REMINDER: The purpose of this blog is to actually document the goings on of the Madsen household for posterity's sake- and for the purpose of keeping grandparents and great grandparents in the Madsen loop! Please remember that as you read (or don't read- up to you! ;)

I have been inspired by Krista's weekly email, so I am going to try to be more diligent in getting news out from around here! Here is what has been going on here the first week of February:

Our ward split yesterday. They took 2 wards (our current one and the one we were split from a year and a half ago) and made 3- we are in the new ward. Kent sighed relief when he didn't get a call from the stake president after going through the regular "the ward is splitting- get to know you" interviews. As it turns out, our new bishop is in his 20's, as is the first counselor. I never thought I would see the day when I was actually OLDER than the bishop of my ward- at least not for another 20 years! We have been realigned with about half of our old ward (2 splits ago), so it is nice to be back with some friends from the old days (2 years ago). This is our 3rd split in the 2 years 11 months that we have lived here- and they are hoping this to be more permanent. We will see! We can only think of one young man in our entire new ward, and he is already an eagle scout, so I think Kent will be relieved of his scouting call for a while. I was released from being the primary music director last week.

We are planning a big olympic opening ceremony party this weekend. We are doing all things Canadian- which is a little more fun than normal for me given our heritage. We are going to have a lot of maple syrup, some french-canadian toast, some ice cream snowballs, Kent's favorite canadian koolaid (lipton peach), a salad with my favorite canadian salad dressing, some canadian caramels and coffe crips candy bars. Then I think most of my canadian food stash that I bought when we were there a year and a half ago will be depleted. The boys can't wait for the olympics to start. Tyse is addicted to the ski jumping. He keeps asking when he can start trying it!

I had a "walking report card" with Tyse on friday- I went in to the classroom and they gave me a test to administer to him just so I knew how he was doing in school. He is top of his class in every category and his teacher sings nothing but praise! If only he could act as well at home! He is reading on a 2nd grade level, knows all his addition facts to 20, and is much more interested in multiplication, fractions, and percentages than in subtraction. His teacher asked me what in the world we were going to do with him next year, and I told her that we hadn't decided yet. She suggested letting him teach first grade. Speaking of his teacher, he drew her a picture yesterday at church and called he by her first name instead of Mrs..... I thought it most interesting. He can't grow up fast enough in his mind!
He has been playing basketball this winter and loves it. Most mornings I wake up to the pounding of the basketball on the kitchen floor. He says he is just practicing his "moves" for the upcomming game. He dribbles through his legs and around his back. Very tricky! His moves, unfortunately, were ineffective this past saturday against a little african american girl on the other team. She had about 10 steals and 10 points over him. I think he was somewhat humbled. He has one more basketball game left in his season this saturday, and then soccer will start up again next month.

Emitt has had a bad round of some stomach bug this week. He has been throwing up since last thursday, and we can't quite kick it. Poor little guy is pretty miserable! He is desperate for a glass of milk, a carton of yogurt, and a friend to play with. Yet all he mostly wants to do is lay on the couch. All TV watching rules have been waived for the poor boy! He was extremely disappointed that he didn't get to go to primary yesterday, so we stayed home together and built a pretty grand looking "candy store" out of wood blocks, complete with slides, tents, and of course, ninjas to protect it from the bad guys.

Ollie is as stubborn as ever. He is inching even closer to that 2 year old madness and is giving himself a good showing for it! He constantly makes us laugh at his extremely diligent, neat, tidy ways. This morning he was diligently scrubbing the walls with baby wipes wherever he could see a scuff. He is really starting to try to talk- I head him attempt his first "sorry" today. I get the feeling he will get lots of practice on this word! Last week while Kent was in Denver I called on Ollie to say our family prayer. He did a pretty good job at copying me, but Emitt's prayers have definitely left an impression on him. Instead of calmly ending the prayer, Emitt always gets a LOUD gruff grumbly voice to say "in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen". Ollie attempted the ending this same way, but of course he can't say all those words yet, so he just mumbled whatever sounds came out in his gruffest, grumbliest voice. It was HYSTERICAL! He repeated the performance for Kent at dinner a couple days later. Another funny Ollie moment this week came when he was playing by himself and I noticed him humming. I went a little closer to see if I could decipher it, and sure enough, he was humming the Star Wars theme all by himself. I am so proud. He was also assigned a "ninja turtle" by his brothers last week while they were playing. It was his first time being big enough to actually be invited to play superheroes. We sure love this little boy, but we wish he would eat more than bread, cheese and whipped cream!

That's it for last week-