J's Family Party...

We had Family over to celebrate our new 9 year old (10 is a year away-wow!). We kept it simple on the cake front for this party and went with the tried and true baseball pull apart cake:

It's very convenient having a cousin for a best friend!

Still a full room for just a small family party:

This was Jayden's debut at one of our parties and he was pretty happy about it:

Happy birthday big boy!

Flashback Friday...

I recently had the honor of making a video for my mom's 50th birthday which means everyone gave me lots of old pictures of my mom.

Of course, I would never post embarrassing photos of her here:

Does anyone see a little me or Ashton in this one?
Please take the time to notice the great outfit:

I'm teasing her, but what a beautiful smile!

But the picture I most wanted to share was my favorite, me snuggled up in her lap just loving my Mommy:

Love it!

PS: Now do you see where Wesley gets his hair from?

An Ode to Kim...

Over the last few months I have had one of life's greatest pleasures, that of developing a new friendship. I love those first few weeks with a new friend where you get to tell them your stories that everyone else has already heard, and you get to relive them all over again. I love learning their stories and getting to know them at a deeper level with each one. If you know me, you know that I am a tried and true introvert and making friends does not come easily to me. I have to force myself to talk to new people or to be outgoing. It usually takes me a while to get to know someone well and to trust them enough that I can completely be myself around them.

This was in no way the case with Kim! With every story we swapped and every personality trait we revealed, we swore we were seperated from birth. I have never met anyone I have so much in common with. After a few times it kind of started to freak us out a little how many things were similiar! She actually even has a boy (actually 2) and a girl that can play with my kids- most my friends seem to have 1 or the other. Even though she doesn't have kids the twins age she completely welcomes them into her home. She amazingly didn't kick us out when Wesley broke Joseph's baby ornament on their tree- yikes! She even offered to get them their own bucket of toys for when they are her house! When we showed up for our first homeschooling activity with the big kids she had even planned themed activities for the twins- talk about the way to my heart!

Homeschooling can be an incredibly lonely experience, and it has been so nice to have a buddy to do projects with. Boy, when we are team teaching we can bring it if I do say so myself! We have done Thanksgiving reader's theater complete with homemade outfits, a Christmas lapbook, electricity experiments, fraction fun, a planning weekend, an Olympics unit, poetry writing, art projects and lots of cool math activities. In one month we are headed to Ohio for 3 nights and 4 days of a homeschooling conference (i.e. girl time!).

My favorite saying she has is "we're looking for friends to do life with." Which translates to not caring if each other's house is dirty, praying faithfully for one another, chatting daily on the phone, folding each others laundry, cleaning out closets together, cooking a month's worth of meals to freeze for both our families (my personal favorite), family game night (my other favorite because Ben's as competitive as me), and right now both having strep throat (my least favorite).

Apparently even God knows how close we are as He revealed something for her to tell me that I really needed to hear. Over the next few months I am excited to cover her in prayer as she heads on a mission trip to Ethiopia. She has taught me so much about hospitality, covering your children with scripture and prayer. So I thank God for her and her family.

She keeps complaining because despite the fact that we are almost daily together I haven't mentioned her on my blog yet. What she doesn't understand is that is mostly her fault. When you have such a good friend I can call her and tell her all the cute or funny things the kids did instead of blogging about them!

So, here sweet friend is an entire blog entry dedicated to you!

Does this make up for the fact that I gave you strep throat??????????????

First Day Magic...

Our first day when we went to the Magic Kingdom was truly one of the most magical days of my life. It was so excited to watch Nana and Pop see it for the first time and how much the twins really understood was amazing. We had to ride the monorail to start:

The best part of the day is when we first arrived and were walking down Main Street toward the castle. I do have to say that our matching shirts helped make it a lot more special. We got there as they opened so all the employees were lining the streets waving at us with their big Mickey hands. They all were saying, "Hi, Dodd family. We love your shirts." It was really neat to be greeted by name. It really paid off too because on the rides and everything they always put us together without us even asking due to the shirts. Jon even admitted he kind of wished we had some for other days! Anyway, it was really cool to get there so early and the park be relatively empty. We even got to meet the mayor:


The castle was amazing as ever. Wesley kept yelling, "my princess castle" because that is what we always call it since we took Ashton at 2 and she dubbed it that. It was funny to hear him say it though!

Nana is an avid rabbit collector and she managed to find a mosaic one in the castle.

The characters were out. Our first autograph came from the Fairy Godmother herself!

This was really funny because Will was all about standing next to Peter Pan while Wesley was having none of it. Then Peter thought it would be a good idea to teach Jackson how to crow and let out a really loud crow and Will fled the scene hysterically. That is him trying to hide behind his daddy:

The first ride up was Ashton's favorite- Dumbo (which also fit in with my copious research of which rides to ride first!). Everyone loved it (Jon and I were SO glad to have Nana and Pop along so no one had to ride alone!):

Ashton even scored her ultimate goal- riding a PINK elephant with NANA- dreams really do come true!

Jackson of course felt obligated to show Pop the ropes:

I got the slightly unsure child who ended up really enjoying the "flight":

The longest line we waited in was probably to see Ariel, but how could you miss out on Ariel?

This one definitely needs to be blown up to an 8x10 and framed:

One of the funniest moments of the day came when we went to ride the race cars. I was so surprised the twins were even old enough to ride, but they could even drive! I let Wesley take the wheel (and had whiplash to prove it) while Jon made Will ride shotgun. They run on a track and the boys both thought they were Lightning McQueen. Jackson and Ashton were right in front of us so every time Wesley saw them he would let got of the wheel, throwing me to the side and start yelling, "Jack Jack, I dwive ca Jack Jack I dwive ca!!!!". It was the.cutest.thing.ever, definitely my favorite Wesley moment.

All of we competitive types were anxious to throw down the gauntlet and rack up the highest score on the space ranger spin. Unfortunately, it was a little hard to get an awesome score while holding a two year old who had the audacity to want to play. I'm just sayin'....

Will had just recently become fascinated with trains. he saw the train when we first came in and wanted to ride right away. As we were riding other things every time we heard the train whistle he would yell to ride. Forget Mommy's organized plan, we HAD to let the boy ride the train.

This is his face when he first saw it up close:

This is his face when we actually got on the train. Entire cost of trip- totally worth it for this smile:

I also noticed he and Ashton holding hands, tissue please...

Oh yeah, these other people liked it too. I believe it was Pop's favorite! That man in the back alone was out stroller wrangler so he got to ride everywhere with a stroller for company:)

We got the best spot to watch the parade only to have it canceled due to rain although they did do their rainy day parade. Everyone consoled themselves with ice cream (another of Pop's and Will's favorite thing about Disney!):

Don't you just love how you spend a lot of money to take them to the most amazing place on earth where you can see things you can't see anywhere else, and they are most fascinated by a bird?

After a slightly rainy, totally awesome and exhausting day it was my favorite time when the castle is all lit up. The twins loved it too.

Then it was time for the spectacular fireworks show: most of us loved it, one of us had a bathroom emergency causing one of us to have to fight our way through a mob to find a bathroom as the fireworks exploded- behind us!

Some us closed our eyes in fear which led to finally giving in to exhaustion, oh to be a kid again!
Main street was just as magical when we left as when we came (though it seemed a lot longer on tired legs!) so we got a final picture with good ole' Walt (his statue not his frozen body!):

This day alone made the entire trip worth it, and we still had a lot of world left to see...

Disney Bound...

I'm finally beginning to recover from my Disney hangover enough to share our trip (especially since lots of people have been fussing at me about it :).

Due to the snow forecast we changed our original plans which had us heading out at 4 Friday morning and left Thursday evening instead. I was a little freaked out because that gave me 12 less hours to pack and prepare, but it ended up working our great. Jon and I were very excited that it would break up our trip since driving 12 hours with 4 kids was daunting to say the least. I didn't let the twins take a nap thinking they would sleep as soon as they got in the car- yeah right! Those little stinkers didn't blink an eye the entire 4 hour trip to Atlanta until Wesley nodded off right when we reached Atlanta! They were amazingly good on the trip though so I can't complain too much.

My wonderful husband drove the entire time despite being up since 4 that morning. I also have to say I was SO surprised and blessed by the fact that he took like 1 work call and then did not work for the rest of the trip (at least that I saw I am sure he sneaked in some e-mails on his phone). That was huge for him since he is on call 24-7. It was so wonderful having his undivided attention :)

So, we were off in our wonderful rented van with Stow-and-Go compartments. I heart that thing! Wed decided to put the twins in the back assuming they would sleep and so we could actually talk to the big kids. Neither thing happened since they were all watching movies the entire ride

(how did our parents ever take us anywhere without DVD players- oh yeah, we read!).

If you know me at all, you know I had activity bags packed for each child, and they were Disney themed bags and activities too!We finally stopped south of Atlanta and checked into a very nice hotel room (thank you Nana). What do you do after checking into a nice hotel room? Jump on the beds of course!

Since we didn't have cribs, Jon and I each took a big kid and a little kid in a bed. Here are the two I was responsible for. Please note that not only are they sleeping, but they are sweetly sleeping holding hands no less. Man, I'm good!
Jon's didn't do so well. Will wanted to sleep on the floor which totally grossed me out because it was a hotel room-eww! So, when Jon was trying to get him off the floor Will threw a fit and hit his mouth on the corner of the wooden bed frame. It was pitch dark so Jon picked him up and carried him to the bathroom. When we turned the light on we all panicked because Jon was covered in blood! Will had sliced opened his gum and, like all mouth wounds, it was bleeding profusely. We finally got it stopped, but the next morning we warned the front desk about all the blood soaked rags!
Friday we got off to an early start and made great time. Again the kids did amazingly well. We made some great active stops at a rest stop and Chik-F-A playground which helped a lot. We arrived at our resort at 5:00. I requested a T*y Story room because the twins love this movie so much. I love this resort because it is fun with the two story characters. We were so excited to have our picture made with "Yeehaw Cowboy" as the twins call him.

Will was loving all the characters, but Wesley was a little scared of the gigantic characters.

Ashton was hamming it up as usual.

They all loved this car and had to sit in it EVERY time we walked past.

Guess which character was Ashton's favorite?

Buzz Lightyear guarded us each night as our rooms were behind him. So comforting!

After Jon and I about had a break down after Will's screaming melt down at dinner, Nana kindly took them to look around some more. They discovered the giant dogs that Will insisted on having his picture made with. There were 2 and Wesley kept showing me the "mommy" dog and "daddy" dog.

This giant TV was my favorite. Notice Will is even trying to change the channel off his crazy self!

Overall, our travel went amazingly well. Before we knew it it was time to lay out our matching shirts and get ready for the big Magic Kingdom day!

What Have I Been Having So Much Fun Doing I Gave Up Sleep and Blogging???

My friend Amy found this amazing website where they will design and personalize shirts for you for FREE! All you have to do is print it off and iron it on. There are thousands of designs to choose from so I have spent hours and hours looking at all of them (and my blog has sat neglected). At about 1 a.m. Monday I finally finished them all and had to share them!

This is the one I made for everyone at Christmas (and the only one everyone knows about!):

The next day at Animal Kingdom all the kids will be wearing Mickey heads with some favorite characters. I love that the twins have Chip and Dale-twins right?

One day we princesses are going to match (Ashton is going to love us matching- she is my daughter after all :)

Then there is the day Jon and Jackson will be rocking some Star Wars shirts. Jackson's has different Star Wars characters behind each letter in his name. How funny is Darth saying "Who's your Daddy?" I'll be sure to post Jon sporting it!

Then Pop the car addict has this surprise waiting on him, hee hee:

These are Ashton's wardrobe line up:

I think this one is my favorite:

I got her some red polka dot hair bows that are going to make this outfit- it's the little things that make me happy obviously!
These are Will's choices. The twins are absolutely obsessed with Nemo and Cars so I can't wait to see their reaction to these:

And here's Wesley's:

I tried very hard to get Jackson some big boy shirts so I give you Pirates and Star Wars- perfect, huh?

I also printed labels with their names, the day of the week and different characters on each. I packed each days' outfit in a baggie so mornings will run a little smoother. I am so excited for them to wake up each morning and see what shirt I made for them. I love surprises!!! I wish I could've made them for each day but Jon said, "You are already making more shirts than we ordered for our entire baseball team last year. It's time to stop." Isn't he a party pooper?

I have had so much fun preparing for this trip! Now due to the inclement weather we are leaving Thursday at 5 pm instead of Friday at 4am! Guess I better get finished packing all my surprises!