Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!! Welcome to our blog. Please feel free to read about our year. We hope you and your families are doing well.

Thanksgiving

Josh and Chris and Aaron at the Iowa vs Ohio State game. Regardless of the outcome they had a great time.

We are thankful to Doug for these AWESOME seats at the Green Bay vs. Detroit game on thanksgiving day. We were in the second row!! It was a lot of fun. Tim Allen was down on the field before the game and I told Jacob that he was the guy that did the voice of Buzz Lightyear so when Tim was standing right in front of us Jacob was screaming "buzz lightyear!! buzz lightyear!!" Of course I did not have the camera for this, and come to find out my brand new, not even paid for camera must have fallen out of the car when I got out and is now lost forever.

In case you are ever wondering what $10 ice cream looks like this is it!

The Madsens at Ford Field. Olivia stayed home with Grandma to make thanksgiving dinner. Jacob had so much fun!

We made headbands for Olivia's birthday craft, are they cute or what! WE ALL HAVE THEM! It was actually really fun doing a craft with the whole family.

This is Olivia's 6th birthday dinner. We had a great time on Thanksgiving for sure!

Random photos and updates

Our friends Katie and Bill gave us these cool kits to make marshmallow houses out of cocoa krispies. Josh and the kids made these when I was at work on Halloween

Jacob (buzz light year), Olivia's friend Anslee (bat girl), Jacob's friend Calyn (duck) and Olivia (Sleeping beauty) Trick or treating. They were out for almost two whole hours!

Olivia and Jacob before trick or treating

Olivia's class party for halloween playing the pin the nose on the pumpkin

Josh's cubs "snuggie" that his crafty wife made

Kids carving pumpkins

Tammy, Olivia and Grandma Glo at Abby's wedding

Last Cubs game of the season

Josh and Olivia at the last cubs game of the season

Me and Jacob at the Cubs game

Jacob doing puzzles in his underwear, just too funny not to put on

My best birthday present ever! My hawkeye snuggie

My birthday party at chuck -e-cheese

Madsen's at my party at chuck-e-cheese

Ella and Jacob sing the ABC's

Just a matter of time

We got a trampoline this summer. I guess we knew it was just a matter of time before an injury. I got off of work last night and came home to Olivia crying. She usually cries when she is mad but rarely when she gets hurt and she was refusing to move her left arm. I took her to the ER and as you can maybe see in the very middle of the picture below She has a broken collar bone.

She was such a trooper last night. They gave her pain medicine in the ER that made her more talkative than usual....hard to believe!! But it was pretty sore this morning. She has to wear a sling for a few days but was in no way missing school today. I offered her to stay home, she didn't want to! I asked if I could take her picture this morning and she said "fine, but Im NOT smiling!"

Our first big injury

We had our first big injury today. Jacob went for a walk with grandma and was twirling around and fell hitting his mouth and nose on the sidewalk. He split the inside of his top and bottom lips open and they really swelled up huge. He also has an abrasion under his nose. He cried for a minute then was off to play again.

The offending sidewalk. It never ceases to amaze me how much lips bleed.

Olivia and Grandma picked these flowers and put them in Jacob's room so he would feel better.

Leader, really???

For my friends to laugh at. I took Olivia to the girl scout meeting to get some more information on it and what is involved. We walked out having joined up and signing me up as the troop leader......how do I get in to this stuff????

American Girl Place

These are the pictures of Olivia and Mary Jane and I's trip to American Girl place in Chicago. The store is overwhelming with every kind of accessory and outfit you could ever want but our first objective was the doll. Olivia decided on the "look alike" doll as opposed to one that was already named or a historical character. Her doll was #27. Layered long blonde hair...no bangs of course, and blue eyes. The picture below is of all of the "look alike" dolls you can choose from.

Olivia was able to pick out one outfit and she picked a cheerleader outfit. Then we took her doll to the "salon" and had her ears pierced and got some earrings for her. We had some time to kill before our 12:30 lunch time date at the American Girl Cafe so we had this picture taken.

The American Girl Cafe is within the American Girl Place. It is a very fancy cafe that you must have reservations for. The menu has a few choices for each course of the lunch. It was just re-done and is beautiful. This is the picture of our table.



They have seats at the table for the dolls as well. And the dolls get plates and cups too!

Grandma and Sis at lunch

This is our dessert plate, how adoreable!

Olivia and her doll Molly (previously known as Butterfly) in their matching pajamas
It was a great day. We had a lot of fun and Im sure will make another trip there soon!

Move it Dig it Do it!!

This past weekend we went to the Move it, dig it, do it. This is a big program put on by the Iowa Children's museum where they bring in a lot of heavy machinery and the kids get to climb on it, "drive" it etc.

This is Olivia learning how to milk a cow, she did this more than once, she thought it was fun.

Jacob driving Olivia to work on the Coralville bus

We got there just in time to see Air Care land. Every time we see this when we are out, Jacob says "that bring you more work mama". So it was fun to see it up close. When they landed it was WINDY!

Jacob watied in line the longest to drive the big brand new John Deere combine.

Driving the North Liberty Fire truck

After the line died down a little we went back and got in to the helicopter.

The funniest part of the day was one of the games. (they have various games for the kids to play). This game was the "scoop poop" game to try to teach kids to clean up after their animals. The had a 5 gallon bucket full of fake poop and scoopers, they would throw the poop out and then the kids would scoop it up. WE COULD NOT GET OUR KIDS TO LEAVE!! I swear they did it for 20 minutes straight!

This is a baby clydesdale horse that was born a month ago. It was sound asleep and would not even wake up when the kids were petting him. He was so cute!!

It was a great day.

Chicago

We had a great weekend last weekend in Chicago. On Friday night Josh and Doug and I went to "Top Golf". For those of you who have not been there it is this super fun driving range. It has computerized balls and targets and it keeps your score when you hit the ball. You have to try to get the ball in to certain spots and you can play against other people. It was a great time.

On Saturday the boys (Doug, Josh, and Jacob) went to Lego Land in Chicago. It is a really amazing place with rides and everything imaginable "lego"

Grandpa Doug and Jacob outside Lego Land. then Dad and Jacob and Daddy with a life sized Darth Vader.

Jacob LOVES Batman. So it was pretty exciting that there was a Batman there.

There was a whole jungle with animals made of legos

They also did the whole city of chicago. This is the John Hancock tower downtown

This big spider was part of the Harry Potter exhibit.

The picture below is made entirely of Legos

There was a room where you could make cars. Josh made Jacob a car and it won every single race. I guess not surprising when you see how much bigger it is than all the other cars!!!!

We met at the zoo in the afternoon and this huge grey back gorilla was just laying in the window.

there was another gorilla that was sitting in the window up on a log.

At the gift shop Grandma and Grandpa got Jacob a new truck that he really wanted. At the end of the day he did not want to put it down and fell asleep with it in the car.

While the boys were at Lego Land the girls went to The American Girl store. We were there for over 2 hours and had lunch and got Olivia a new doll. There are some great pics that I will post when I get them from Mary Jane. This is how many packages we ended up with!

This is Molly. It is Olivia's "look a like" doll. It has blonde hair and blue eyes like Olivia. Her lovely braids are courtesy of our sitter Maddy. The bracelets and headband were made from a craft kit for the dolls by Olivia and Grandma Diane.


This past weekend was Jacob's first visit to Kinnick stadium. He had gotten up super early that morning and was tired and crabby. Josh got $200 for our tickets to the game and we took the kids to Wal Mart for toys!!!