Garden Happiness

A moment of silence for my crook neck squash and cucumber plants, who succumbed to powdery mildew last week.  No amount of fungicide or love could save them.

(I'm not devastated - a girl can only eat so much squash and cucumbers.)

The corn is all done and I'm not sure if the beans will every really grow that well.  So now it's the tomatoes and peppers that are growing like crazy.  Happiness is homegrown tomatoes. :)

iPad Fun

Tonight Cole and I are testing out Blogger on the iPad.

Not bad, although typing is a chore.  Maybe I'll actually blog while I'm in San Francisco at the of the month.  Have I mentioned I'm going there?  Well, I am.  Hooray!  Lance is going to a conference and I'm tagging along because Lance likes me best.

Apparently we needed another picture.

Cole wants to type: cole boley

He seriously just typed that.  Who is this kid?!? (Answer: Cole boley)

So anywho, I keep thinking that I need to blog but then just can't get myself to do it.  Part of it is I just don't have a ton of spare time with all four kiddos home.  But the other part is that my hormones are still out of whack and I just don't feel myself.  It's like perpetual writer's block, only it's not just writing, it's thinking, too.  Thinker's block... Is that a thing?  It is now.  Well hopefully my doctor and I can get things figured out soon so I can start to function again.

 

There's my guy!

Time to put kids to bed, so time to sign off.

New School Year Motto

Last night at Mom's Group

-wait-

have I told you I'm in a Mom's Group?  I honestly can't remember.  Well, I am.  And it is awesome. Each month we read an article about mothering and then get together and discuss it.  It's nice to hear so many different points of view, get new ideas about mothering, but also realize that many of us have the same issues. We also laugh and talk a lot.  It's pretty great.

Anywho.  Last night we got a little off topic and jokingly decided that this should be the Madsen's new school year motto.

Hahaha, it's funny.  Because it's true.

(And you'd think Tess would keep her hands out of her pants because what's down there that's so interesting?  No.  She follows the example of her brothers in ALL THINGS.)

By the Numbers

Number of light bulbs shattered after a careless 6 year old swiped them off of the store shelf after I told him 978 times NOT to touch anything: 6.

Number of fights broken out between my children in the aisles of Wal-Mart within a 50 minute trip: 57

Number of times I had to tell Cole not to blow his stinky breath on his brothers: 39

Number of times I have had to pray for patience with my children this morning: 73

Number of days until school starts: 9

Nine longest days of my life.

Cub Scout Day Camp

Spencer got to go to Cub Scout Day Camp last week.  In his words: 

"It. Was. AWESOME!!! Except for the pool.  The pool was freezing."

I'm sure the water in the pool was cold - it was a rather chilly and extremely unusually mild week here in Indiana. (And Spencer has 0% body fat.) I don't think the boys realized how luck they had it; it's usually blazing hot this time of year.

Anywho, as interesting as the weather is, back to day camp.  Spencer did fun things like archery, bb gun shooting, arts and crafts, hiking, swimming, and other sundry activities.  He's already reached that stage where it's like pulling teeth getting info out of him.  Perhaps I should have him write a post about it.  (As if he'd ever agree to do that.)  Suffice it to say, he loved camp and I'm really glad he got to go.

On the last day of camp there was a family camp fire, where each pack got to do a skit and awards and such were given out.  You can imagine just how fun it was.  (I'm a bad scouting mom in that I'm not very enthusiastic about it.  As my friend Gigi says, I can't be good at everything.  And I'm not.  I am sooo not.)

I tried to do video of Spencer's skit, but it didn't turn out well. And I only got a few pictures, none of them with Spencer in them.  Go figure.  But here's one picture, just to give you an idea of what it looked like.

We suffered through enjoyed all two hours with our friends the Asays and the Reams.  Josh behaved pretty well (as far as I know - he was sitting with the Reams), but Tess and Cole were another story.  You just imagine how fun it was to sit on benches and watch skits you could barely hear.  By the end Tess was throwing gravel at the people in front of us.  Yeah, it was pretty fun.

Kinley (who is three) tried to reign Tess in, but no dice.

The Reams with two of my kids.  (Thanks, Gigi and Craig!)  I never did get a picture of the Asays.  Perhaps next time?  (Ugh.  Next time.)

How Lance controls toddlers.  (Actually, she just wanted to stand like this.)

As her shirt proclaims, "and though she be but little she is fierce"!

The mighty scouts of pack 8!  From left to right: Zeniff, Spencer (who decided not to wear his shirt that day.  Oh well - he looks pretty great in his rugby shirt grandpa and grandma got him in Scotland!), Logan, Chris, and Ethan.  These boys.  I love 'em.  I can't wait to see what they're like as teenagers. (Or maybe I can...)

Afterwards we all went to Dairy Queen for dinner.  We sat on the patio and enjoyed the lovely weather and awesome company.  I didn't get too many pictures because I was too busy gabbing and eating. That's the sign of a nice evening.

Apparently Bergen really enjoyed her ice cream!

Not the greatest picture, but I wanted to remember that we had an adults only (plus Tess) table, which was nice.  We decided to call ourselves the "Townies" since all three of our families are permanent to Lafayette.  (As opposed to all of the students who live here.) (Not that I don't like the student families.  In fact, I LOVE many of the student families!  But it's nice to know that there are some people who won't be leaving me, sad and alone, any time soon. ;)  It was so nice to sit back and chat and learn the history of auto sales in Lafayette (thanks, Kevin!).  The kids all played so nicely, too!

This is something we'll definitely have to do again sometime soon.  (The dinner and chatting - not the family campfire. Oy.)

Grandpa ElRay & Grandma Susie Visit

Oh, hi.  Yeah, I'm still alive.  I've just been totally lazy about blogging lately.  Guess I took a little blogging vacation there.  Btu I'm back and ready to get back into the swing of things.

Last week Grandpa ElRay and Grandma Susie came to visit.  They've been traveling literally all over the world lately, so we sure were grateful they were willing to stop in our neck of the woods for a bit!

Lance was in Chicago at a conference and Spencer had Cub Scout Day Camp each day, so the trip was perfectly timed.  I was so grateful to not have to drag all of the kiddos out the door at 7:25am every morning to get Spencer and his buddies out to Cary Camp!

On Tuesday morning Grandpa had a meeting at Purdue with some other 'bug guy', so Grandma and I took Josh, Tess, and Cole to Columbian Park to play, visit the zoo, and ride the train.

Of course the first picture I took was of a chicken.  Because chickens are cool.  And Josh really liked that chicken.  (He kept asking if I took a picture of him.  This one's for you, Josh.)

Despite the look on Tess's face, she was pretty excited to go on the train.

There we go!  Woo-hoo!

As you can see, the train is pretty empty on Tuesday mornings.  The kids had a blast, though.  We usually only go on the train once a summer, so this was a bonus treat.

Okay, this picture is hard to see; I took it during our train ride.  It's the remains of Home Hospital, where Josh and Cole were born.  Josh is pretty sad that they're tearing it down.  (I'm not - the new hospital is SOOOO much nicer!)  Whenever we drive by the rubble he pouts and whines about it.

The next day we went to the Rotary Jail Museum in Crawfordsville, something I've been wanting to visit for quite a while!  (I'm pretty sure my kids are going to grow up moaning and groaning about all the weird places I take them.  I don't care.  I like history; especially unusual local history.  I also like national parks, factory tours, and museums.  My kids are in for a lifetime of odd and educational outings.)

Josh often poses and demands that I take a picture.  I'm happy to oblige.

The tour was actually pretty good! We were, oddly, (haha), the only ones there, so we had the tour guide all to ourselves.  What is a rotary jail, you ask?  Well, think of a huge, multi-storied lazy susan surrounded by bars.  They had issues keeping prisoners from escaping the old log cabin with dirt floors jail, so the rotary jail solved that problem.  (Although it was eventually closed because it was a big ol' fire death trap.)  Anways, Cole looked especially awesome on our tour with his huge Cole shirt and binoculars.  Four Three year olds are funny.

True but unrelated story: When you ask Cole how old he is he still says he's three.  But when you ask Tess how old she is she says four.  My kids: super cute, not so super at knowing their ages.

Susie and Josh chillin' in the Sheriff's office.  The tour guide was telling us a story about some murderer who was sentenced to hang; the rope broke twice and on the third try his neck didn't snap so it took him 12 minutes to gruesomely suffocate.  It was a funny-but-not-really story.

The tour guide let us go inside the actual cells and even showed us how the rotary jail worked.  It was really cool!  I think he said that the cells weighed something like 13 tons, but because of the gears it only took 13 pounds of force to rotate them.  Pretty cool.

The only picture of me the whole week, and I'm behind bars.

 Checking out the rotary cells.

We even got to go up to the second story on the rotary cells.  It was pretty neat, and a little bit scary.  (Only because I'm not a huge fan of heights.  Especially heights that involve 130 year old buildings.)

 

Tessie was really impressed with all of the potties we saw at the jail.  "Oh look!  Potty!  Oh, potty!" (This one was in the women's cell.  Nice.)  Don't you love her choice in outfits for our jail tour?  Nothing says jail like a tutu!

A cool looking window on the second floor.)

The rotary mechanism from the top.

 
We went all the way from the third story of the jail to the basement - and Tess insisted on walking up and down every single stair by herself.  Needless to say, she kind of held up traffic.

The basement was really neat - we were right underneath the rotary cells!  The engineering was really quite impressive.

Checking out the gears.

Looking up the gear shaft.

The the tour guide went upstairs and rotated the cells while we were in the basement.  That was COOL.  And creepy!  (But mostly cool.)

Tess didn't seem phased by it at all.

Cole wasn't quite sure what to think.

Tess just wandered around the jail's basement and looked cute.

After the jail we went to the Lindy Freeze for lunch.  The Lindy Freeze is this little local joint that has great ice cream and stuff like tenderloin sandwiches and fried pickles.  Very Indiana.  Very yummy.  (So yummy I didn't take a picture.  I was too busy convincing Tess she didn't want to play in the rather busy road.  Rotten two four year old!)

The next morning we went to the Battleground Monument for a picnic.  We went to the nature center, walked around the monument, and went on a little hike.

Josh wasn't so excited to go since he had been there on a fieldtrip just last fall.  But once we got there he happily took the role of tour guide and showed us around.

Look!  I actually got each child to smile for the camera!  (Grandma Susie is pretty easy to get a smile from!)

The best picture I could get of the kiddos with the grandpa and grandma.  Not so bad - pouty Tess is pretty standard.

Yeah, she totally started hitting him when I took this picture.  Battles ensued.

Walking on the bridge.  Two year olds make hikes so much more interesting with their constant death wishes. (Getting to close to the edge of bridges and tall walls, refusing any help down steep, muddy paths, etc.)

During lunch Josh found a really big caterpillar.  Entomologist grandpa helped him catch it on a stick.

The weird stairs on the fence.  Why have a fence if you're going to have stairs going over the fence?  I've always wondered about this.

Grandpa and Grandma spent a lot of time playing with the kids and helping me out around the house.  We sure were sad to see them go, and can't wait to see them again!