Early Eye Candy

Since tomorrow is supposed to be awful weather I took advantage of the little sunlight we had before our ward's Trunk-or-Treat tonight and made the kids pose for a million pictures.

Because they are darling in Halloween costumes.

So, for your viewing pleasure (a little eye candy for the grandparents), I give you the stars of Despicable Me 2: Gru and his minions!!

I decided to totally take advantage of their willingness to have a group costume; I doubt they will ever let me do this again!

Just for comparison...

So it turns out that getting a crazy purple minion to hold still for pictures is pretty near impossible.

Two happy minions holding hands for the costume parade... makes a momma's heart melt.

Joshie, Sugar Fiend

Me: What do you think, Josh - should we make bread for dinner?

Josh: No.  I don't like bread.

Me: You are a weirdo.  How about rolls?  Should we make rolls?

Josh: No. I don't like rolls.  But I do like Rolos...

Pumpkin Thievery

Josh stayed home from school today.  

The poor child spent half of the morning in the bathroom, but swearing up and down that he wanted to go to school.  Then he decided he didn't want to go to school.  Then his stomach started hurting.  Then he started feeling better and begged and begged to go to school, but I wouldn't let him.

Me: What if you got sick at school?

Josh: I won't.  I don't care.

Me:  What if you still have germs that get your friends sick?

Josh: I won't.  I don't care.

Me: What if you get Miss Anderson sick?

Josh: Wha...? I...? No!  I don't want her to get sick!  My tummy hurts - I want to lay down.

How cute is that?  He sure loves both his teacher and school. 

Even though I know he was sick this morning, as I write this he is fighting with Cole over the iPad, acting (and feeling) 100% healthy.  I guess I could take him to school now, but that seems kinda weird. Besides, who knows what kind of bug he has?  He could totally be puking in the next hour.  (I really hope not.) 

Random side note: When I was in the first grade I got pneumonia and was out of school for at least a week, probably more.  I was so anxious to get back to school that I totally faked feeling better.  My mom fell for it and let me go back.  I was in class for all of 20 minutes before I started throwing up all over the place.  I still remember I was standing next to my teacher's desk and I could tell I was going to be sick and I tried to hold it in with my hands. (Gross!)  This was not my teacher's first rodeo, so she had a garbage can ready before things got too out of hand.

Now that I think about it, that's the same class where the kid sitting next to me was always leaning back in his chair and the teacher was always getting after him for it. And then one day, BAM!  He fell backwards and - and I am not making this up - BIT OFF HALF OF HIS TONGUE!!!  I was sitting to the left of him and still remember it clear as day.  That teacher didn't miss a beat.  She swooped him up and carried the wailing boy down the hall, leaving a bloody trail all the way down.  All 20+ of us crowded around the door, watching, not daring to leave but definitely not sitting down, either. 

This is why children leaning back in chairs was one of my pet peeves when I was Primary President.  No way did I want to have to deal with bitten off tongues!!

But I digress.

The point it, Josh loves school and so did I.

Since he wasn't dying I figured he'd be okay coming with me to take Cole to preschool.  As we drove up we all ooohed and aahhhed - there were tons of pumpkins of all shapes, sizes, and colors at the entrance and inside.  

This is my kind of preschool.

Cole and I admired them all as we walked to his class; he was really quite pleased with them.  (That's my boy!) Turns out that Exploration Acres (the Corn Maze) had lots of extras and randomly gave them to the preschool.  When I went to pick Cole up there were signs that said we could take pumpkins home with us.  

This is really my kind of preschool.

Only problem?  Cole FREAKED OUT at the idea of taking pumpkins home.  I literally had to drag him out to the car, him screaming and fighting the whole way.  "NO TAKE PUMPKINS HOME!!! WE CAN'T!  WE CAN'T!!!"

Seriously child.  When someone says you can have free pumpkins you take the free pumpkins!

I suspect his teachers had told them not to touch or bother the pumpkins, so he naturally thought that rule extended to us.  In fact, I'm fairly certain he thought we were stealing the pumpkins from his preschool.

Pumpkin thievery!

He cried and yelled most of the way home, but all of a sudden he stopped and just let the matter go.  Perhaps he thought we had gotten away with it?  No more worrying about getting caught?  Who knows what goes on in the mind of a crazy four year old.

I only took two pumpkins because I only have two arms and one of them was in use as a preschooler wrangler.  Plus, everyone else was only taking one or two, and I didn't want to look like the crazy pumpkin lady with five or six pumpkins.  (Although, let's face it, "crazy pumpkin lady" pretty much nails me.)

I got one cute little orange pumpkin and a really cool pinkish one.

I just love it! Those stripes are so cool. Josh wants to carve it for Halloween, but I suspect this one will be around for quite a while in a place of honor in the house.

And for the record?  I would never just steal a pumpkin from the preschool.  Oh, I would think about it.  But I would never actually do it, despite what Cole thinks.

Get Lost

On Saturday we took the kids (plus our neighbor, Justin) to the Corn Maze.  They had never been before and were pretty excited.

You might wonder why we would take a bunch cranky kids to the corn maze the day after our fab doughnut party.  Answer: there's no more dangerous time in the week than Saturday afternoon, especially after kids have stayed up late the night before.  It's prime time for whining, fighting, and general mayhem on the kids' part and very little patience on the parents' part.  Getting them out of the house (generally) stops all that nonsense and everyone is much happier for it.

Here we are at the beginning of the maze. Okay, they don't really look that excited.  But trust me - they were!  Oh, and I have to say thank heavens the corn maze provided wagons!  We had forgotten the stroller and there's no way Tess could have walked as far as we did.

In a stroke of local marketing genius, the corn maze had sponsored checkpoints scattered throughout the mazes.  If you found a checkpoint you put a special hole punch through it and then could use it as a coupon.  The kids loved this idea.

Here they are on top of the bridge, which was very exciting, despite Justin's look.  It was pretty cool to be up above that sea of corn.

After we were mazed out we took the hayride back to the play area.  Tess and Cole were pretty happy about this.

Spencer's such a good sport.  I'm so glad he's not at that age yet where everything we do is stupid and uncool.  (I know, it's coming.)

The kids played in the hay bale maze and jumped in a giant pile of hay and had rubber ducky races.  But the highlight was the corn cannon.  (A giant air pressure gun that shot corn cobs a good hundred yards.  It was pretty impressive.)

No one made it through the target, but that's okay because it was still pretty fun just to watch.

It was dang windy and cold by this point, which I'm sure is why Lance didn't hit the target. :)

The corn maze was a pretty good time; I think we'll have to make it an annual event. (And maybe next year I'll even sneak into a few of the pictures!)

Ninth Annual Madsen Halloween Doughnut Party - With Pictures!

This year's Halloween Doughnut Party was six months in the making.  Way back in March our Relief Society had their annual Service Auction and I won a photographer for the event of my choice!  Woo-hoo!  This photographer happened to be my awesome visiting teacher Janene.  (You might also know her from SF trip fame.)

So Janene came and took a ton of pictures and it was awesome, because I rarely get any pictures of my doughnut parties, let alone actual good pictures.  Isn't that the coolest service auction item ever?  I think so. So big kudos to Janene for all of the great photos, which she not only took but also edited and cropped.

Let's start with this year's invite.  Can you tell what our theme was?  I just have to say that I love the doughnut in this one.  (Pat on back, thank you.)

Unfortunately, that was the extent of my Photoshop cleverness this year.  I never had a chance to make a Halloween family picture, as I have in past years.  With this new calling of mine I just don't have a lot of spare time, so something had to go.

This year's party was a little odd because 1) we were late getting started, but that seemed to be okay because 2) everyone came pretty late, and 3) we did not have nearly as many people as we have had for other years.  Lance and I were trying to figure out why but couldn't come up with any good reasons.  Lots of our doughnut party "regulars" (the Souths, Shurtzs, Roylances, Hansens, etc.) moved last year, but that wouldn't explain the gap.  Oh well.  Maybe we're just not as popular as we thought we were.  Or maybe people don't appreciate fresh doughnuts anymore.  Wait, both of those explanations are crazy talk.  I think people just forgot.  (I forgot to send out my reminder email.  Oops.)

Anywho, Janene and David showed up right on time and I was still rushing to make the glaze.

Lance as out on the porch frying up some doughnuts.  Notice our new set up?  One big table with 2 fryers.  I purposely bought a new, cheapo electric skillet just for our doughnut parties; I learned the hard way that nice big ones never get hot enough to fry!

The brain ice cube.  It looks pretty cool here - too bad it melts with all the milk in the punchbowl, although I suppose that's it's job.

 Here's the basic set-up: plates and napkins, delicioso doughnuts, filling for filled doughnuts, and the glazes.  The table stays this clean for approximately 3.2 seconds.

I put these signs up every year, and every year people ignore them and do all sorts of crazy things to glaze and fill their doughnuts.  These people are my friends, so I'll just say this: signs save lives, people.  Lives and delicious doughnuts.

Lance and I have this party down.  The whole family helps clean the house, then I clean it up to my standards (read: I get all the stuff no one else thinks about, like fingerprints on walls and dirty kitchen chairs), I put up all the signs and decorations, I make the dough and cut out the doughnuts, Lance fries the doughnuts, and then we both clean up.  It's a good system. (Although Lance almost lost his position as fry cook because a batch of doughnuts became a bit... Cajun.  His excuse was that they cooked too fast.  "Why don't you just turn down the heat?" was my very common-sensical question, which was met with "Are you crazy?  Don't touch that dial!  Now I know how fast they cook!")

This year we had a skyline photo op, where you could dress up like a big 'ol movie monster and terrorize the good people of San New Chicago.  David took full advantage of this.

We also had our usual quizzes.  Name That Monster was a little on the easy side because you only had to match the name to the picture.  Super Size Me was hard because you had to rank the movie monsters in order of size, with bonus points for guessing their correct height.  I got a lot of flak for that dang quiz, to which I say "I got the answers off of the internet, and everyone knows that everything on the internet is true!!!"  Also - it's a quiz for Dollar Store prizes, so calm down.  Then again, you also gain eternal fame and glory, so I guess that is worth fighting for.

Here we are, back outside.  Can you tell I couldn't be bothered to put these photos in any sort of order.  Ain't nobody got time for that.  Heck, we're all lucky I'm actually blogging about this only 2 days after the fact!

Here's where I let my doughnuts have their last rise.  Thank goodness it was chilly so they didn't rise too fast or too much!

This year I only made 2.5 batches, and even though we had far fewer people than normal we were only left with a couple dozen extras.  The friends who did come obviously had healthy appetites.

Okay, can you tell who Lance and I are dressed as?

I'll give you a hint:

That's right - we're SHAMY!!

Note to self: this costume is only good if people actually watch The Big Bang Theory.  Otherwise, I just look like a substitute teacher.

Well, people finally started filtering in.  Like this random newborn.  (Kidding.  She's the Fry family's latest addition.  And what a cutie!)

And here's Thor the monk.  You read that right.

John the Crusader.  Yes, that is chain mail.  No, I do not know if he got it specifically for this costume.  I doubt it, though, which means he had it before, which brings up all sorts of other questions that we just don't have the time to answer during this post.

John Michael as Robin Hood.

3/4's of the Fahey family.

Me (Amy Farrah Fowler) and the Frys.  The Frys have been coming to the doughnut parties since the days we had them in the (as Don put it) ghetto.  He is correct. We used to live in the ghetto.  The ghetto where we'd have fabulous doughnut parties.

As you can see, the quizzes are serious business.

 I reeeaaaallly need to get my act together and have some kid games next year.

Our neighbor, Jennifer and her son Connor.  (Connor was in Josh's Kindergarten class last year.)

Darth Vader and Donzilla on the rampage!

 A giant power ranger and Sheriff Woody!  Yikes!

Super Connor!

The Livengood boys.

  Senor Dallin and his padre.

My good friend Deidra and Tessie's good friend Millie.

The Smiths.  Can I just say that the Smiths are awesome?  They are awesome.

Truman (also known, in smaller circles, as ElRay Junior).

So you'll notice that we don't have the filling gun anymore.  It just wasn't working right and they keep breaking every year.  So we filled up some of these $.99 bottles from Wal-Mart and I think they worked pretty well!

Obviously, Senor McKay read the signs about filling and glazing doughnuts.

 Jonathan and baby Quinn.

L-R: Frieda, Ashley, Melissa, Jessica, Deidra, Truman

Robin Hood and a mariachi band member walk into a bar...

 
Lance discusses the finer points of frying doughnuts with a ghost and Kris.  (Kris is the one in the sweater.)

McKay and Sheri.  Sheri is Spencer's wonderful piano teacher.  (Her makeup is generally toned down for lessons.)

Monkey Ethan quite enjoyed the doughnuts.  Smart kid.

Monster High Leah!  (I was Primary President when Leah was a Sunbeam; she was, in all honesty, the Cutest Sunbeam Ever.)

Alice, Matt, and Ethan Tang.  The Tangs just moved into our ward this year and I'm really glad that they did!  They're really great!

A ninja, a princess, and Thomas the Tank engine walk into a doughnut party...

Meanwhile, back to the quizzes... (Poor Spencer.  Every year he thinks he's going to win the quiz and every year he fails miserably.  Okay, next year, for sure, kid games.  It'll get done with all the spare time I have.)

Remember that awful gold velour chair Lance and I bought for our first apartment.  Yeah, it's still down in the basement...

Our neighbors, Scott and Elaina, came for the first time this year, and I'm so glad they did!  (Elaina was PTO president last year, which is how I got all involved with that...)

The Hendersons.  I really like Jessica - we got 'lost' taking meals to LUM last week.  It was quite the adventure.

 McKay gave me a hard time about the quizzes this year, mainly because he didn't win.  (Bazinga!)

Melissa, who was my visiting teacher forever and has also been to a ton of doughnut parties.  She and her family are 'townies', too.

Finally, it was time for the quiz answers!

No cheating with cell phones, computers, etc. allowed under penalty of no more doughnuts.

Okaaayyy... runnin' out of caption ideas.  Janene took a lot of pictures!

 Am I the only one who gets a kick out of Kris's hat and Landon's grin?

RAAWWRRR!  The Harwells terrorize the city!

 Quinn looks a little drunk on doughnuts.  ("I'll tell you when I've had enough...!")

Auughh!  Tyrus-asaurus vs. Quinn the Destroyer!

 
Poor Tessie got so tired at the end.  She was a little slap happy.  (Literally.  She kept laughing when I smacked her in the face.)

Matt and David.  (With Ethan trying to escape.)

Spencer was all about filling the doughnuts.

 Hmmm... Melissa is looking a little baby hungry. (That's the Fry's baby she's holding.)

Ricky, Lance, and Kris.  I'm pretty sure they're discussing how awesome Ricky is for taking his wife to Bora Bora last month.  Yeah, I'm jealous.

Melissa and baby Abby.

The sister missionaries also came for doughnuts, because when you're a missionary and there are free homemade doughnuts you do NOT pass that up!

Sister Round and Sister Williams.  I feel bad because there was some miscommunication and the elders never got their invite.  I have told them that they are now welcome to come to our house for anything.  Except maybe bedtime, because that's the craziest time of day. Unless they're willing to actually put the kids to bed, in which case they are welcome every night.

A very small portion of my pumpkin collection.

Spencer and Josh towards the end of the evening.  Josh claims to have eaten at least 6 doughnuts; I'm pretty sure Spencer ate twice that.

 SHAMY IS ANGRY!!!!

Joshzilla and King Spencer Kong

The evening ended with Tess covering herself in Halloween stickers.

Whew. I'm pretty sure that's the LONGEST doughnut party post that has ever been or ever will be.  A big thanks again to Janene for taking pictures, and to all of our friends who joined us.  We had so much fun!

Now, time to start planning for next year - it'll be the TENTH year of our doughnut parties, which deserves a BIG bash.