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Those Little Moments

I just got back from Girls Camp (and it was a blast). The last night I stayed up really late, so when I got home, I just slept pretty much the rest of the day.

This morning, while playing around on the computer, I opened a sticky note Rachel had typed up. It read, "try to call indi for a playdate soon and ,make sure lindsey gets enough sleep."

Oh how I love my sisters...

Promotion

The summer is finally here. I am glad to be out of school, but I'm also a little sad, 8th grade has been my favorite year so far. But the end has also been so much fun! On Tuesday night I had promotion, which is basically a ceremony to commemorate graduation followed by a dance. That was so much fun! A lady in our ward came and did my hair really pretty and I got to wear a dress we picked out last week and experiment with a little bit of makeup. The end result was so exciting for me! It's hard to believe that I will be a freshman in the fall.

Arrived!

We finally bought a new car. After a lot of research, test driving, research, and pressure from a sick mini-van, we bought a Honda Pilot. It is very exciting. Our first new new car. Rachel and Gracie have checked out all the cool things about it and think it's the best car ever. At one point I was telling them they they can't climb over the seats. Rachel, who was in the back and wanting to come into the front asked how she should get there. Before I told her about folding the seat down, I asked her to get the seat belt that is in the ceiling in the back. She immediately said "Oh, I can swing from the seat belt to the front?" Truly this was the coolest car!

2/10 Madsen CA trip

Music picture video of our trip to California.

10 thoughts on our California vacation

Thoughts on our trip:
1. If traffic laws were similar to pedestrian traffic at Disney Land, we would have a far less successful nation.
2. There are a lot of Mormons at Disney Land. Since only (roughly) 10% of church membership wear BYU sweat shirts, and I must have seen a dozen BYU sweat shirts, I'm guessing upwards of 25% of the people there were Mormon.
3. You can go to Disney Land just for the flowers. They are lovely!
4. Disney Land isn't such a happy place that kids don't ever cry. Nor that moms don't yell at their crying kids.
5. Captain E.O. is super stupid, but was Michael Jackson's prime time for looking good. When he appeared, everyone applauded, including me.
6. I had to take lots of pictures of the Dumbo ride because when I went to Disney Land with my niece Kaila that was the only ride she wanted to do, so as a 12 year old that was my Disney Land experience--Dumbo.
7. We opted not to go to Sea World and rather stay at the beach, and I think we had just as much fun.
8. Military lodges are the best place to meet friends, especially for kids. Every time my kids have fond memories of new friends they made.
9. My kids can spend hours and hours in the sand and not ever get bored (which explains our giant sand pit in the back yard).
10. Family vacations are the best. They are worth the long drive and the money spent. Really.

Rachel

Rachel has been home from school with pink eye for a few days this week. When she went back to school she decided that she needed to go to the nurses office. She LOVES the nurses office, something about being sick and having special attention paid is so motivating to her. She went to get her eye checked, since, well, it hadn't been checked in a while. She wasn't feeling sick and her eye had no pink it it, but somehow I got a call to come and get her. So today when she went to school I gave her explicit instructions to NOT go to the nurses office.

Yesterday I was doing her hair and noticed that all the clippies were not on the clippy board. I asked her where they were, and she answered as casually as possible "I know, I saw that they weren't there and wondered where the hell they were." I just laughed, so much that I didn't even correct her.

Today on the way home from piano lessons Rachel got a special treat from her teacher for practicing a certain amount of time. She came into the car and read the back of her gummy life savors. One was blackberry flavor. Now, I've been trying to teach my kids to try new things, even if they don't think they'll like them. Rachel is one of the worst at this. But when she read the flavor options she said very sweetly: hm, I've never tasted blackberry, I might not like it--but I'm going to try it. How brave of her, to taste a new flavor of candy. I'm getting somewhere.

Homemade Gifts '09

We have joined the home made is best bandwagon. Here is our first year projects:

Kimmer had Rachel and tied a fleece blanket for her. Rachel loves it. It was a favorite especially for the long drive to Utah and Idaho.

Rachel had Gracie and tied her a tulle skirt. She told me that sometimes her teacher would teach them something and they would learn it so well that the teacher didn't need to help them any more. That was a subtle hint for me to leave her be. It took me a bit to get that hint--she had to be more direct. But she did a great job, and Gracie loves to dress up, so perfect.

Lindsey had Kimmer and made her a bow and clippy board. It is darling and super useful. Now we can invest in more bows.

Gracie painted Jane's name, which she loved to do. Several times when I checked to see if it was dry I noticed that she had "worked" on it a bit more. She really did the painting and the polka dots. Cute!

Janie had Lindsey and "helped" put the flower stems in izzy bottles. Lindsey has a shelf above her closet and these will go nicely there. It's amazing how Janie is so smart like that.

Christmas Letter 2009

Jane is our biggest event of the year. Our 5th baby girl is 9months, three teethed, 90th percentile, mobile, almost walking (translated, mostly falling), growling, giggling, bouncing, and delightful. She was born on March 11th and weighed 6 pounds 12 oz. In one month her weight went from the 10th% to the 90th% (haagen dazs do wonders for milk supply). She is well (not always gently) cared for by all her “mothers”, including her now 4 year old sister

Grace who was the un-intended star of our church primary program. She sang the very loudest (by far) even if she didn't know the words or the tunes very well. She enjoys her speech class (we’ve mastered the K and G sound!) and loves to be with people (a good thing with a family of 7). She is a motivated kid who wants (and determinedly tries) to do everything almost-7-year-old Rachel does, like roller skating and riding a two wheeler, because

Rachel is super cool and “popular” as she will easily attest to. She loves her class, has taken off on reading, and was given a special “Pillars of Character” award at school. When I got the award notice I asked which pillar of character she was being awarded for. She didn’t know because she was matter-of-factly “good at all of them”. Where is this confidence from? For Christmas she wants a real magic wand so she can participate in all the Harry Potter hullabaloo like

Kimmer. You maybe didn’t know that HP is still super “in”. Believe me, it is! My girls have been known to sneak up on people and cast spells, which can be really frightening. One neighbors’ mom even asked them to please not cast unforgivable curses. I think that’s good advice for everyone. And Kimmer doesn’t--she likes to deal more with love potions. She’s been asked on a date twice (she’s 10). Not to worry, she said "No. I want to go to the celestial kingdom." She is a good kid, much like her sister

Lindsey, who is still really good even though she is now 13. She keeps busy with high school honors geometry (as a middle schooler she has the highest score in the class), cross country (she helped the girls team go undefeated—her best mile time is 6:54), good friends (possibly the best), and music (piano, violin, and jazz band). I have rarely met a teenager as self-directed as she is, which makes me believe that she must have gotten it from

Carol. Because, let’s face it, I’m awesome. I have done more laundry this year than any year before. I’ve sewn more this year too. My cousins and I did a fun round robin quilt. (Let me break this down: for Blair family readers, this was a super intensive, beautifully artistic feat. For the Madsens, be grateful I haven’t had anything to do with any of your round robins!) I also planned a trip to Mesa Verde which was totally awesome and enjoyed several good reads. The only one who can out-do me is

Daniel—but he out-does a lot of us. At work he is the temporary chief of staff (SGH) and just got selected for Lieutenant Colonel. In the mean time, he has made cement counter tops, got him a big ol’ deer, is always doing home improvements, and he rode El Tour de Tucson (109 mile bike race). He tries to balance out the two of us so on average we are in pretty good shape and really productive. He’s nice like that. He, along with

The Whole Madsen Family wishes you a peaceful and sweet Christmas. We love you!

El Tour de Tucson

El Tour de Tucson at one point comes about 4 blocks from our house so we went to cheer on the riders. One of them even took a picture of the girls holding the home made GO sign, and a lot of them would thank my girls for being supportive. (This picture is missing the exclamation point that another girl would hold, you know, just to emphasize GO!). It was a beautiful day. Daniel and our brother-in-law Bryce rode 109 miles, which I say (with emphasize) Wow!

Paper Swan

The girl who sat behind us at church folded a paper swan for Gracie. Gracie looked at it and immediately started poking me with it. I couldn't figure this out and so just ignored her. After a while she asked me "what do swans do?" I thought of the traditional romance that is paired with swans, but before I could answer, she said: they bite people. (Which is what her paper swan was doing to me, not being intriguing and beautiful and REVERENT which is what the folder intended. It may as well have been a folded dinosaur). This should not be surprising since Gracie's only experience with swans is from her Great Grandma Spencer's house. They had a pond with two swans--the father swan was particularly territorial and my younger girls were really scared of them. I remember that one time we couldn't find Gracie and Rachel anywhere, we were calling for them and looking for them to no avail. Finally they both came out of the car (in St. George where it was over 90 degrees-yes we've talked about this since) with red faces and tears streaming down their cheeks, obviously having been crying for a long time. They retold of trying to cross the bridge but they knew the swan was going to get them and bite them, so they hid in the car, still convinced that the swan was looking for them. Anyway, it's just interesting that experiences can radically differ from traditional thought. Swan lake may not be appreciated quite as much with this background.

Iron Kids

Friday at the bus stop our neighbor told us that their daughter was running a triathlon the next day. I listened and thought that sounded pretty fun, surely my kids could do that, then mentioned kindly that he should send us more information. After talking to the girls and Daniel about it we decided that they would do it too. (Kimmer said she would like to train first and I told her that it wouldn't do much good to go running the night before the race). So, very spontaneously, Lindsey, Kimmer and Rachel registered and ran a the Iron Kids triathlon.

Lindsey was in the 12-15 year old group, swam 300 meters, biked 8 miles and ran 2 miles. She said that we need to invite Ben Powell to do this next year, and she would like to work on swimming since she hasn't done laps in quite a while.

Kimmer was in the 8-11 year old group. She swam 150 meters, biked 4 miles and ran 1 mile. The biking was hard for everyone, but she hasn't really done any running so wants to train to do better for another race. She enjoyed it and did well.

Rachel beamed the whole race. She was in the 6-8 year old group and swam 50 meters, biked 2 miles and ran 500 meters. I think she smiled the whole time. She took 2nd place in her age group and qualified for the Iron Kids National Championship race (which was on Sunday so she didn't get to compete).

You can see in this picture that she is jumping up with great pride at her trophy. I think she'll be competing again too. Fun time.