Adventures in Odyssey 25th Birthday Party

About a year and a half ago, our church invited Kurt Bruner to come and speak on building a legacy of faith in families.  His message was so inspiring and challenging - I took pages and pages of notes that I have looked back at several times.  It was awesome!  He and his wife shared lots of practical ways to grow our children in our faith.  One of the things that they mentioned was the Adventures in Odyssey series.  We went online the next day and ordered our first set of CDs.

Clayton started listening to them during his "room time" in the afternoon.  Before long, he was hooked!  He loves the characters and gets so into the story lines.  Wade & I love them, too.  We have ordered several more sets of CDs and listen to them as a family on road trips.  They are a lot of fun!

Several months ago, Wade was on the Focus on the Family website and he saw that Adventures in Odyssey was celebrating its 25th birthday.  They were having a live birthday party in Dallas and would be taping an episode in front of the audience.  He bought our tickets to the show on the spot.  We didn't tell the kids about the show until the night before.  Clayton was sooooo excited!  I think his reaction may have even topped when we told him about Disney World.  ;)  On June 16th, we headed to Irving Bible Church bright and early for our 10:30 show to ensure that we got good seats.

We met Whit & Eugene...

Then we found some seats on the 2nd row - yes!  There were 2200 people at the sold out show.  People came from all over the country - we felt a little guilty about only having a 30 minute drive.  The people in front of us came from Michigan and had to take 3 planes.  There was also a family from the Ukraine.  Wowsers!

About 30 minutes before the show, one of producers came up to us and asked if Clayton would like to come up on stage and blow out the birthday candles on their birthday cake.  There are no words for how excited C was to be chosen out of 2200 people.  Lucky kid!

They called him up on stage and asked him where he was from and how old he was, etc.  Then he blew out the candles with another little girl.  So cool!

As a side note, we went to Chick-fil-a after the show for some lunch.  A lady recognized Clayton and said, "Hey!  Aren't you the kid who blew out the birthday candle at the Adventures in Odyssey show?"  Clayton turned bright red!!!  She gave him a high five and told him that he did a good job.  When she walked away, he said, "It's like I'm famous..."  Ha!

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The cast was so much fun!  You could just tell that they all loved their jobs and really enjoyed being together.  It was fun to put a face with the characters voices.  Clayton also liked watching the sound guys and seeing how they make the sound effects.  It was way cool!

Sweet baby boy...  He was such a trooper.  He's outgrowing the Baby Bjorn - so sad! 

We had such a fun day!  I look forward to many years of having little boys that love listening to Adventures in Odyssey.  :)