This Sucks

I have been thrown-up on 4 times in the last 24 hours...all of which required a total change of clothes for me and whichever child it happened to be, not to mention the floors, couch and beds. Both Ashton and Abbie are sick, we were up all night, I am exhausted..............poor Jake had to go to work. This is the second round of sickness we have had since Thanksgiving, what in the world is up??

New Site Continued

I tweaked the new site a little, I figured out how to add comments to the new blog and also to the photo pages so that is there now. Just remember it is a work in progress for me........

The new site...

Its finally ready..... It wasn't that it was hard, it was really easy, there were just so many choices that I had a hard time sticking to one theme. The first day I changed the home page about 25 times til I found something that I was happy with. Then the next time I tried to work on it I messed with changing the home page again. I had to leave it alone and just do the rest of it. Once I got doing the rest it was so easy I could do it holding Abbie. I am starting really love my Mac. Just wish I had my picture editing software for it, I should have bought it when we got the Mac (thought I would try what came with the mac which is really good for a basic program) but I really like my Photoshop Elements. Here is the link to the new site, I will still keep this one and put stuff on here occasionally but most new stuff will go there.... http://web.me.com/jakennikki

Hope you like it!!!!!!!!!!

Thankful Turkey

So I have been a blogging rut lately. Not that we haven't been doing stuff, just really nothing has felt blog worthy. The kids asked me why I hadn't put our thankful turkey on our blog, so I decided to do it since I haven't had anything else to blog about. The other night for FHE we made a thankful turkey, I have seen many different kinds of thankful turkeys and I have never been very impressed with the finished product but when I saw this one in a magazine I decided I really liked it and it could be on our table all month long. The kids really had a good time coming up with things to be thankful for and I wrote anything Ashton said, Lexie wrote her own. I think the best part is going to be next year when we get to go back and read all of the things that we were thankful for this year....

For Sara

I guess I will be tagged and actually participate, mostly I ignore tags...Here is my fourth picture in my fourth folder.... does it matter which computer??? cause its different on each one. This is from my PC. Abbie in July (6 weeks old).

From the mac...the kids at the Ogden train depot.

And finally from the lap top...Ashton at 3 months just after a bath.

I tag whoever wants to go along with it.

Ouch!!

Who wins when you are running down the hall and you slip and fall into the door frame??

Not Ashton.....




We were visiting Grandma June and Grandpa Larry last night, getting even more candy, we were just getting ready to leave and Ashton decided that he needed to say goodbye to the cat (why? I'm not exactly sure but he thought he did did) and took off down the hall. The next thing I hear is one of those terrible cracking sounds that you hate to hear as a mother when you don't know for sure what has happened but you know that it can't be good, and then Ashton screamed. I then knew that it was going to be a very LONG car ride home. On the bright side, it did not break the skin and he wasn't bleeding so he wasn't going to need stitches, but his eye starting swelling and he was screaming hysterically. He calmed down after a few minutes and we were able to get some ice on it to help with the swelling. Poor guy. He has been a trooper though, and although I know it must hurt he hasn't complained at all. He just looks like he had been in a boxing match.

Halloween

Yes, I do have pictures of what went down on Halloween, but Saturday was Super Saturday for our ward and I am on the Enrichment Committee and I was at the church most of the day and then... well you saw what happened that night. Lexie had a parade at school I took the other two kids and my parents came too. It was fun to see all of the costumes and Ashton had a great time looking at everyone. He is still scared of the scary costumes but he really liked the cute and funny things. It was fun to watch him, after every scary thing he would remind us all that "its just pretend". We had a good time Friday night, I stayed home with Abbie to hand out treats to the 10 people that came to our house, we were a little bored, and Jake took the two older kids around the neighborhood. They did get rained on just a little, but it was by far the warmest halloween we have had for a long time. The kids got lots of candy. Then we went to my mom's house to see my grandparents who were out for a little visit, it just happened to be on Halloween so that was fun, it was the first time they have ever gotten to see my kids on Halloween. My mom took lots of pics when we were at her house so I will need to get them from her, but I do have pics from early in the day...
Abbie the kittie...yes she is sitting up!! Still not very stable but she can for a little while.

Lexie at the school parade.

Lexie the glittery soldier girl. I say it defeats the purpose of camo but she was really cute.

Ashton the spitting image of Dad, what else would he be??

New Site

I know that I just started this new blog, but I am going to start another new website. We bought a Mac about 6 months ago and I kept telling myself that I really needed to figure out how to use more stuff on it. (I really like the iphoto program.) Well a friend of mine that I haven't seen for a few years found me on facebook and we exchanged blogs. Her blog (which is gorgeous by the way) is a site that uses her .me account from Mac, which we also have so I have been inspired to try it and see how it goes. When I get it all figured out and working I will put the address here so you can all see the new site, hopefully it won't take too long to get it up and running.

Rolling Over

Abbie has finally mastered rolling from her back to her belly. She has been able to go the other way for well over a month now. And after just 4 days of rolling over for toys and whatever else she thinks she needs in her mouth, she is already trying to figure out how to crawl...swimming and going backwards. I really don't want my almost 6 month old crawling but it is really cute watching her try and figure it out.

Too cute!!

Just had to post this picture that I took of Abbie yesterday.

Quick Catch Up...

We had a very busy week last week and I just now have time to try and post a little about what we did. First off, it was Jake's birthday on Wednesday (he's 32) and then it was UEA (or fall recess as they call it now) Thursday and Friday. Jake took those three days off of work and Lexie was out of school so we stayed at my sister-in-law's condo in Heber on Wednesday night. That was really fun, we didn't do too much but it was fun to just relax. This is a picture of the kids just hanging out at the condo. Then on Thursday we went for a walk in Provo Canyon to Bridal Veil Falls and had a great time on a "nature walk" as Ashton called it.

Friday we spent most of the day cleaning up the yard and getting it ready for winter, it was nice and warm so that made it easier. Now my yard looks bare with all the flowers gone. Then Jake went and helped Kirsten and Jon with their roof and I took the kids to get pumpkins since we had already told them that we were going to go(good thing I am used to doing such things by myself.) But there is no way that Jake is going to get out of helping us carve them. Besides that is his favorite part anyway. Saturday was Jake's work Lagoon day, we left Abbie with another sister-in-law (Holly) and Jake's mom, and had a good day at the amusement park. Sorry no pictures, I didn't want to take my camera it is just a pain to drag around the park. Then Saturday evening I took pictures of some friends of mine up Butterfield Canyon. That pretty much sums it up.

And the Owner of a Brand New Ipod Nano Would Be....

LEXIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, you read that right, Lexie is the owner of a brand new black fifth generation Ipod nano. Now before you start freaking out and wondering why we would buy our eight-year-old daughter such an expensive toy when it isn't even her birthday or Christmas, she worked hard and saved her money and paid for over half of it by herself. When she came to us asking for an Ipod (about 6 months ago) we told her that she would need to save her money and pay for part of one by herself. Jake and I did some research and found out that you could get a refurbished Ipod nano from apple for a descent price and so we made a deal with Lexie that if she earned half of the money we would pay the other half and she could get a refurbished fourth generation nano. After she started working and saving so much she decided, all on her own, that she wanted to earn all the money and pay for it herself (you go girl) and just as she was almost there apple went and did away with the fourth generation nanos and came out with the new ones. Needless to say she was disappointed. Well since she had worked so hard, Jake and I decided that we would go back to our original agreement and help her out. She gave us all that she had saved and we paid the rest for a brand new Ipod. I would say lucky girl but she worked to hard for it to be luck. Good job Lexie.

On a side note this is Lexie's super cute new haircut (thanks once again to Maren!!!!) The best part, she can do it all by herself.

Snow Already????

The calender says that it is only the 12th of October I can't believe that it has snowed at all, let alone enough for my kids to be outside playing in it and building a snowman. Granted the snowman was a foot tall, but they still managed to build the little guy. All that snow melted this morning, but it started snowing again this evening and we now have a few more inches on the ground. I know Ashton does not have any gloves on in the picture, I promise that he had them on while they were playing and had just taken them off before I came out to take the pictures.

Before and After

When Jake came home from getting his hair cut the other night, Ashton said he wanted a buzz cut like his Dad. He really needed a hair cut anyway so I asked the ONLY person he will let cut his hair (Aunt Maren) if she would cut at the family birthday party this last weekend. Here are the results, I liked it from the beginning but it took a while to see MY Ashton when I looked at him since he has always had fairly long hair and curls. Talk about a mini Jake, he really is one now. Before..


and after.....

Double Trouble

The is a somewhat complicated story so please be patient while I try to explain how we ended up with two babies named Abigail in the extended Madsen family. When I was pregnant with Lexie and we were trying to decide on her name, Jake and I had few names that we liked and Alexis and Abigail were the tops of a VERY short list. When we found out that my brother and his wife were expecting a girl, due six months after ours and that they also liked the name Abigail we decided to go with Alexis. So when to our surprise, 8 years later the name Abigail had still not been used by any of our brothers or sisters for a name of one of their children we decided that we could now name this baby Abigail.
We knew that there were some Abbies in our extended family (on Jake's side) and that did not bother us. Another side note to this story is that since we already had two "A" names for our children I really felt like this baby needed an "A" name too, Jake said it didn't matter but I (being somewhat psychotic about things like this) just had to have another "A" name. Well trying to find another "A" name that we both liked proved to be a futile search so Abigail Dawn was chosen as her name. I then found out that Jenny was going to name her baby Abigail also but it is a beautiful name in my opinion and we can't have too many of them around. So anyway here is a picture of our Abbies together Abigail Dawn and Abigail Rose (Abbie and Abby for short)




We also took pictures of the three girls that same day... as you can tell it was harder than it should have been. Sitting up from left to right Abbie, Abby, and Natalee.

Babies, babies, babies

Two of my younger sisters and I all have babies right now, born within 5 months of each other. We also have little kids that are 10 months different in age that are two turing three relatively soon. Talk about cute when we get them all together. But I also have a cousin who lives in California who also has kids the same age as our kids. When our first babies were babies we were at my Grandpa's birthday party and my mom took a picture of all of us on the front porch. (my sister Lisa was pregnant at the time so she was not in the picture). So from left to right me(Nikki) and Ashton, Heather and Braelee, and Jenny and Elizabeth.












So when my cousin came from California for a visit a few weeks ago we decided to recreate the picture on the steps, this time at my house. Here is a picture of us with the "big kids" Ashton, Elizabeth, and Braelee.







and here is us with the new babies; my Abbie, my cousin's Abby and Natalee. Lisa was at work this time so she still wasn't able to be in our picture. But we still love Josh (one of the big kids) and Zach (one of the babies).

Abbie

I just took these great pictures of Abbie for her 4 month pictures but I can't decide which one I like best what do you think?

Fishing

We bought Lexie and Jake fishing rods a long time ago (like when Ashton was a baby) because she got the idea that she wanted to go fishing with Jake. But for whatever reason they never went and the fishing poles got lost and forgotten in the basement. That was until we were making the shelves and Ashton found them buried in a corner of the basement. He wanted to know where his fishing rod was and when Dad was going to take them fishing. We are lucky that we have two ponds within 5 minutes of our house now, so we bought him a rod, got Jake a fishing license and Thursday night we took them fishing. I only went to take pictures and supervise since we took Abbie with us too. The kids spent a while in our backyard practising casting which was good because they had so much more fun at the pond because they had some idea of what they were doing. I left early with Abbie because she hated being stuck in her seat and there were too many bugs for us, but the first thing the kids said when they got home is "can we go again tomorrow?" even though they didn't catch anything. I think Jake is going to spend a lot of time fishing now.

Great Dad

Sometimes, as many of you well know, Jake is anything but patient when it comes to the kids. Well the other day Jake was building me (I should say us because it really is for the whole families well being) some much needed shelves in our basement to hold our growing food storage. Ashton was very intrigued watching Jake use the power tools. Jake asked him if he wanted to help, you could see that he really did want to get in there and do it, but sometimes he is so timid that he just can't. (The power tools were very noisy and a little scary even for me.) Well by the time that Jake was almost finished with everything Ashton finally got brave enough to want to help, well at that point there really wasn't anything that Ashton could do very easily so I figured that he was just going to be out of luck. But Jake had the idea to use the scrap pieces to build a little step/table thing so that Ashton could help. Jake showed him how to measure out the pieces, load the nail gun, hold the tools, and where it was safe and not safe to hold the tools and was so patient while Ashton got the hang of using them, it was really one of those moments that you hope your kids will remember forever.




As you can see from the smile on his face it made Ashton's day to get to help.


Thanks Jake for being such a great Dad to all of you kids!!!!

Pictures...

My camera has a full battery again so here are the picture I promised.


I totally forgot that Ashton just had to ride the new carousel and when Jake finally relented and took him he could have had his pick of almost any of the cute animals (notice that it is very empty) that went up and down on the ride, and what did he pick, the non moving carriage thing that you just sit on. Such a funny kid. Oh well Jake let him decide and that was what he wanted, I told Jake that I think I would have made him get on an animal but Jake let him be an individual so I guess that is good.

A Trip to the Zoo

Jake is working a mixed up schedule at work right now, nights and odd days of the week so we have been enjoying having him home on random days of the week. We took advantage of having him home last Thursday afternoon and made a quick trip to the zoo. Ashton had an absolute blast and had a whole list of his favorite animals when we left. Lexie had a good time too, she played the part of teacher to Ashton telling all sorts of facts about the animals that she has learned. Abbie even had a good time since she loves being outside. She stared and stared at some colorful birds too. It seemed to be a good day to go to the zoo, most every animal was active and fun to see, unlike in the heat of the summer when all the animals want to do is sleep. We had a great day. I did take lots of picture as usual but now my camera has a dead battery so I will have to upload pictures later.

Preschool already???

I can't believe that my little boy is old enough to start preschool, but here is the proof, a picture of him on his way to his first day of preschool. Its a neighborhood thing kind of like Joy school where every mom gets a chance to teach. He is really excited about it. I had been debating on whether or not to start him in preschool this year because he still has 3 years before he starts kindergarten because he misses the cut off by 7 days. Three years of preschool seems like a lot and I am afraid he is going to be really bored that last year, but his pediatrician said it would be good for him to get out and socialize with other kids his own age and recommended that we put him in some sort of program. So when my neighbor called and asked if we were interested I decided to go ahead and do it.