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.