmas ever, which is saying a lot since she had some GI bug on the 23rd and was vomiting in the bushes at church and spent the rest of the day in bed. Come to think of it, maybe the time in bed was WHY it was the best Christmas ever. No seriously, the reason why it was great was the kids were SOOO much fun opening gifts. They just were so excited about everything they opened and wanted to play with them all right away! We spent all the next day opening packages and playing with toys.

Sarah is loving school and dance and church. She continually cracks me up. She is such a character. She loves to hear and tell stories when we put her to bed at night, and likes it when I tell about goofy and say "Gawrsh", it is a surefire giggle inciter. One night after I got her tucked in she came out and said she couldn't sleep because she had too many giggles inside her.

Joshua is usually a very sweet boy and very polite. The thing is he can go from a responding from a request from us with a pleasant "No thank you Daddy" to freaking out with a two year old temper tantrum They are usually short lived though and he will come back for some love, which he usually likes to wipe off so he can get more! He is talking up a storm, and loves to watch Mary Popping, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and has recently added Pixar Shorts Collection and Polar Express to his video selections. He likes to watch the part where Santa flies away.

I continue to let stress build up inside me as Boards begin their relentless march towards me in May/June. Yep, my stomach just did a little flip there thinking about it. I will be going to a review course in San Diego in March, then two week vacation/house search in April followed by another conference to present a research project and try and get some more review in. Then five short weeks til boards and then the trip out West, back to California and home. We have enjoyed having our kids here and are glad I am being trained well as a Radiologist, but are VERY ready to be back home in California and avoid the snow and generally blah of winter.

So there you have it. Hope all is well with you as you read this little entry. I am now off to bed. Back to work tomorrow. We are expecting 6 inches of snow. Should be great. Look for the pictures!!!

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The kids have this nice big box of musical instruments my mom sent last Christmas. Every now and then they pull them out and make A LOT of noise with them all. I am kind of amazed he can even move the accordion, but he like to sing along with it usually. I especially like how he ends his musical session, it's like he is on his way to becoming the next Spinal Tap.

This was about the only time that Joshua went on a sled. It freaked him out too much to be on the sled. I think he does not like being out of control. Sarah however loves to sled. Last week when it snowed we were sending her down the hill on the side yard and then moved to the back steps. She made it down the steps about a dozen times before the inevitable flop over on the steps occurred with the tears that followed. Then on Christmas Eve we talked our neighbor into letting us use his yard, and Sarah had a blast sliding down the hill and through his yard all the way to the back field. She had fun going though his garden box because it made a little bump each time. No injuries that time so next time we will have to go to a big hill!

So Sarah's favorite thing to do out in the Snow is to make the Snow Angels. She thinks she is invincible in her snowsuit and will just drop down wherever she is at and make a snow angel or try and throw a snowball at you. She will stay out until she is ice cold and still fight you to keep from going inside. Joshua, however, likes to be out in the cold for about 10 minutes and is then ready to go back in for some hot chocolate. Momma is always happy to take him inside for the warmth.

Okay, one last little photo of cute little kids. They got Mickey/Minnie pajamas for Christmas/ Joshua liked it, but still would rather be wearing CARS pajamas. Sarah loved her Princess Minnie.

Here is the proud momma showing off her first real gift from her Daughter! Sarah made this beautiful candle/candle-holder for her momma at pre-school. She did really good and did not let it slip about what it was. She did however let her mom know we had bought her a DVD but kept the title a secret! So how good at keeping secrets do I really want her to be, ya know?

Okay, there is no one that could say I was lacking for much in my childhood. But one thing I kind of always wanted was a snoopy sno-cone machine. I mean, you put ice cubes in you get a sno-cone out, yum-yum fun is what it's all about! So it ends up yum yum fun is not ALL its about, also bruised knuckles. You really have to push hard on the ice cubes and spin the handle fast and hard and scraping my knuckles on the counter. Soo, we will keep it for the kids, but I will stick to my powered ice shaver....mmmmm.

The other image is of my Disney Treasures! I have most of these collections of old Disney cartoons and Disney TV shows, and LOVE them. Sheila got me two more for Christmas, Donald Duck and Disneyland.

That VERY happy look on Joshua's face is because he just opened up his favorite book Tugga Tugga Tugboat. Joshua has finally gotten into the swing of things with going to bed on his own and sleeping all through the night. The thing is, he has decided that the way to do that is to take two or three books to bed at night. I am pretty sure he is not thumbing though them or anything, he just likes to have his favorite stories near at night. Needless to say, with the sleeping through the night consistently, we are willing to bend over backwards to help him do this!

My favorite thing to see is when the kids are kind or play with each other. Here you see them playing their new Elefun game, the thing shoots out little butterflies and they catch them. They get SOOO excited and are jumping up and down trying to catch them.

Christmas Eve Decker Family present opening. Joshua loved his Cars Racetrack (he ended up getting three of them of varying types for Christmas). Sarah looks scared in the picture, but was excited to be opening her Leapster from Grandma Peaches!

My beautiful princesses. Sarah always dresses up in her princess clothes, and Joshua wanted to dress up as well. Yes, it was me that helped him get in the dress. No i am not worried. His favorite pastime is to take all the clothes off of the Mary Poppins (Barbie) doll and putting on only her high heel shoes. That's my boy! :)

Our happy little 2007 Christmas Tree!

Sheila took on an emotionally enormous project this fall to create a quilt for my mom out of all my dad's old shirts and some of his jeans. It was a stressful task only because of how important she knew it would be for my mom. She added in this picture of me and the kids under the quilt in the package for her. Needless to say, my mom loved the quilt and was pleased beyond measure with it on Christmas Eve opening up gifts.

My kids are not quite sure about how to smile without squinting. I think that is from all my cheesy smiles I give them.

We made individual gingerbread houses to get ready for Santa on Christmas Eve day.

Joshua decided he would rather eat the sprinkles than decorate with them

This artfully crafted picture of our Christmas tree was taken by my lovely four-year-old daughter! Go her eh?

This was shortly after our first real snow. Joshua loves to go out and help snowshovel. The problem is that he likes to go out and shovel the grass, and put the snow on to the driveway.

Here are the inside shots of Sheila and I with our respective children. We were a little worried about going because it was kind of sleeting out as we left, but they had these very nice covers for the carriages, and some nice warm blankets to cover our laps. Sheila and Sarah were still cold.

Well after gathering our Christmas tree from a local tree lot, this was how we kicked off our ChristmasHoliday. We went to the Meijer Gardens and went on a horse-drawn carriage ride around the grounds, seeing all the the pretty lights they had set up all over. It was the beginning of some very wintery weather. We had a great time!

Some more pictures of Sarah at her dance class. There are more kids in the class, but this was the last class before Christmas break, so many kids were gone!

So since Miss Sarah has been loving her dance classes so much I got Sarah and Sheila tickets to the production of The Nutcracker here in town. They had fun getting all dressed up and seeing the show. They got to go up on stage and meet some of the cast afterwards, and even knowing it was a 9 year old girl under the mouse mask, was still a little leery of her! All Sarah wanted to do for the next week was re-enact the Nutcracker afterwards. One time I even got to be the Nutcracker Prince and the Mouse King at the same time!

Sarah has been taking dance lessons this fall at the Grand Rapids Ballet School in GR. It is the only professional dance company in Michigan, and like the third school we tried taking her to to find good instructors and a good physical environment. She LOVES going to dance. The little girl behind her is a friend of hers from church and in her dance class.

Poor Joshua. The kid is the transitioning stage from Really needing a nap and not wanting to really take one anymore. Sundays are especially hard with the awful timing of church, so dinner time he really starts fading. We used to think that those videos of kids falling asleep at the dinner table were all hogwash, and now we have our own little Joshua fighting to stay awake to eat his carrots!

I am not sure what this particular dress-ing up was for, but doesn't she look lovely?