Month: January 2010

With two birthdays within three days of each other, there is a little bit of overlap in our birthday celebrations! So please excuse the ongoing birthday posts that will be appearing! Here is the documentation of the celebrations of just our little family.

We celebrated this years birthday boys with the traditional stop at Krispy Kreme….
Always have to watch the ‘robots’

First Birthday at the Krispy Kreme

Birthday boys

All my boys

He could spend the whole day here

Look at the kids amazing balancing skills….must be because he is now 7 🙂

And then off to have some more fun at Nicklecade.
We played games,


Danced a little,

We rode rides

Saw many, many smiles.

And I saw this crazy move from across the room, it’s perfectly Tucker.

Of course we won a few tickets, claimed our prizes (Penny candy and quarter machine toys….) and then we headed off to Logan!

Sat down to blog this morning, opened the wrong folder, came across the wrong pictures. And started to cry.
Not because I found the wrong pictures, but because I needed to see these pictures today.

I needed to be reminded of Trumans long sunbleached hair, his chubby little arms, fingers and sweet face.

I needed to be reminded of Tuckers contagious little smile, and twinkling little eyes.

Mostly I needed to be reminded of how quickly these moments are gone. Right now, with the new years, and new goals, I am often found trying to help my children learn, grow, and get to the next phase of life. But today a powerful reminder that all days do not have to be this way. Some days can be spent reveling in my children right now.

W

Is brought to you by Truman!
W is for Whale.
And since this whale is too big to fit in his backpack, and he insisted for preschool that it needed to be the letter ‘W’ Show and Tell, we took a picture. And although he doesn’t look it in the picture…he was thrilled that the big whale was coming to school with him, in one form or another.

A cold night during the boys break from school, we did some sledding…

Behind a four wheeler. 🙂


It was as great as I remembered from the last 2 years.
Thanks Again for the good times Madsens!

You may remember about Truman’s experience with the Birthday Dollar, Tucker’s birthday week finally arrived, and he finally received a birthday dollar.

And what good deed did he do with his dollar? See for yourself…

All of it went in that grey familiar envelope. Some to Humanitarian, some to the Book of Mormon fund, and some to the Missionaries in our ward.

This was what he wanted, nothing else. He was so happy to finally receive his dollar, and take part in this tradition our ward set! 🙂

Since the weatherman forcasted NO SNOW the day of Tucker’s party, we had to get creative!

We had such a great time.
Highlights:
Decorating with Snowflakes, a Chocoloate/White/Chocolate Cake, Snowman Stories, Pretending to be on melting icebergs, Singing/Being Snowmen, Making Snowman kits, Snowball Soap, Snowcatchers, Chili and Hot Cocoa.

Thanks to everyone who came and helped out! We chose the messiest activities yet!

It was a great way to celebrate seven wonderful years with this little boy~~

ALL year long my kids ask when Patty’s skating party is…and as it approaches, the anticipation of the event is so much fun, but the skating is so much funner! The reason the boys love it so much? They can take out buckets and coolers, and garbage cans to hold onto while they skate.

And near the end of the party, they are skating with out them–their confidence has been boosted.

This year, Elliot was not quite old enough for the skates, and I had planned on watching with him from the sidelines. But, after Patty’s suggestion, we loaded Elliot up in a bucket to sit in,

and he skated around with us,

happily babbling the whole time.

When we stopped, he’d sign more, or gently give a little scream, as if he was saying, ‘keep on moving!’

We had such a great time…

Thanks Again Patty! We love you!

This post is mostly for me.. To help remember the last few things from this season. The random things.

Unfortunately, quite a few of our pictures from the season got deleted off our camera 🙁
But I wanted to document a few of our favorite traditions, and last few Christmas goodness with the pictures that remain…
–For days we all baked and decorated gingerbread then packaged it up and delivered it to neighbors.
the only picture we have (Truman did his own hair, and in his words, ‘used a little bit of gel!’) …

—Advent Calendars.
Truman Religiously did this one on the fridge, again, the only picture we have,

And we did pretty good about reading scriptures about Jesus’ life daily, until the candle we lit while we read, (Which while lit, helped us to count down the days until Christmas, with marks down its’ side) fell onto my scriptures and burnt a hole in my binding!

—This year, I really, really enjoyed helping out in Truman’s Class with his preschool class party. (Pictures deleted) Toph and I also enjoyed seeing Truman perform and really sing the christmas songs, (Hand actions and everything!). He has since walked around singing the Rudolph Song constantly since then. The program concluded with a visit with Santa.

Again, the only pic we have!

A lesson learned this year–I thought was a great idea, to let Tucker and Truman help me write the gift tags on the presents. But since we wrapped them up almost a month ago, it was hard to remember if TJ heart TR was Tucker giving to Truman, or Truman giving to Tucker…I’ll be honest I’ve peeked at a few of the presents, and secretly relabeled them just so I could make sure that the right present goes to the right boy, or the right cousin!

Of course one day, while I was preoccupied with some of santa’s secret stuff, Tucker got creative. He kept walking in and out of our craft room, to the front door:

Turns out he was making a pulley to go between us and our neighbors house across the street, to pass notes. His mind is always working, wanting to create and make.

Good times, good times.

Due to sickness, we weren’t able to get to the Great Greene’s house before Christmas…And it was a weird feeling, not seeing them before Christmas. I felt as if Christmas was not complete.

Luckily, we were all still healthy a few days after, and we were able to go and see them.

We always try to get a picture with all the kids at the same time with the grandparents, but Toph wised up, and suggested that we might have a better picture with them just one at time. I’m married to a smart man!

Here are the results.

Much better.
We love you Great Grandma and Grandpa Greene!

Christmas Day Continued with a trip to Grams and Gramps House.

We exchanged gifts with siblings


and cousins,

Yes, Eric’s present was Cheese,

lots of it, and lots of different kinds. He loved it.
Gave my Mom and Dad their present from us kids.
And the Grandkids (and us) got spoiled rotten by Grams and Gramps.

Since, we didn’t get to see the Greene’s this Christmas (they gather on Christmas Eve-whilst we’re at the Phillips’), My cousin Heather and Aunt Sue came by too! Thanks heavens for Christmas Time, so we can reconnect with them. We of course missed Leslie and Brandon, but at least we were able to see some of the Greene’s!

Afterwords we enjoyed a yummy lunch, and finally time to play with the new toys!!



And relax a little…

Before we headed home later that night, we tried to get a few picture of the kids with the Great Grandparents

And the Grandparents.

The excitement of the day was starting to wear off, and we headed home. That evening, the boys slept in Tru’s new tent next to the tree. (They slept there the next three nights too!)

I’m sure they had sweet dreams from the busy few days they had.