Ballet Night

Lastnight Tonya took Ashton to ballet class, so the men had the rule of the house. First of all, I think she was trying to get me back for something. Before she left, we fixed spaghetti and on her way out, she told me told me to make sure that I gave the kids a bath and then flew out of the door. Bath night is bad enough, but you can see the challenge that I was to have.

This kind of looks like a glamor shot.

We finally made it to the tub.

If you look close in the next two pictures, you can see that the boys were stained. Maybe mom will not notice.

Then Jackson and I took everybody downstairs to rock it out on Rock Band. The boys think they are stars for sure.

Now he's ready for an encore.

Look At This!

Well, it all started with the normal screams that are ever present in our house. I decided to look into the living room to see why Ashton was screaming this time. What I saw was Jackson chasing a screaming and crying Ashton. This wasn't out of the ordinary, but it did surprise me to see Ashton playing with a ball. Then I noticed she was not playing keep away. For some reason, Jackson had decided to cram her finger in the holes of a wiffle ball.

I then tried to pull it off, but her finger had swollen too much. It started to change color so I even called my fireman brother David. He told me to cut her finger off and then the ball would come right off, but I did not take his advice. Just kidding, he was a big help.

I did however find some pliers and cut it off, but it was tough.

Death Of A Blog

Well, it has only been since August 30th that I last blogged. This also means that if any of my past readers had any kind of life, they would have given up on my sorry blog a log time ago. I don't blame them. But I have to refer you to my very first blog entry when I stated in my man blog by-laws and I quote: "Every blog entry will be a gift". It will not be a gift because it has any notable content, but because I am pretty unreliable when it comes to this kind of thing. I will try to get back on the wagon. Just to fill you in, I am trying to come up with something interesting to blog about. I am told by my wonderful wife that I am going on a diet tomorrow. Maybe I could post before and after photos like those cheezy infomercials. You know the ones where in the fat picture the person looks like their dog just died and then they are skinny and have a new makeover. Or maybe I could bring back another stupid joke edition. Whatever it is, I can assure you it will probably not be worthy of one of Tonya's blogs. She has pretty high standards......that's apparent by her choice in men.

Passing Of The Cup

Today was a big day at our house. Last night I purchased our son's first athletic supporter. If you aren't politically correct, you may not understand me unless I refer to it as a jock strap, boulder holder or a family jewel case.

For all you mothers out there, I did not pass down my old cup to him as the title of this post might imply. I did the right thing and purchased him his own. That would not really be feasable since mine would be way to big.

Anyway, I knew that he would be excited and I knew that he would put it on right then and beat on it all day. That is exactly what happened. He loved it. We could not have bought him another toy that would have made him any happier.

He actually took it a step further and started finding alternative uses for it.

A hat in case it starts raining.

A fireman's breathing apperatus - a timeless classic for sure

And football shoulder pads

He even wanted to put a stick on it and make a lacrosse stick with it. I was pretty proud. It's great to be a guy, girls don't get to have fun like this.

Cat-astrophe At The Dodd House

Well, do you remember back around May 1st of this year, we were the proud grandparents of 3 kittens. We had taken in a skinny little stray that was apparently pregnant. (Just our Luck). The wonders of Craig's List found a wonder full home for them and I thought that we were done with all that. If you do the math and extrapolate that the average gestation period for the common household feline is 63 days, our social little kitty got knocked up again around 4 to 5 weeks after giving birth. To make a long story short, we are now the proud grandparents of 7 kittens.

(6 of which we will be finding homes for if you are interested. If you are cool enough to read my man blog, I know that you will be great parents.)

Last Saturday night, she started following us around and acting kind of funny. Jackson let her outside and soon she was nowhere to be found. We looked for her quite a bit for the rest of the night, but could not. When we came home from church it was starting to rain and Tonya spotted her in our back yard. She then led her under our deck steps where she had the nestled in a little nest in our ivy. We both crawled under our deck steps in the rain reaching in pulling out kitten after kitten until finally we had seven. It was like a magician pulling handkerchiefs out of his hand. After each kitten, we thought we had the last one and then there was another, and then another. I hope that our great cat houdini has performed her last trick.

Wordless Wednesday...

Frog Scare

Here is another one of my greatest moments as a dad. We found this frog puppet and the twins loved it. That is until I thought it would be funny to make him bite them.....It seemed like a good idea at the time, but as you can see, I was wrong.

Wordless Wednesday...

My Brother:

Slide Slip-Up

Today we had our family birthday party for Ashton. If you are going to have a party at the end of July, you have got to break out the water slide. I was embarassed that we bought this thing a couple of years ago, but we figured it was cheaper than renting something like this every year. The best part about it is that big kids can get on it too. Here is a video of our little mishap today. I did learn an important lesson. There is a reason why they insist that you stake it down.



Obviously, it did not stop the fun.

Knoxville Zoo

Ashton had her 5th birthday this week. I was supposed to go to Knoxville for work, so I took everybody. I was working a pretty early shift, so what the heck. Family Trip. I did not want to miss her birthday. I think that it worked out pretty well. My work paid for our hotel and gas and my meals. Then we had zoo passes to Nashville's Zoo, so we were able to get into Knoxville's Zoo for free. Why not bring everybody. I was a little nervous about traveling with the twins again, but they were very good.

The first evening we were there, I called ahead to my office in Knoxville and was told by two people that we were staying in the hood and they would not take their family there, so I cancelled our reservations on the way there. Who would've thought that you can't believe what you see on the internet. It looked nice on their site.

When we got into town, we called some friends from high school, Matt and Brandy Rappe. We were actually trying to check into a hotel when we first spoke, but he told us that we could find something closer to my office and we would take care of it after dinner. So then we went to their house where he grilled a wonderfull dinner. As you can probably predict, there was not another room to be found that was not in the hood. So they invited us to stay. They were obviously crazy and did not know what they were getting into. We had a great time there and the accomodations were much better than we had planned on having. We taught them a big lesson, don't invite friends over from out of town without making sure they will leave.

Later the second day, we went to the zoo after I got off of work. Here are a couple of video clips of our encounters there. First is our experience with the camels. You just have to watch.

Then Jackson decided to throw poop. I promise that I did not teach him this.

Wordless Wednesday...

Momma's Day Off

Tonya is always complaining that she never gets a day off, well she finally got it. At the last second, she got invited to go to Atlanta to hear Beth Moore speak with some church friends of hers. She left Friday morning and is hopefully coming back late Saturday night. She will not be gone for very long, but it feels like forever. Mom's have it rough. I have to work alot of hours and fight computers all day, but you can at least smack them and turn them off if you get to upset with them.

We had a really good couple of days. I was really trying to do things right. We had just eaten our lunch and I looked down and Will had eaten some lunch of his own. He was sitting in the floor chewing on a tube of desitin. Hey, look on the bright side, he should have a clear face for a while.

Here is a picture of one of our lunches. I promise that is a green been on his head.

Wesley was good except for Friday night. I went to the bathroom for a quick trip (I promise that it was only #1) and when I came back to the living room, he was shoveling fireplace gravel into his mouth. He saw me coming and started doing it even faster. I got several out of his mouth, but I couldn't have gotten them all. I am hoping that they are like doves or pigeons. They eat gravel every day to help digest their food. Maybe babies are the same way.



Saturday evening, the Carpenters came over to visit and play for a little while. Chloe and Ashton had alot of fun dressing our new kitten. I am afraid to go up to her bedroom to see what else they have gotten into.

Happy Anniversary

Well, almost a month has gone by. I guess that it is time to blog again. Alot has happened lately and I will try to get to them at some point, but I have got to tell you about my wonderfull aniversary. Well truthfully, it stunk, but hopefully we will have many more to make up for this one. Our story begins in 1993. Here is a picture for proof. Look how skinny we are. If you look close, you can see my "butt" chin as Tonya so lovingly calls it. No wonder I have a gotee.(I've never tried to spell that before) Tonya looks like she is 12, but I promise that she wasn't.

Who knew that we would later get married, have about twenty kids and always have wonderfull aniversaries. Well it really wasn't that bad. Ya'll settle in close ya here and I will tell you all about it. (That is my Uncle Remus imitation).

Tonya had strep throat and as you can probably imagine, when momma is sick, it is no fun around here. Daddy is just no replacement for Momma. I try, but I'm outnumbered. I made it all better by getting her the perfect .............card. Isn't that what every woman wants on her 12th anniversary? For the record, I had already gotten her two truck loads of mulch the week before. You know 5th anniversary you are supposed to get something silver, the 8th is a birth stone or something and the 12th is definitely mulch. Here is a picture.

And the inside...

I know you ladies are jealous....But then, that evening my wonderful wife gave me a gift.

That's why I love her. She loves monkey cards! Or she has given up hope of me being romantic.

What A Day!!

Poor Tonya has had a heck of a day. I can usually tell how her day is going by the phone calls that I recieve at work. This morning I could tell that it had not started too well. She then asked me to go to lunch and I was glad to accept the invitation. Then she told me they did not get out of ballet until 1pm. I could tell she was having a bad day, so I still went. We enjoyed our lunch and I am sure being with her wonderful husband really helped. Later, the phone calls started again. Every one with a baby crying in the background. If I hadn't mentioned it before, she does a great job. One that the state would not let me do for long.

Then on my way home from work, I went to the grocery to get a healthy dinner. (I will discuss our new diet another day, if it lasts that long.) When I got home, the babies were not happy and neither was momma. The babies are going through their seperation anxiety stage and are jealous of each other when you pick the other up. (Did that make sense?) Anyway, we had decided to cook a pizza for supper and try to deal with all of the crying babies around here. Tonya went upstairs for a little bit and I was left consoling Will while we were preheating the oven for our pizza.

I was starting to get a handle on things until I smelled something that was not pizza. Last night we had an ultra healthy dinner. We even handed out those cool plates that seperate all of your food.

After dinner we went for a walk and hid the kids plates in the oven so that our new cat would not eat any. You have probably guessed the smell by now. I then ran to the kitchen and saw our oven billowing with smoke. So we evacuated and ran to Sonic for dinner. Here is a picture of the two plates that we left in the oven. If anyone knows how to clean this up, let us know. The plastic should be easy enough to pick off, but we are not sure how comfortable we are about cooking in it for a while. This place stinks.
Then when we got home, Tonya got peed on I got pooped on and we are ready for this day to be over!

Happy Mother's Day!!!

Well another Mother's day has come and gone. I did not do very well this year as far as gifts go. Tonya had been hinting that she wanted a bike and maybe a stroller to attach to the back of it. This is probably a part of our healthier habits that we have been trying lately. I'll save that for another blog. I had been checking Craig's List regularly and had seen that if you watch, you could get these pretty cheap. As a backup plan I found them at Academy Sports as well. Long story short Craig's list did not come through and I was too afraid to go buy it without her seeing it first. It's a good thing I did, because she decided that she wasn't sure that she could still ride a bike or would trust herself with putting the babies in the stroller behind it. Sooooo, this means yet again I am left without a gift to present on Mother's Day.

She was great though. I expected to get a little bit of lip for not having her anything. I didn't even get her a card. I did however have the kids make her a card, but I lost it. I found out later that they had given it to her last Friday. I am very lucky that Tonya would much rather have something done for her than to recieve anything.

I was given just that opportunity lastnight. Mr. Wesley decided that he wanted to pee everywhere lastnight and then stay up and watch some tv. Then the kids were really good getting ready for church. (That is more of a miracle than a gift.) Then I tried to clean the house as much as I could when we got home. Somehow, this was enough.

I have to hand it to her. She does alot. I could never stay at home and do what she does. I am so tired of changing diapers and gettting everyone ready, but it I have not even scratched the surface of what she has to do everyday.

The best thing that I got her was to FINALLY kill a turkey. Season ends today and I killed me one yesterday. I have never went a year without killing at least one and I was probably getting a little hard to be around. I really get obsessive in turkey season, if you did not already know. For you fellow rednecks out there, it had almost an 11 inch beard and 1 inch spurs. If that doesn't mean anything to you, that's a dandy.

Just Our Luck!

About a month and a half ago, we took in this nice malnourished little kitty cat. She was nearly grown and was very good natured. Best of all, she was already an outside cat.

You may or may not know that when we told Jackson and Ashton that the twins were both boys, Ashton started crying. My rock solid wife then paniced and told Ashton that we would get her a kitten. That is the only time that I have ever seen her crack like that. Now that it has been a while, I figured that I was getting out easy by taking in an almost grown outside cat.

Recently she has been looking really healthy. As a matter of fact, she has been putting on a little too much weight. I have been joking about her being pregnant, but now it is for sure. We have yet to follow her and ask her to pee on a stick, but now that you can feel them kick, there is probably no need to. If anyone wants a kitten in a couple of months, PLEASE let me know.

High Crawler

Here is a video of Mr. Will crawling. He has started crawling instead of rolling or scooting everywhere. The funny thing is that he has a hitch in his crawl. For some reason he moves his right arm high in the air and moves the left one normally. At times it is really funny to watch. Enjoy.

I've Still Got It.

Jackson had his first baseball game of the year the other night. Brent Jones and I are coaching his team again. The best part of being the coach is that I get to pitch to the kids. I have to admit that this is pretty stressfull. The kids get 6 pitches no matter what, if they do not strike out first. I have the team that loves to crowd the plate. It is all that I can do not to go back to the old days when I would throw one at their chin to back them off and give me room to work the outside corner to strike them out.

To make a long story short, I ended the night with 11 strike outs. I was really on my game. They didn't even come close. Too bad that I wanted them to hit. The truth is that I never had a problem letting batters hit the ball. I always had a talent for that. Even worse was that we only played for 12 outs since we were getting losing so bad. I think that the final score was 17-6 or something. Who's counting? We are out there for the fun of the game ya know. Who am I kidding? That loss hurt Coach Brent and I pretty bad. We do have a good team. We just did not want to go undefeated and give the kids a big head. It's all about the kids........ I think.

I'm Back.

Well, apperently I am not much of a blogger. If anyone is still even checking my blog, you may notice that I have not blogged in over a month. I could give you alot of excuses, but it all boils down to the fact that I have not really had anything interesting to talk about. I will try to do better.

Birthday Party

Friday night we hosted a party for Jackson's 7th birthday. We had 5 kids over to spend the night. I have to say that Tonya was a little nervous for some reason. I'm the one that is usually scared of kids and she is the one hiding. This scared me because she is the one that is comfortable around 25 4th graders and ultimately has our game plan on surviving the night.

She did have everything planned, but this was the problem. When they arrived and started tackling each other, she realized that they probably would not be interested in the multitude of science experiments that we had planned for our evening entertainment. We had to go to plan B. I started acting like a drill sargeant and then I would not acknowledge them unless they called me Big Jon. Then Big Jon talked as much trash and kicked their butt in every challenge that I could come up with. (Mainly Guitar Hero, I rocked!)

Then it was time for the eruption. Jackson had asked for a volcano birthday cake, so I found some ideas on the internet to make one that was supposed to erupt. I had to try this out. We had had a mock eruption on thursday, but it did not go so well, so I was a little nervous. I had made a cake that was four layers thick and full of toothpicks to keep it from destroying itself. Then in the top, you put aluminum foil and fill it full of egg whites, sugar, food coloring and dry ice. Then when you add hot water it was supposed to erupt and run lava down the sides.

Then we stayed up late and later played in the snow. I would write more about all that, but it's dinner time around here and Wes and Will are not happy. Big Jon has got to go.