Those Eyes!

My good friend Kim took this picture of Violet on her birthday. The thing is...her eyes are really like that...I think they are really quite beautiful. Someday, there will be pictures of those eyes, without a lot of extra gooeyness on her face!

WOW! What a Weekend!

We had such an incredible time this weekend visiting family and friends in Moscow! I have made many attempts at articulating our weekend and keep deleting my posts because they just don't express what a great time we all had. My only complaint would be there was just not enough time to really catch up with all our friends! All your kids have grown a ton and are just beautiful! Please remember to keep sending us pictures so we can get an occasional glimpse at their growth!

Love to all our family and friends in Moscow! We'll be back for a few days at New Years!
See you then!
The Madsons

Happy Attention Grabber

At The River Academy there is a policy for notifying parents about the going ons in the class room by sending home a bright yellow sheet of paper called an "attention grabber." Most of the time the attention grabber is used as a way to let the parents know if there has been a behavior issue in class, or some work related issue. However, Mrs. Patterson Tage's kindergarten teacher has been giving one "happy" attention grabber a day to the student who has done an outstanding job in the classroom that day. Tage has received 3 happy attention grabbers so far this year! We are so proud of him and thought we would share a great picture of him grinning ear to ear holding his "happy attention grabbers." Enjoy!

The Patch

This afternoon was a picture perfect fall day! It was about 58 degrees and sunny, so we headed out to "The Patch" to get pumpkins. We took a hay-ride behind a tractor....wooohoo....and saw some pretty hefty pigs, and some beautiful fall foliage. From there we ran through the corn maze, snapped a few pics, and ran home to eat dinner and post to the blog for you all to see. Hope you all had a wonderful and restful weekend! Talk to you soon!

Welcome Back Sabbath

Last night we had the most glorious Sabbath dinner with some dear new friends here in Wenatchee. As many of you know when we lived in Moscow, Id we had a weekly tradition of kicking off our Sabbath on Sat evening around 6:00pm with the Schumaker (Brant's sister and fam) and Rheingans families. We had a decent size feast since there were at least 6 adults and 14 children every week and often more if we invited another family. The kids played, the adults talked, we would sing the doxology, pray, eat, talk, drink wine and eat some more, before the kids were excused and off playing again. It was such a wonderful and glorious way to end the week that our family really looked forward to it.

As a result of our move to Wenatchee our Sabbath dinners have been few and far between and we really miss it. As I was sharing this with a friend here she (also being from Moscow) told me her family was feeling the same way so we decided to commit to Sabbath dinners together. This week was our first meal together and it was absolutely wonderful! We had 3 families, 6 adults and 10 children 6 years and under...oh and they were mostly boys. We started off the meal with some Catechism questions like:

Who made you?

Have you been baptised?....to which one little 2 yr old answered "Da.." with a huge grin and shake of the head...It was so cute.

Who is God?

What does the bread represent? What does the wine represent?

The amazing thing was they all new the answers to these questions. After that we sang the Doxology, prayed and ate. It was so nice to feel like we are starting to really get settled and become part of this community here. All I have left to say is WELCOME BACK SABBATH!

Picture of me

Here is a picture of me, taken by Tage. I needed to post it before it could go on my profile page.

Fall in Colville

Ok, so this is my life...As I was typing the title of this post Ben came over and punched a buch of buttens on the keyboard. Before I new it a few screens flashed before my eyes and a message came up saying this messsage had been posted...Aggg I have not even wrote anything yet!!! So then I had to figure out where to go to edit a posted message. My point you ask? If things look half-finished or a little unorganized/frazzled, just remember I have 4 children 6 and under. They are often sitting on my lap while I check email or I guess writing on my Blog.

Here are some pictures of the kids and hubby while we were in Colville this past weekend. There was nothing more exciting for Violet than to ride on Joe's back! Grandpa did a wonderful job of instructing the kids on how to be around a horse, which I thnk they listened to since they have been reminding me of it whenever we talk about our horse ride. Tage and Simon loved playing outside, raking leaves and collecting sticks.

Just a reminder, Tage is 6, Simon is 4, Violet is 3 and Ben is 16 months Enjoy!