3-Year-Old Alarm Clock

Everyone but Abby was sleeping this morning when she walked into our room and began talking about something. I don't know what it was, though, since I immediately noticed that it was 7:45, and clearly no alarm had gone off like it should have at 6:45. So: pee-clothes-frozen lunch-granola bar-coat-kisses, and I was gone. No showering or shaving, no real combing of the hair, no brushing of the teeth. Also, we had our first real snow of the year, so our street was an ice rink, and the drive to Big Rapids wasn't great, but it wasn't a disaster, either. Regardless, I was almost 20 minutes late for my first class.

On the way up, I tried to call the math department office so they could let my students know before they could employ some sort of made-up "10-minute rule" and left. However, I only got about 2 seconds of call time before my cell phone died. After thinking through the quickest way to redial, I managed to power it up one more time, and tried to say "It'sMikeDekkerI'mgoingtobelatehelp!" before it died again. It was like some movie where I was in danger and had a small window of time to alert the authorities. Apparently, they heard enough in the office or managed to figure it out, because someone spoke with my students. They didn't mind, and thought my Christmas All-Stars were cool.

In the end, the sky turned blue, all was well, and we had a nice evening with friends up in Cedar Springs with pizza, beer, ice cream, foosball, cards, and general chaos: 8 adults (ages 32,32,32,31,31,31,31,31), 10 kids (ages 6,6,5,5,3,3,2,2,1,8mo), and one yellow lab.

Piano Prodigy?

A Mish-Mash

OK, it's been forever. I wanted to do justice to the blog and put up good pictures of stuff, but there's been too much going on to spend the time on it. So, anyway, here's a rundown of stuff from the past four weeks:

I pretty much missed Halloween since I had to work late, but the girls had a great time, even though it was a little damp. They went as crayons, wearing felt costumes that Lisa did a great job making for them. She even made one for Jake, although he only wore it briefly.

Abby and Annika both started dance lessons at a new dance studio, located in the old Seymour Christian School. I spent parts of 8 school years working there, so returning was quite nostalgic.

Annika also started piano lessons with a woman from our church. She's enjoying them and doing pretty well.

We raked lots of leaves. One Monday morning there were 16 city of Grand Rapids yard waste bags in front of our house. We're doing pretty well getting settled, too.

The girls and I, over the course of 6 sessions or so, watched all of Star Wars. They're probably too young for it, really (Abby, at least), but they still enjoyed it. I'm sort of proud that they know names like Obi-Wan Kenobi. They can't ever seem to remember C-3PO, though.

We continue to watch Dancing with the Stars (see a previous post on my blog - link at right), and while some justice was served last week when Jane Seymour got the boot, somehow Marie Osmond continues to survive. It matters to us.

Jake is officially helmet-headed now, to deal with his somewhat misshapen head. We're a couple weeks into what will be at least a 3-month process, and we've pretty much gotten used to it - he has too. You can't kiss those baby cheeks as well anymore, but Jake is still Jake.

Who knows how much I forgot just now, but we'll call that good.