Disney 2014- Day 1

We left for Disney on an early flight on Sunday morning.  *Note to self for our next trip do NOT book a 9:30 am flight when you have 4 kids! We had to leave our house by 7:30 with all our stuff.  Not the best planning.  And probably why our start looked like this:

We made it to the airport parking and caught a bus over to the airport.  The kids quickly adapted to not being in carseats in prep for a week of bus rides

We caught our flight and I am pretty sure everyone was on pins and needles over seeing the two adults with four kids.  But these kids were rock stars and flew with no problem.  Haddie slept most of the flight, but did manage to spill my drink into my lap during her brief awake time.  The three big kiddos enjoyed playing games, coloring, and eating snacks.

We caught the Magical Express and rode to our hotel.  The kids loved seeing the awesome arch as we drove through.  It was about a 45 minutes drive, but there is a video about all kinds of Disney stuff that we watched while driving.  Oh, and of course more snacks.

We got to Art of Animation and even though check in wasn't for a few hours, they had our room ready.  We ran on down and got settled before going to grab some lunch in the restaurant.  Then we went swimming and played in the splash pad before grabbing dinner and getting to bed so we were ready for our first park day.

 I snapped a couple pictures of the room.  This is from the door of the table that pulled out into a single bed that was Ellie's.  Through that door is the bedroom where Spence and I slept and also a full bath.

This is from beside the murphy bed.  The green wall is a full bathroom.  There was a pull out sofa that the boys slept on.  Beside that was a mini fridge, microwave, and sink.  Across from the couch was a tv that the kids all loved watching a little good night movie that ran every 15 minutes in the evenings.

This is looking from the boys' bed back across the room.  We put both beds back up everyday so we had room to eat breakfast and have room to move around.  Every time we put the bed up, Ellie asked "mama, where my bed? where could it be?"  Then she would go over to the table and say "there it is!"

The kids loved seeing Mater, Ramone, Flo, Luigi, Guido, Sheriff, Doc, Sarge, Filmore, Lightning, and Sally.  I didn't get any pictures of our time at the Big Blue Pool that was all themed out with Nemo.  The boys enjoyed the pool and the girls enjoyed the splash pad.  Haddie was a wild child crawling all around. And Ellie loved playing with her toys in the little fountains.

Diary of a Church Planter's Wife

Well, yeah.  I dropped that "we are having a huge life change" bomb on you, and then what did I do?  Yeah, not really mention it for a whole month.  So, here is an update of how the past month has gone.

There are the fun, high moments where I am over the moon.  Those moments include Spence having a cool meeting that went well and coming home excited, having college students over who are interested in hearing more about our move, our kids talking about Charlotte, reconnecting with friends, meeting new people, random people getting excited about our move (Zeke's teacher and our doctor both have been really encouraging in the last couple weeks).  

There are also sad moments like when I thought about Haddie can't have her next birthday party at the pumpkin patch near our house that we love, not being so close to Chapel Hill, missing the fair next year, when Ben starts talking about his best friends, calling up friends late and making Target runs, being far from Meredith, and don't even get me started on when I think about leaving my friends. 

There are also hard moments where I feel lost and confused.  Like with the fact that right now I still don't know where exactly we are going, or if anyone is going to actually come with us, or a name for our church.  The type A planner in me is going a wee bit nuts.  Coupled with this is the fact of just a few other things going on in our world (like crazy work schedules and AC being broken for a week, but those are just normal things that feel heightened by the underlying)

But ya'll this is what I know, Jesus is gonna meet me wherever I am.  Today was one of those days where it was just a roller coaster.  We had a really fun, full day.  The boys had soccer, we had lunch, Spence had to leave to go out of town for a couple days, we went to a birthday party and were going to go to church.  Everything was pointing to going to church as being a bad idea.  I was alone, we had a full day, Ellie fell asleep in the car, and then it started to rain.  Everything in me wanted to hit a drive-thru, head home, and put on a movie.  Instead, the four kids and I went to church.  I prayed the whole way there.  JD said this quote tonight "God's plan for discipleship is not something, it is someone".  And it hit me.  We are that something.  This no name, no identified partner for Spence to share the work load, no exact location body of believers.  And yes currently it is Spence and me and the kids with a few verbal commitments.  But we together are gonna be disciple makers.  We together are going to be a someone.  And knowing that makes all the difference for those sad and hard moments. 

Ben's Spy Party

Ben decided he wanted his fifth birthday to be a spy party.  When he said this, I was all "huh, what?!"  And then I hit the Pinterest and started planning.  We decided to have a Spy Academy with a training mission before they could become spies.  We fingerprinted and gave them new ids and names to start the time off.  

the check in table

Ben showing me how he would fight the bad guys

Cupcakes

Laser Lane

Balloon Blast- we did some target shooting with marshmallow blasters

Punch card- each hole had a card with a word.  Once they sorted the words out it gave them their final clue to find the treasure.  

The final challenge was breaking open a piñata 

The crew observing

Happy birthday Agent Ben!

Oh, and let's throw in a little cuteness too. 

 Girl, knew exact what to do with that cupcake this week