A week and a half ago, 31 May 2014—a date which will live in the past—the Madsen household was suddenly and deliberately invaded by the combined forces of David and Janene. The Madsen family was already well-acquainted with the Silvers, and, at the solicitation of the Madsen parents, had, only the night before, had the Silvers over for dinner, looking toward maintaining those good relations.
Indeed, 30 minutes after David and Janene invaded the household, the Madsen parents delivered the Orange Binder of All Things To Do With the Children. And while this binder gave great knowledge of the favorite meals of the children, it contained no threat, or hint of tantrum if said meals included vegetables.
It will be recorded that the thickness of the Orange Binder of All Things To Do With the Children makes it obvious that the babysitting scheme was deliberately planned many days, or even weeks, ago. During the intervening time, the Madsen parents continually expressed hope for continuing peace to their kids while the parents were away. The invasion, which ended scarcely three days ago, has caused severe short-term consequences. I regret to tell you that many cheesy goldfish have been lost.
On Saturday, one squirt toy was broken, and yet remained functional.
On Sunday, one squirt toy was broken and found to be non-functional.
On Monday, the first squirt toy was damaged beyond repair, and both had to be retired.
On Tuesday, the tanks had to be called in. (Mostly) Literally.
With confidence in the Madsen children, with the unbounding determination of the parents' love, we are sure the kids will recover from The Week The Silvers Stayed Over – so help them God.
Well, that was fun. We won't ask for a declaration of war. Now, to change gears for those of you who don't keep up with famous speeches, we'll move on to children's stories.
The Very Hungry Cole-erpillar: an eating log for Thursday
For breakfast, Cole ate through 4 pancakes
For after-breakfast-snack, Cole ate through 1 fruit bar
For lunch, Cole ate through 6 chicken nuggets and 2 bowls of applesauce
For after-lunch-but-not-quite-snack-time-snack, Cole ate through 1 ½ bananas
For snack, Cole ate through ½ a banana and 1 bowl of pretzels
For after-snack-but-not-quite-dinner, Cole ate through ½ of a graham cracker (and would have eaten more if I had let him)
For dinner, Cole ate through a small serving of green beans, and ignored the main course
He has not yet become a butterfly. Instead, we visited butterflies on Friday.
But we get ahead of ourselves. Here is a bit more detail, in chronological order.
On Saturday, we showed up before lunch. Tess was being particularly clingy. It was only the promise of being pushed on the swing that would convince her to release her firm grip on her mother. (Aside: You may recall that last time we watched the Madsen kids, David perfected the art of pushing a two-year-old in the swing while reading a book. He surmised that someday, that book would be replaced with a smartphone. He finally learned how to do it this trip!) Saturday was a pretty laid-back day. Spencer and Josh enjoyed computer games, and Tess and Cole played outside. No hamburgers were burnt.
On Sunday, the kids were so well-behaved that they elicited comments from many church members. There were also a number of friends who were amused at seeing us with four kids in our row. This week, Tess put a bunch of stickers into a coloring book instead of her trademark face-stickering. Tess even let David put a sticker into the book. Truly, he has found favor with the three-year-old crowd.
The Madsens have a nice Sunday tradition of putting the kids in pajamas when they get home. Then, we ate popcorn for lunch, with a little bit of healthy stuff, and relaxed for an afternoon of wholesome recreational activities, watching "Bica Me 2." This sequel to Despicable Me was quite funny. And Tess liked to remind us that she was a purple minion for Halloween, and Cole and Josh were yellow minions.
All of dinner was eaten! I suppose it helped that Sunday is breakfast-for-dinner night, and the kids do better at eating things with syrup on top. (Maybe I should have put syrup on Josh's vegetables.)
On Monday, David went off to work. Janene made the mistake of pouring milk into Josh's cold cereal. He pouted and didn't eat any of it. She also made the mistake of giving Josh his swim goggles at the house, where he proceeded to lose them in plain sight, and announce that he couldn't find his goggles as we were needing to leave for swim lessons. Other than that, Janene survived the day alone with four kids. That evening, we had a surprisingly successful Family Home Evening! While no one paid attention to Spencer's lesson, the game of Go Fish, which none of the kids had played before, managed to keep everyone entertained! Janene lost, horribly. David won, spectacularly. And everybody had at least one match.
Tuesday morning was much like Monday, except that Janene didn't pour milk on Josh's cold cereal. Only because we didn't have cold cereal; we had pancakes. Tuesday afternoon, we "called in the tanks." Meaning we drove down to Crawfordsville (40 minute drive) to the Ropkey Armor Museum. As you can see, everyone was thrilled to be going to the Tank Museum. Seriously though, cool place, right? Climbing in a tank with a gun that shoots bullets the sizeof your head . . . pretty awesome. Even Tess thought so after a little while. And there are more than just tanks; there are also some airplanes, and model airplanes. Overall, a good use of an afternoon. (Make sure to click on the links!)
Wednesday was fairly low-key. We could do that after a Tank Museum trip. You've already read about the amount of eating that happened on Thursday. Mostly, we let the kids entertain themselves when they didn't want to be around us, and we played games when they did want us to entertain them. We learned that Life is a really complicated game for kids who are still learning to count. Particularly in handling money. We learned that Janene is really bad at Mario Kart on Wii. (Let it be known, however, that she used to be good at Super Mario Kart on SNES.) And, we learned that, in the Madsen household, when playing a game of War, the ace counts as number 1, and is beaten by everything; it does not beat a king.
After two low-key days, we had to do something on Friday. So, we visited the butterflies. And monkeys. And wallabys. And river otters (although they were hiding). And prairie dogs (although they were hiding, too). And goats, which are a hazard to children under 4 feet tall when they think you have food in your hand. The best line of the day does go to Shelly, who joined us at the zoo, and who, as we were having the children leave the goat area, said "only kids, no goats."
Afterwards, we went swimming. Josh was fine with us going swimming. (Aside: Last year, he was angry with us for making him go swimming, and was not sad to see us leave.) Sources reveal that this year, Josh would be happy to have us return; he thinks we were fun. And it doesn't hurt that Janene made pancakes for breakfast multiple times.
And David didn't change any diapers.
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