March

Brandan - Brandan has been spending hours and hours working on his last class to finish his Masters.  I know he is ready for it to be over, but, really, the whole family is looking forward to May.  The kids want their Dad to have more time to play basketball and wrestle and I want to throw away the thousands of scrap papers scribbled with Brandan's writing stacked all over the house that I haven't dared trash in case he needs those notes later.  In addition to his class, Brandan is also plowing through the school year and has started coaching Junior High track.  In his very limited free time, he is working towards his goal for the year of listing one new carving a week on Ebay.  So far, he has managed to keep up and has sold everything he listed.

Candie - I am currently treating a large cold sore which, I believe, was largely brought on by my Young Women's calling.  I actually really love my calling, but it seems like I'm always a step behind.  (Apparently, not having a camp director called by March 1st is a cardinal sin.  And don't even get me started on camp fundraisers.)  I have also taken another turn teaching Colt's preschool on Wednesday mornings, so on Wednesday afternoons, I have a headache.  We did some fun things, though, including finger painting different numbers of raindrops onto umbrellas (U is for Umbrella!) and making homemade volcanoes (V is for Volcano!).  Finally, I am in the 13th week of the P90X workouts and regularly reward myself with large desserts (Thus, failing at my year long goal to eat less sugar.  2015, however, is looking bright.)

Dash - Dash is rapidly becoming an expert in all things sports.  He has checked out most of the sports books from the school library and the first thing he does most mornings is look up the NCAA rankings.  He follows the rankings like the stock market and when his team drops down the list he gets as depressed as a wall street trader on a down day.  I recently met with Dash's teacher for Parent/Teacher conference.  In the national tests, Dash is ranked in the 99th percentile in Math and Reading.  Amazing!  His teacher is impressed with his writing as well.  His last writing assignments was a nonfiction story, so Dash wrote about the time Brandan tried to break into the ball closet at the Junior High gym with his credit card.  We're not sure if we should be proud of his writing, or burn his story to destroy the evidence.

Colt - Colt is also an expert in his own field.  Colt loves animals and regularly picks out lengthy library books on different animal species which take hours to read (he doesn't mind, but someone else struggles). He only has to hear a fact once to commit it to memory.  For instance, Colt has recently taught me that the Black Mamba snake is the most poisonous snake and you can tell the difference between a jaguar and a leper by their spot patterns (in case you want to impress your friends, the jaguar has a black dot in the center of the brown circle).  We have also recently realized that Colt is a math genius.  I would say he takes after his father (mother), but Dash takes full credit for his training.  At dinner the other day, Colt said, "I know what 30+30+30+30+30 equals.  It's 150."  We asked him how he knew this and he gave the following explanation.  "I know that three 3s is 9 (or 3 30s is 90) and then the 90 to 100 takes up 10 so that would be 120 and then 2 plus 3 is 5 (20 + 30 = 50).

Sport - Ninety percent of Sport's day is spent on his head.  The child is always propped up on the couch with his feet in the air.  I've seen him watch an entire movie that way.  Sport's other interests include dancing the Cupid Shuffle and reading Piggie and Elephant books, a series he found at the library.  Our local library stocks about 12 of these books and we always have at least 4 checked out.  Sport has memorized most of them so when he asks you to read one to him, what he really means for you to do is hold the book, turn the pages and prompt him if he gets confused.  Hopefully he is able to completely teach himself to read because he has recently announced that he will not be going to Kindergarten...ever.  You see, earlier this month, Colt got his Kindergarten immunizations and Sport decided if that's the price you have to pay to go to school, he's not interested.  Sport also makes a point to randomly remind us that he doesn't get sick and therefore doesn't need shots for any reason.

Breeze - Breeze had a really hard month.  She went a solid eight days battling a fever and dehydration and the rest of the time with a yucky cold.  Actually, she passed her illnesses around some.  Fifteen of the 30 days so far this month, someone in the Madsen family has had a fever. However, for Breeze, being sick had its upside.  When she felt so terrible, it became important to her that we understand exactly what she needed, so she started talking!  She went from whimpering sadly "up, up" (translation: cup) earlier this month, to boldly declaring this morning "I wan bed " (translation: I want bread!).  She does have some manners.  At dinner she will throw her empty bowl at you, but then she will sweetly say, "Mo, pees" (translation: More, please).  Her favorite sentence, however, is "Hep me! Hep me!" (translation: Help me! Help me!).  She first screamed this when she had locked herself into the bathroom, but I hear it most often now when she has climbed onto a surface too high to get back down on her own.

Sis likes to pick out her own clothes.

Breeze likes to watch movies on Daddy's phone, but she accidentally touches the screen and then gets frustrated when it interrupts her movies.  After restarting it for her one too many times, Brandan came up with the solution to make her wear mittens while she watches movies.

This was day 3 of her fever marathon.