Happy 87th, Grandma Ruth!

We celebrated a great birthday with Grandma Ruth mid january. We got together with cousins to celebrate her and her fabulous style!

I am so glad my boys are able to know my grandma. They love her and just adore how she dotes over them in ways only a great grandma can do... just ask Ollie! They have a great bond- mostly driven by outrageous amounts of sugar and "no" being a word that means, "ok, a couple more times is fine". I learn more from her everyday and am so grateful that I get to live so close to her and see her so often!

We love you, Grandma Ruth!

GNO Skiing

Some neighborhood friends took an afternoon to go girls night skiing at Alta. They let me come along even though all I could do was sit in the lodge. Thanks for driving away with me in the car during my indecision! Here's my cute friends in their natural element...
Krissy and Kjersten lookin' like true snowbunnies!


Cute Heather

Jane teaching Lally the finer points of skiing

My dear sweet Kjersten said her boots were hurting her legs... but I think she was just being a FAB friend and took pity on me sitting in the lodge alone (although I was more than content... it was quiet (meaning no one nagging me or yelling at me or demanding things from me) and beautiful!) She came in and shared some hot cocoa and laughs together! The pic of me is terrible, so you get to just see her instead! (You love it, KJ!)

Thanks for a great afternoon, ladies! And you will be proud to know, I have expanded my online TV watching capabilities!

Denver Finale

Before we left the motherland, we had 2 more good events...

we were able to visit Grandpa Bart a couple times! They fed us a great dinner I haven't had in years! I had forgotten about how great ham and pea soup with potatoes is, and topped off with chocolate pudding. I couldn't ask for more! We don't get to see Grandpa Bart very often, so it was really nice for the boys to spend some time there and play with blocks, crawl around and play bears, watch some football, eat some food, have a HUGE pillowfight (I hope the truck has been repaired, dad!) Thanks for the great time!

We were also able to celebrate Kent's 31st birthday! HOORAY! Over the weekend, Grandpa and Grandma Madsen took us out for a nice birthday dinner to celebrate a little early! The big day came on Monday. He actually worked an extra long day- he left at 6 am and didn't get back home until 7:30.

After a yummy dinner, we treated him to his gifts. The boys went all out for dad this year...

A set of car cup holders and a carton of Egg Nog!

Grandma and Grandpa Cox, Grandma Ruth, and Mom pooled resources to get something fun...

a new camera lens! I love the look on his face when he saw my wrap job (pictured left)

We have yet to actually get the lens, but we are excited to get it- or whatever he decides to trade it for!

Kent has taken a liking to Boston Cream Pie, so we fancied one up just for him!

Happy Birthday Kent!

Denver part 3

While in Denver, we had to take advantage and do a few more things! No trip to Denver is complete without paying proper respects...

We took the boys to Investco to visit the Broncos store and wander around. And, of course, this is one for the scrapbook...Yup, changing Ollie in the middle of the grass outside the gate. He is now a Bronco fan for life!Luckily they think that place is as cool as we do! We were lucky that the workers and other shoppers were pretty tolerant of the boys running through the store, kicking balls, tackling the pads at the bottom of the upright mounted inside, and screaming at the TV as they played a bronco game. It was quite a memory maker!

After this, we headed over to the Denver Children's Museum. The boys had a great time! They loved the construction area- Emitt the builder, Ollie the wheelbarrow operator, and Tyse the electrician!

So after we did this, the boys had a great time at the grocery store, the fire truck, the little backyard playland thing, and so on!
They had these TERRIBLE costumes that the kids just loved! Emitt was an adorable little ant and Tyse was....um...? maybe a mole type thing? They had a grea time running around with stuffed nuts to save for winter- they loved taking them from girls and stashing them, then protecting them from being stolen back. It reminded me almost completely of capture the flag back in mutual. I thought I would have a few more years!

We had such a great time! I love these kinds of places! Thanks for the great day, boys!

Colorado Trip- Olympic Training Center

One day we went down to Kent's work site in CO Springs. After he was done, we headed over to the Olympic Training Center. I had never been to this specific site before- I went to one of the centers when I was little, but it was a lot different than this one- this was much cooler!

Some of our highlights:

We formed our own bobsled team. We are ready to compete! This is an actual US team bobsleigh used at the Salt Lake games. The boys loved the fact that it wasn't screwed into the floor...Ollie does all the grunt work for our family!

I also learned that Muhammad Ali wasn't his real name... in the hall of champions, his real name is listed- Cassius Clay, JR. It was very cool to see all the art dedicated to these athletes and their sports!

We went on a tour after watching a video that got us all psyched up for the olympics! We were so glad we were able to go on an Olympic year so our spirit wasn't wasted- it just increased!

Our tour guide was a little (big) african american olympic weightlifter. I call her little because she was shorter than I am, and looked totally skinny, but she's a weightlifter, so... not so little, I guess.

The grounds were really cool! They had all these statues of athletes playing all the olympic sports with life size tracks,. goals, etc. The boys had a go at the 100 meter dash...They only made it about 25 meters before they were too tired to keep going. I didn't break it to them that they only made it a quarter of the way.The boys loved looking through the rings at me!

And of course we had to give the podium a go...

As we were leaving, we saw the countdown clock that really got us excited!
I can't believe the olympics are finally happening! Hooray!

Colorado Sledding

While we were in CO we were able to do some really fun things! The day after Christmas, Grandpa took us all sledding at the park by his house.

Grandpa had a sled big enough for all 3 boys to go together. I love their faces!

Ollie and Emitt had the life... they got a tow rope all the way to the park AND back up the hill after sledding!

Tyse's 2 favorite parts of the day were: eating snowand crashing!Even Grandpa got in on the action!

After about 2 hours, everyone was ready to relax- they just weren't ready to warm up!

Thanks for the great morning, Grandpa!

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-