Thanksgiving Fun

We spent thanksgiving at our house with Devan's aunt Elinor's family and the rest of our "substitute" family which includes our ward friends that also don't have family in the area. We ended up with over 30 people. What a blast!!! It was crazy so I didn't get pics of the event but here are some before and after.

Drostan rolling out dough for his great-grandma's monkey bread. 

One of the great things with such a big group was we only had to make a few things. We fried a turkey and roasted a turkey breast and of course made green bean casserole and monkey bread. We had oodles of delicious food.

The kids played all day and were exhausted at the end. Drostan and Spencer love to do things together. At bedtime we found them both curled in balls, sharing Drostan's toddler bed.

Not thanksgiving related, but after living in our house 11/2 years I finally got my chalkboard wall comleted. Yeah!!!

Pumpkin Carving

It's very late to be posting these, but I thought they were fun and they let you see some of the fun we've been having. For Halloween this year, we hosted a pumpkin carving party. We had lots of people and lots of fun.

My monsters getting ready for the party.

Drostan showing his claws and roaring. Scary!!!

We did several crafts for the kids. Here they are making playdough ghosts. We also made bat pumpkins and played a mummy game and eyeball race.

We even had a hay ride (yes there is even straw in there) for those who wanted to brave the cold.

We even carved some pumpins at our "pumpkin carving" party.

a few pics

So I have decided to take over our blog since Devan is too busy on Facebook to bother. Anyway, I thought I would post some of our recent pics of the boys.

Grayson is growing so fast, he is smiling, cooing, and giggling all the time. He is quite a vocal child, always making some kind of noise. He is also carrying on the Madsen tradition in being "vertically challanged." He is 50% in weight but only 10% in height. He has also taken after the ball side in the hair department.

I finally pulled up the corn stalks and piled them on the driveway by the garden. Drostan went out to play with Devan and discovered a treasure. He made a depression in the middle and promptly sat in it declaring it was his nest. (it really did look like a giant nest)

Grayson doesn't like to be away from the action so this is where he likes it best when mom is cooking or cleaning--sitting on the counter.

Drostan is still a doting big brother. He is constantly hugging and kissing and generally mauling his younger brother (even when he isn't supposed to be on the counter).

This is a common occurance the last few weeks as Grayson has been teething. He frequently gets both fists in his mouth, don't ask me how.

Having a Ball

For my birthday this year my wife took me to "Harry Potter" and dinner, after which I took her to the hospital. Her water had broken during the movie, but she toughed it out and then insisted that we eat before she went to the hospital. We showed up at the hospital at about 5:30 and at 3:09 am Grayson Wallace Ball was born. He weighed 7lbs 15oz.

After being home for a few days Grayson decided he wanted to go back to the hospital. His bilirubin had been high repeatedly and the pediatrician wanted to have him spend the night on the lights. In the morning his bilirubin had gone down and he was sent back home.

Drostan loves his little brother. People keep asking if he is getting jealous but everytime he gets to hold Grayson or help take care of him, he gets that same silly smile on his face. He is a great big brother.

Here is Grayson in his blessing outfit which was made by Kris (whom Drostan has named White Grandma).

Busy Summer

Well it has been a little over a year since I have posted and a lot has happened. We bought a house and moved in and got settled. Got pregnant and now summer is here. Along with summer came a long list of honey do's. First up, Cassie decided that Drostan and eventually our other children need a swing set . No ordinary swing set would do, she wanted the one that takes three weeks and an engineering degree to put together. Luckily my friend has an engineering degree and I have time so eventually that project was done and Drostan loves his "house"
Next up was refinishing the deck (you can see the completed swing set in the background). First we had to strip off all the old weatherproofing, and then five gallons of Thompsons water seal later our deck was ready to take on the elements again. You never realize how big a deck is until you have to paint it three times. One layer of stripping compound, wash, one layer water seal, by the time you are finished it is time for the second coat, and that is just for the area around the firepit, tomorrow you have to do the rest of the deck by the house.
We also decided to plant a little garden. Three rows of potatoes, two rows of carrots, broccoli, onions, peppers (three different kinds), six roma tomatoes, six rows of corn, two rows of beans, two rows of peas, a summer squash and a winter squash. Some of them are doing better than others but hopefully we get some good food. We also had to redo our front flower beds. Cassie tore out all the pre-existing plants (because she didn't like them) along with the copious weeds and we replanted them and added 2.5 cu yrds of mulch. In order to accomplish all that........
We needed to buy a truck. It is really hard to rent a tiller and haul a truck load of mulch if you don't have a truck to do it with. 2.5 cu yrds of mulch is filling the whole truck bed to overflowing. Yeah, that was fun spreading around by hand. The problem is we still need probably another 2 cu yrds, but we'll get to that later. The truck was actually just luck. One of our friends was moving to Washington state, and after a little convincing decided that he didn't need to drive that truck all the way across the country. So he sold me the truck along with...........his hot tub. He was actually going to take it with him, but it ended up being 2 inches too big. Oh darn. Cassie and I really didn't intend to add a hot tub but if life gives you lemons you make lemonade. We had to have a second platform added to our deck because the existing deck was not sufficient to hold a 3000 lb hot tub. So we built the hot tub platform a little lower than the deck so you step down into the hot tub. Now we are just waiting for a little cooler weather to use the hot tub. Maybe we will just fill it with cold water and use it to cool down during the summer.
After getting all this work done Cassie gave me a great big long........ list of more honey do's. Oh well I better get back to work.