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).