The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club

Luckily this breakfast club meets for donuts instead of detention.  Let's hope it stays that way...

Back in time...again!

Famous Kiss

You can't celebrate Valentine's Day without a little love in the air...especially Kindergarten love.

Christmas Cards

A Dortch Christmas Story

Who needs boring Christmas Cards when we now know how much fun recreating is now?!?!?

Friends

Friends

And what better way to celebrate this adorable group of 2nd grade friends than by redoing a famous "Friends" photo?!?!

Because seriously, look how adorable they are!!!!

Old Timey Time

Lunch over OKC

The boys wanted to do a recreation with their friends from school.  After looking through numerous old photos, they decided on this one.  We call it, "Lunch over OKC" (one of my all time favorites)

Saturday Evening Post

Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving

Nothing like a little Thanksgiving recreation with the family!  I love I'll be able to take this out, year after year, to add to our holiday decor.

Halloween Costumes

Halloween...our most favorite time of year!

The boys love nothing more than dressing up in a "theme" for Halloween.  I am waiting for one of them to say they want to dress up as something on their own.  They have not done that yet, so I will continue to make their costumes and help them come up with a theme year after year.

2008: Batman, Robin, and Joker

2009: Tin man, Lion, Scarecrow

2010: Cat and the Hat, Thing 1 and Thing 2

2011: Willy Wonka, Oompa Loompa, and a Wonka Bar

2012: Pacman and Ghosts

2013: Rock, Paper, Scissors 

2014: ET, Elliot, and Reese's Pieces

Weekend at Dortchie's

"Weekend at Dortchie's"

When mom's away, the boys will play...

Let's just hope they don't have TOO much fun!

Photo Recreations

Photo Recreations

I decided to put all of our photo recreations up on our blog (the blog that hasn't been touched in almost 4 years) so the boys can look back one day and have them all together in the same place.

"Emmett Kelly"

The first photo we ever recreated was for my dad's birthday.  When I was young, I remember all of the little Emmett Kelly clown figurines around the house.  So, for my dad's birthday, we made costumes and the boys dressed as a few of those little clowns.

Seven??

My baby is SEVEN???

Where has all the time gone? I can't believe, seven years ago today, I became a mom! It's been the best seven years of my life! Definitely some of the hardest years, but every minute is worth it!

We love you so much, Cody John! You make our lives so much better!

Happy 7th Birthday!

Cade is FIVE!

Happy FIFTH birthday to my little man!

Can you believe my sweet, sweet baby boy is already FIVE years old?? Where has the time gone?

His actual BIRTH day:

1st birthday:

2nd Birthday:

3rd Birthday:

4th Birthday:

You make us smile every single day! Your love for sports amazes me and the fact you can sit for hours and watch Sports Center on ESPN by yourself confuses me :)

You make our lives better in every way possible. We love you big guy! Happy 5th Birthday, Caderson!

Photo Booth Photos

Numerous people have asked me how I made the boys' Photo booth photos (my favorite project so far) so I decided it was time to just post the directions :)

Materials:

34.5" x 11" cut piece of plywood

black spray paint

hot glue gun

Mod Podge glue

paint brush

4 8x10 goofy, black and white photos of your little one (I just put them up against a white wall in my house, worked just fine!)

Steps:

1. After plywood is cut, spray paint the entire piece of wood black. Make sure the entire front and all sides are black, they will be visible.

2. Once the paint is dry, hot glue the pictures directly on the wood in the order you wish.

3. Once the glue is dry, brush Mod Podge over the entire surface. It is best to do multiple coats. It will dry clear and the thicker, the better!

4. once it is dry, find a great spot in your home to hang, then enjoy!!!

Out of all the projects I have done, these get me the most compliments, by far! Plus, they're of really cute boys :)

Thunder Up!

OKC Thunder has been doing AWESOME this year! We love our Thunder team! Tickets are really hard to come by because of how well they're doing and because of the shorten season. Over Christmas break, we were able to score 4 tickets, so TJ took my brother, step-mom and dad to the game. Since Cade is still so tiny (one of the perks of being small for his age), he still gets in for free!

While at the Thunder game in December, Cade got to show off his stud skills! I think this was more for his dad (who was taking the picture) than for Cade himself, but my little man is still super cute!

Cade and Uncle Claydough at the game

Cade's favorite player of all time is #13, James Harden! My boy worships everything Harden! Now, most people never get the chance to meet their hero, but Harden, being the awesome guy he is, showed up at one of the high school basketball games. Cody and Cade got to see Harden up close and personal, and to make the night even more awesome for the kids, Harden picked Cade up and took a picture with him!

Most of you know (or can see by this picture), Cade is a little lacking in the height department. If Harden wasn't Cade's hero before, his words when he picked Cade up would have sealed the deal. He said, "you sure are a heavy guy!" Words Cade is not used to hearing so it made the experience that much better!

Fear the Beard, Baby!

Mardi Gras!

This summer, we took the boys to New Orleans on our way home from Florida.

We got to explain some of the fun stuff they do down there, so when Mardi Gras came around, I decided to make it a little fun for the boys this year...

First we made Mardi Gras masks

we did a little decorating:

The boys wanted to wear purple, yellow and green to school. Having a house full of boys, the purple is not so easy to come by though....

we did the best we could!

I found an awesome King Cake recipe! YUMMMM!!!

I hid the baby inside and I kept finding Cade trying to find out where it was hidden.

We had jambalaya for dinner, and I told the boys if they ate well, they would get some awesome desserts:

TJ ended up being the one who had the baby in his piece of cake. What the boys didn't know, was I had a baby hidden in one of the puddings. Since they assumed all babies had been found, Cody took a big bite of his pudding and was surprised to bite down on a little, plastic baby!

Now, he has a loose tooth. I'm sure the two are not related, but it's more fun to blame it on the baby!

Happy Fat Tuesday!

I'm Baaaaaack!!

I know it has been, well...forever!! But back by popular demand...(and by popular demand, I mean three people), let's try this whole blog thing again!

Most of the time I post pictures on Facebook, but I'm told that just wasn't good enough (story of my life) :), so here it goes...

A lot has happened since I blogged last so we will just have to start with what's going on now.

The boys had "spirit week" last week at school. They were helping one of the local high schools raise money for The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

On Monday it was "Decade Day"

Cody chose the 60's look, while Cade decided to go back to the 50's

Tuesday was Valentine's Day, and after the boys woke up and saw what the Valentine Armadillo left them...

and ate their Valentine breakfast of heart shaped pancakes, tortillas, and ate cereal with pink milk...

...they took their Valentine's to school to hand out to all their friends.

That night for dinner, we enjoyed heart shaped meatloaf and pink mashed potatoes! Might look gross, but it was actually pretty good!

You can't forget my little "spud muffin"!

My three little Valentine's:

Wednesday was Wild West day. Please ignore the odd shaped hat, we don't usually dress up in cowboy attire, so our clothing is not up to cowboy standards I'm sure! But these boys are still pretty darn cute!

Thursday was the boys' favorite day of Spirit week, Nerd day!

My wonderful husband asked if I had anything they could borrow for this day! Jerk! He's not near as funny as he thinks he is...

Freaky Friday was fun for them as well, although Cody still has hair dye on his scalp!

Saturday was Cody's last basketball game of the season so we all went to CiCi's Pizza where Codeman received his trophy and medal!

We'll miss you basketball, but welcome baseball and Soccer...for both Cody and Cade!

Now, hopefully it wont take me too long to post pictures from our Mardi Gras celebrations!

Happy Halloween

Hope everyone has a Happy Halloween!

Congratulations!

Even though he didn't tell me he was nominated, even though he didn't tell me it was down to him and another teacher, and even though I had to find out from someone else, I'm still proud of T.J. for winning Teacher of the Year!

Happy Birthday Cole

My little man turned TWO today! It's hard to believe he is so big. This is the first time that a child of mine has turned two without there being a new baby in the house already.

It's bittersweet, little guy. It's fun to watch you grow and learn new things, but I sure miss you being a baby. You can now carry on a conversation, you want to do everything on your own, you follow your older siblings around and do what they do, and you want things done your way and if not, we all hear about it! You are extremely sweet and you make us so happy!

Your actual birth day

One year

Two Year

Happy Birthday, Cole. We love you!

Party pics to come soon...