Ol' Blue Eyes

Because when the baby is this cute and the lighting this good, an impromptu photo shoot is a must.

Homemade Valentines

A few weeks ago the boys and I made homemade Valentines for some of our family.  (Grandpas and Grandmas mostly.)  We went extra fancy this year and used some extra photos that I had of the boys.  Nice.

I didn't post these right away because I wanted them to be a surprise. But I'm going to now, just for posterity's sake. And because I think they're just so darn cute.

Can you tell which Valentines the boys made and which ones I made? :)

Valentine's Day

Some families go all out and have fancy-shmance Valentine's Day dinners.  Not us.  We are quite the opposite: pizza and root beer, baby!  We used to eat it on our wedding china, but now that we have kiddos that's just too much effort. (And dangerous.) 

So here's what our table looked like this year:

We give the kiddos books for Valentine's Day, which I think is a great tradition.  (Although they willingly admit that they like the candy Grandpa ElRay and Grandma Susie send better.) 

Here's our fancy china.  Nice, right?

And here are a few random shots of my Valentines.  (Josh refused to have a picture taken, was grouchy, and wasn't wearing any pants.  Anyone want a three year old?  Free to a good home!)

Wait, what's that?  You want to know what that misshapen pink thing in the middle of the table was?  I was hoping you wouldn't notice.

Well, it's supposed to be a giant cupcake. See, my dad gave me a giant cupcake cake silicone pan for Christmas.  The boys had been begging me for a while to make a cake with it, and Valentine's Day seemed like a good enough excuse.

So I made it.  And it was cute.  For about three seconds.

And then I frosted it.

And things took a major turn for the worse.  See that crack?

One second after I took that picture it turned into this.

Dang it!  I'm not quite sure what happened with that.  I think the top must have shifted while I was frosting and decorating it.

Also, the frosting was apparently a little too thin.  Very too thin.  (It didn't seem that thin in the mixing bowl, I promise!)

I have never had a problem with frosting like this before. *sigh*

Things look a little better from this angle.

Or this angle.

But not this angle. 

Or this angle.

D'oh.

On the bright side, the cake was still very tasty.  I mean, seriously, how can you go wrong with milk chocolate cake mix with crumbled brownies mixed in, super-duper vanilla buttercream frosting, and Whoppers?

Mmmm(ish)...

As per usual we took several videos of the boys enjoying their candy.  My favorite is "Gross"; it starts out with a conversation with Spencer but quickly goes downhill as you can hear Josh gagging on and spitting out a mouthful of candy.

Yes, the Madsens are the epitome of Valentine's romance.

42 Minute Pirate Costume

Yesterday I faced a stereotypical mothering moment: I had forgotten that Spencer needed a costume for school.  The next day.

In my defense, a note was sent home about the costume quite a while ago - like before Christmas.  Holiday life was busy and crazy and thinking of a costume then was not my highest priority.  Plus, I figured they'd send another reminder home once we got closer.  They did.  The day before.

D'oh.

D'oh!!!

But, I am proud to announce that I did not have to spend my entire afternoon and evening shopping and sewing and gluing together.  I spent around 42 minutes and didn't even have to leave the house.

The majority of that time was spent trying to figure out who Spencer could be.  His class was having a Fairy Tale theme to their Valentine's Day party, so his costume needed to be a character from a fairy tale.  Although it would be cute, animal characters weren't really an option; they take a lot of time and talent, which I did not have.  After going through a list of fairy tales I gave Spencer two options: Prince Charming or Captain Hook.

(Side note: Lance questioned whether or not Peter Pan was really a fairy tale.  I wondered that, too, but Wikipedia - the source of all internet knowledge and truth - listed it as such, and that was good enough for me!)

He chose Captain Hook.  And who can blame him?  What six year old would want to be a boring ol' handsome prince when they could be a swarthy sea dog?

I quickly realized that being Captain Hook wasn't really an option, since I lacked the requisite red coat with gold trimming and a curly black wig.  No matter; Spencer was perfectly happy being just a regular pirate from Peter Pan.  (Although he resisted being called Smee, which I think is the coolest pirate name ever.)

So, the first 30 minutes were spent on research.  The remaining 12 were spent gathering items from the house:

• A pirate hat left over from his birthday party (Admission: I freaked out about making a pirate hat for about 30 seconds before I remembered that I already had one!)
• A raw silk ruffled shirt that I used as a pirate shirt when I was in college.  (Is it a sign of age that I can use real clothes from my 20's as costumes for my children?  Ponder.)  I had kept it with our Halloween costume stuff for such an occasion!
• Pirate booty beads, also from his party.
• An old (and kinda small) church vest.
• Two fabric belts from a couple of child-sized Japanese kimono outfits we inherited from my dad.
• Red and black-striped socks.  Essential for any worthy pirate.
• A cardboard sword, covered in traditional aluminum foil.

The sword took the longest, and even then I only spent about five minutes on it.  

The results:

Argh and avast!  A pirate worthy of terrorizing Never Land and that annoying kid, Peter Pan.

I saw lots of the other costumes this morning when I went to his class to drop off some cookies.  They were all adorable, and I might be a bit biased, but I think my homemade pirate was definitely the cutest.

For Kevin

Not feelin' the love, Kevin.

NOT. FEELING. THE. LOVE.

Bloodthirsty Undead Progeny

Cole is a zombie.  He tries to eat my face every chance he gets.  Generally he goes for my cheek, but every once in a while my little bloodthirsty undead progeny will go straight for the jugular. I risked life and limb to get this picture as proof.

In all fairness, I think he thinks he's returning the kisses I smother him with when I pick him up.  But I just kiss - he bites.  Fortunately, he's following Madsen genetic tradition and is a late teether.

Lately my little zombie baby has been extra grouchy, due mainly to his double ear infection and the antibiotics he has to take for it.  He gets very upset whenever I leave the room.  He also gets very upset when I'm not holding him.  While walking around.  

Too bad, little zombie.  I cannot hold you and walk you around all day.

While folding laundry I stuck him in a laundry basket with some toys.

This seemed to appease him a little.  Fortunately, he is also following the Madsen baby tradition of being a late crawler, otherwise a mere laundry basket wouldn't be able to contain him.

Not Good

Yesterday Cole woke up with a double ear infection.  Goop coming out of both of his ears.  Grossness.  Now he's on antibiotics and the ears are clearing up, but the medicine bothers his tummy.  Not good.

This morning I went to the dentist expecting to get an old filling replaced, but ended up getting three 'hidden' cavities filled. (They didn't find them until after they removed the filling and got a good look between the teeth.)  The amount of Novocaine used on my jaw was quite impressive, as was the amount of drilling.  And the total cost.  Not good.

So I got home all numbed up and sore and found a grouchy baby, who's all drugged up and feeling yucky.  He whined constantly.  I wanted whine constantly.  Not good.

So I decided to give him a bath in the kitchen sink.  And make his hair stick up all crazy-like.

This made Cole and me feel better.  A baby taking a bath in the kitchen sink is Always. Good.