"H" confusion

Last night I took Christian to soccer practice at the normal location, Hogue cellars. When we got there, someone else's soccer game was just starting.

Christian said, "Oh yeah, the coach said practice was moved to the high school." So I started driving to the high school.

Christian sheepishly said,"Maybe he said Housel...or maybe Heights."

All of those confusing "H" schools! We got lucky and found his practice on the first try though!

Hats!!!

We have learned that you can never predict what might make children happy. When we took Caleb to Disney as a three year old, his favorite thing by far was riding the tram from the parking lot to the park everyday.

On this trip, our kids had a marvelous time one night trying on hats in the Disney stores (for my germa-phobe friends, you may want to close your eyes!). (The pictures are from my cell phone, so they are not the best).

Disneyworld - The Endless Day of Travel!

Disneyworld is AWESOME! Getting there from Washington is not! There is no good time of day to go - it takes all day no matter what time you leave.


We left the house at 6 AM and drove to the Portland Airport. We would have flown out of Pasco, but it was almost $1000 extra for that nice convenience.

We opted for Portland instead of Seattle so we could avoid Snoqualamie Pass in the winter. Unfortunately, Portland had a snow day and we ended up with some tough driving conditions.


We finally made it to Portland and had just pulled off the exit to the airport when some bonehead rear ended us. All of the kids were crying and holding their necks, but the car seemed okay.

We quickly exchanged information and made sure that everyone was okay. Somehow we still made our flight.


So the first leg of our flight was almost five hours to Atlanta, Georgia. The airplane had GPS so we were able to see where we were flying, which was really cool. I think we went through ten states in one day.



The kids did better than I did on the long flight - they had movies and snacks while I was pregnant and bored. I was also in the bathroom every thirty minutes.


Our flight was late getting to Atlanta, so we had to find another connecting flight to Orlando. By the time we got to the airport, rented a car, and found our way to the hotel, it was two in the morning.


Normally, when we get to a hotel, the kids are jumping on the beds and bouncing off the walls. Not a problem this time - we had to carry them all to bed.

We stayed in the Disneyworld resort which is nothing like staying at a Disneyland hotel.

At Disneyland, the hotel is just a quick monorail ride away from the park.

In Disneyworld, they have a million hotels that are five to fifteen minutes away from the various parks.

We stayed at the Port Orleans Riverside Hotel which was beautiful. Considering the vast array of hotel choices in Orlando, this choice was surprisingly simple. It was the cheapest hotel that allowed five guests. Decision made!

Little Guy

Christian is a pretty advanced soccer player thanks to a huge competitive streak and a brother who never goes easy on him when they play together.

He is a second grader but plays on the third/fourth grade team. He also practices a lot with his brother's team, the fifth and sixth graders, because his dad is the coach. He doesn't shine on that team of course, but he can hold his own.

Well, the sixth graders on that team affectionately call him "midgit," and compared to some of those kids, the name is pretty accurate.

We missed Christian's soccer game on the 18th because I was in the hospital, and Doug was coaching Caleb's game.

When Doug came to pick up Christian after the game, he was kind of pouty and upset. When Doug asked what was wrong, Christian complained, "Dad, the coach and players of the other team kept calling me "Little Guy."

Christian's coach said, "It's true. The coach kept saying, "Guard the little guy... quit letting the little guy score...put more players on the little guy.""

Christian was pretty happy after that clarification.

Disneyworld

Okay, since I was not blogging at the time of our awesome family vacation, I am going to do it now so my family can see some of our pictures.


Truly, this was the best vacation ever! Granted, we were in a car accident, the weather was cold and we got completely drenched on 2 1/2 of the days, we had kids throwing up, I was seven months pregnant, and we were always exhausted. But there were no crowds! That cancelled out anything bad!

You might wonder why crowds are such a big deal to us - I mean, you expect to wait in lines when you go to amusement parks right?

We went to Disneyworld last time eight years ago when I was pregnant with Christian. We went in February expecting it to be the off season.



Holy cow! I cried every single day because the crowds were so overwhelming (and possibly, my hormones were a little out of control). Most days we only stayed at the parks for a few hours and then just gave up and went back to the hotel.

Then three years ago, when I was pregnant with Hope (are you seeing a pattern here?), we went to Disneyland, again in February, when it actually was supposed to be the off season.


Well that year, they had practically given away tickets and there was a cheerleading thing in town, so again the crowds were unmanageable.

The only day we actually got to ride anything was the day there was a torrential downpour. We were freezing and soaked, but there were no crowds, so we ended up having a great day!

So, you can see why the no crowd thing was such a blessing this time!

We spent a lot of time in gift shops doing the child swap thing since Gracie wasn't tall enough for a lot of the roller coasters.




These pictures are at the Rockin' Roller Coaster gift shop. That was an awesome ride - so smooth and fast! The longest we waited for that ride was ten minutes - that included the little movie they show before the ride - AWESOME!

Happy Birthday Boys

It's amazing how many birthdays we have in the spring. We used to plan it that way to avoid having me be pregnant during waterskiing season. The irony is that now, we have so many children, we only make it out once or twice a year anyway so it doesn't really matter when I am pregnant.

Grace is March 26, Christian is April 20, and Caleb is April 25. The funny thing is that Ava was a wonderful suprise baby, and her birthday fell in with the others on April 16.


In case you think I am forgetting somebody, Hope's birthday is July 18th. We were so in love with Gracie, that we (well, me), couldn't wait the full three years to have another baby, so Hope's birthday is in the summer.

Anyway, Gracie just turned five and had a wonderful birthday party with a million friends. The kids got to make their own homemade pizza's and decorated cupcakes. I actually had about five cooking tasks prepared for them, but we ran out of time after only three. I think everyone had fun though. (Sadly, the pictures from her party along with about 70 others, were ruined - I'm not sure how).


Christian turned eight and Caleb turned eleven. We usually do pretty large birthday parties for the boys, but with the baby being born only a week ago, the thought of throwing a large party completely overwhelmed me.

We broke the bad news to the boys reminding them that we just took a huge vacation to Disneyworld. Then we had a family party with more gifts than usual, and called it good.



Christian is going to be baptized soon and Caleb just graduated from cub scouts. He earned his arrow of light badge and crossed over the bridge (literally) from cub scouts to boy scouts. He gave me about five seconds to get one lousy picture of him on the bridge, so this is it!

Vital Statistics

Okay, so I forgot some details about the baby. Since this was my first attempt at blogging I was much more concerned with photo placement, etc.

The baby's name is Ava Faith Hagedorn. We really struggled with her name because all of our children have biblical types of names. The choices of female biblical names is much more limited so they have been over used for thousands of years (Rachel, Mary, Elizabeth, etc.).

Of course, the obvious choice with her sisters being named Grace and Hope was to name her Faith. We thought that might be taking things a little too far, plus we didn't want everyone mixing them up.

I told everyone at work, with a straight face, that I was going to name her Chastitiy. It was funny to see people's reactions!

I've liked the name Ava from the start, but Doug wasn't sure. In the end though, who is going to argue with a woman who just had a baby?

Ava is a derivative of the name Eve, which means life. We liked Faith so we kept that as a middle name. That way she still feels like her name fits in with the family. Who are we kidding? She will probably hate her name like all kids eventually do. Oh well - we tried!

She was born on April 16th at 4:45 in the afternoon. She weighed seven pounds, fourteen ounces and was twenty inches long.

I tried to imagine what she would look like when I was pregnant and assumed she would be another blondie like the other kids.

The day that I was in labor, I started imagining a little dark haired baby and was so excited to see that she really was! Finally, I get a little credit in this baby making thing. Who would have thought that Doug's blonde, blue eyed genes would so completely trump my dark genes?