We LOVE Spring

Today was such a nice, warm spring day. We spent all afternoon outside enjoying the nice weather. Zack loves being outside and since it has been cold he just stands at the door when I open it and watches everything going on outside and yells to anyone or anything he sees. So today when I took him outside and put him down he was so excited. He took off walking down the sidewalk and after he got about 5 houses down I yelled at him to come back, he probably had no idea what to do with so much freedom so he just took off! It was so fun watching him play on all the toys in the backyard. This was his first time playing back there and walking around and climbing on things. He thought everything was so funny it was so cute. He would hear other kids playing in their yards or the church parking lot so he'd yell to them like he was trying to communicate with them. It is so fun to see the excitement and magic in little kids eyes!

One year older and wiser too!

Yesterday I got to celebrate my birthday with most of my sisters and brother! We ordered take out sushi ate cake and watched Bride Wars at my sister Heidi's house. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. My sister surprised me with a Raspberry/Lemon cupcake from The Cocoa Bean. It was great!

When I got home my neighbor brought me a huge cupcake - it looked so pretty.

and my mother-in-law had left me a basket of her homemade rolls and jam - YUM!!

A bunch of my friends showed up at 5pm to surprise me and take me out to dinner, but I had already made arrangements to babysit my sisters kids so I wasn't able to go. I told them all to go anyways and think of me while they ate! :) It is a good thing I didn't go - Kade ended up getting sick and throwing up all night.

I had a great day which started off with my kids running in my room to tell me happy birthday and remind me I am now 31. Soon after we got up I got a phone call from my parents which is always a great way to start the day and then spent most of my day on the phone having friends and family wish me Happy Birthday or answering the door to find someone else bringing me treats. Thank you all for you thoughtfulness and kindness - you all made turning 31 not so bad :)

10 Year Anniversary

A while ago we realized that all our friends, including us got married the same year. So to all celebrate our 10 year anniversaries we went on a cruise together. I don't think I could dream of a better way to celebrate - we had SO much fun! This was our first cruise and we LOVED it! We went on the 7 day Exotic Western Caribbean on the Carnival Glory. This is a picture of our ship. It was huge. It had about 13 levels and was the length of 3 football fields. After being on the ship for a week I could still get turned around and confused about where we were at on the boat.
Our cruise had 4 stops and the first one was in Cozumel, Mexico. We went on a caverns and jeep tour. We got to drive jeeps through town and out to these caverns.

We hiked through these caverns until we came to the cenote (underground water/river). We got to jump in and swim through the caves and play around in the water. It was really neat.

After swimming in the cenote we drove the jeeps about 1/2 hour more down to a beach where they served us a Mexican lunch and we got to play on the beach and in the ocean. This beach was so beautiful with white sand and the water was pretty warm here.

Our Second stop was in Belize. One of our friends was scared of heights and pregnant so they went on a different adventure at this stop. We went zipling through the jungle! I was so excited for this one. We rode an old school bus for and hour and 1/2 on crazy bumpy dirt roads to get here - but it was worth it. We walked back through these trees and ended up in a cave where they hooked us all up in our gear.

We hiked up the mountain which was an added bonus to our adventure - it was so pretty. At the top they hooked us up and off we went! We did 4 zipline traverses then repelled down and did one more zipline traverse and one more repell down back into the cave. The highest traverse was 300ft. high and the longest was 200 ft. long. It was really neat and not nearly as scary as I thought it would be.

Standing on a ledge waiting to repell down to the next zipline traverse.

Our third stop was in Costa Maya, Mexico. This is a port created just for cruise ships to stop at. It is not really a town. So we spent the day playing on the beach and eatting yummy food.

Two of our friends and I got a massage on the beach. $20.00 for a one hour massage. I am pretty sure the lady/man?? who massaged me wasn't trained like they are here - but it still felt so good to lay in the hot sun and hear the ocean while getting rubbed down with oil.

On the days we were on the ship cruising all day we'd play games with our friends, try our luck in the casino, lay out, read books, run on the treadmills, enjoy the steam room and sauna and EAT, EAT, EAT!

Our last stop was in Nassau, Bahamas on Friday the 13th, which was also our 10th anniversary. Rich and I had signed up to do snuba, which is like scuba diving but the tanks stay up on the boat and you stay attached with a cord. It sounded really fun and exciting to do. An hour before we were suppose to go we got a message saying the adventure had been cancelled because not enough people signed up. So we signed up for a catamaran ride and snorkeling.

There were lots of fish and the water was crystal clear.

That night at dinner our friends bought us drinks to celebrate our anniversary

and surprised me by having our waiter bring out a plate of chocolate covered strawberries (my favorite) and everyone singing Happy Birthday to me! I LOVE surprises - I have the greatest friends in the whole world.

Our trip home from Orlando was another adventure in itself. Due to plane delays we missed our connecting flight in Washington DC and no other flights were leaving until the next morning.

What do you do when you are stranded in Washington DC without any luggage?

You rent a mini van and drive around and see the sites!

It was getting dark and was raining and we were all in shorts/capris, sandals and light jackets. But we all braved the weather and wondered around the sites. Thankfully Rich forget to take off his coat and winter hat when we flew out and so he had those in his carryon.

After touring around DC for about 6 hours we went to the airport and slept on the chairs in the airport chapel for about 3 hours while we waited for our flight at 5:30am. Rich was setting the alarm on the cell phone so we wouldn't miss this flight as well. We made our flight and got into SLC at 9:40am only to find our luggage was NOT there. We had to file a baggage claim and went home with no luggage. Our luggage was flown up to Idaho Falls and we got in Mon. afternoon. It turned into quite an adventure just getting home. We had such a great time and are missing having people clean our room twice a day, or serve us dinner or having a constant supply of food anytime you want it. We loved going on the cruise and will definetely be going on other one.

Miss Ruby

We got to babysit my new neice the other day and all the boys LOVED having her here. She is such a pretty little girl, and having a girl in our house with pink clothes and pretty ribbons and flowers on her head was such a novelty here! The boys were so cute with her. Kade and Ty were so sweet with her. They'd just lay by her on the bed and say how pretty she was and that they liked her flower headband.

Notice there are no pictures of Zack with Ruby. He LOVED her a little too much! :) He kept trying to give her smothering hugs when I was holding her and when I would pull him off of her he would get so mad he'd throw himself backwards on the couch and slap his legs and then come back again full force for more hugs. It was pretty cute - but he was relentless and wouldn't stop.

WARNING

For Valentine's Day and Pres. weekend we went down to Utah and partied with our friends. Friday evening all the husbands took the kids to the monster truck rally at the Enery Solutions Arena. This left me and my girl friends for a girls night out with the two youngest kids. We went to dinner and then went shopping for clothes to take on the cruise we are all going on together in 2 weeks.

We had a fun weekend shopping, sledding, playing games and eating a lot of food and snacks.

The boys loved sledding. Zack even went down a couple of times with Rich.


The chocolate fountain is always a big hit with our family - We love it! It seems like everyone else eats a few things and then walks away - but NOT the Madsen's! We are all huddled around the chocolate fountain until all the food is gone and the chocolate is licked clean :) My favorite dipped in the chocolate is fresh pineapple, strawberries and shortbread cookies.

On Valentine's Day we got a babysitter for all the kids and the adults went into Layton for a Valentine's lunch so we wouldn't have to deal with the evening crowds. We went to McGrath's in Layton and we were about the only people there. Our husbands all got the same gift for us to open all together at the restaurant. We were all excited and opened them up to find.... A SNUGGI. That's right - the one and only, AS SEEN ON TV - SNUGGI!
Rich and I have been making fun of these for months - but I guess he secretly LOVED them enough to buy me one. We have heard Jay Leno refer to them as the exact opposite of lingerie. And how giving them to the person you love is like saying - here, why don't you completely cover yourself up in the most unattractive way! I wasn't sure what to think of Rich giving this to me. We all got a good laugh out of the gift and all the workers at McGrath's had a good laugh over it and hearing our conversation about the Snuggi. We were there so long and very entertaining to them that they even offered us all FREE dessert! I guess the Snuggi was worth it - if only for the free dessert :)

Later that night I realized why the guys bought the Snuggi's - it was pure selfish reasons. All the husbands were wearing the snuggi's the rest of the night, and when they weren't the kids were. Ty asked me the other day if we get to keep the snuggi forever! I take back all the bad things I said about the Snuggi, they really all the greatest blanket/robe/NOT lingerie there is! I wear my snuggi every night to watch tv or a movie. But after an incident last night the Snuggi's should have come with a warning: RISK OF ELECTRIC SHOCK! After wearing the snuggi for a while I got up to go turn off the lights and go to bed. After walking over to the light switch while wearing the snuggi I got shocked when I went to turn off the light. Not just a little shock - I am sure there must have been some sparks flying. The only time I have been shocked more was from an electric fence. I walked down the hall and checked on the boys and went to turn off another light and got shocked again. I do love my new snuggi but need to wear with caution from now on!

Thanks for the greatest Valentine's gift ever Rich! Even though it almost killed me the other night :)

One Down

Kade's two bottom teeth have been loose for about a week and tonight one was so loose it could bend all the way forward and almost touch his gums in the front - gross, I know! But he got a piece of broccoli stuck in the hole under the tooth at dinner and was panicked about having the broccoli bit in there. He was continually wiggling his tooth trying to get the broccoli out. He kept getting out of bed to tell me about the progress and eventually to show off his victory of getting the broccoli out. I took a picture of the tooth dangling forward out of his mouth because it was so gross and turned the camera on video and told him to just pull it out. Much to my surprise - HE DID!!! I turned the video off just as he started yelling, "Ty, my tooth is out, my tooth is out!" It was a very exciting time here. Ty took the tooth and put it safely under Kade's pillow for the tooth fairy to find. The other tooth will probably come out in the next day or two. I couldn't convince him to pull it out tonight so the tooth fairy only had to make one trip. :)

Las Vegas

Rich had a conference to attend in Las Vegas last week and I got to go along for a little vacation since airline tickets from Idaho Falls to Vegas are pretty cheap. We flew out Mon. night and got back Fri. night. It was really nice to get away from mom duties for a few days and to enjoy the warm weather (70 degrees) and grass and flowers! The conference didn't start until Wednesday, so we had all day Tuesday to enjoy Vegas. Due to some unexpected charges to use the workout facility at our hotel we hit the streets of Vegas for a morning jog. It was so nice to run outside again. After our jog we hit up Denny's FREE Grand Slam breakfast. It was some sort of customer appreciation day.

We ate at RA Sushi for dinner one night. We were there during happy hour - which was from 3-7pm - that is a long happy hour. But in Vegas is seems like Happy Hour is 24 hours a day! Because it was happy hour a lot of there sushi rolls and appetizers were 1/2 off. We got a ton of sushi and appetizer for $20. It was SO good!

We got tickets to see the Cirque de Solei show KA. You can't take any pictures in the theatre - but it was amazing! It was so entertaining and fun to see. The stage would move around while they were performing and at times it would be completely vertical and the performers would be sliding down it face first and running up it. Crazy!!

We ate at the Paris buffet one night. They had a crepe station, where they would custom make crepes - I started and ended my meal with a crepe and ate a few during the meal. SO GOOD!

We watched the fountain show at the Bellagio a few times, that is so fun. On Thursday Rich's boss' wife and I went to a session at the Las Vegas Temple. I had never been to that temple and it was fun to go. It was a very small session - only 9 people. I LOVE black jack and when I found a black jack slot machine I was so excited. I convinced Rich to let me play - every hand I would win he'd tell me to cash out. After 15 min. I had turned $1 into $15 - Rich made me cash out and he quickly took the earnings. :) I convinced him later to let me play again and lost $10 pretty quickly. By the end of the week I think we walked away even. We had a fun trip and it was so uplifting to be in the warm sunshine for a few days.