Surprise blessings...

We love Adventures in Odyssey. Yep, a lot. So much in fact, that when we found out that AinO was coming to Dallas, TX to celebrate their 25th Birthday, we canceled our plans to camp at the beach and decided to go to the Birthday Party!

We purchased the 10am show tickets thinking it may be less crowded. We knew that would mean and early morning, on the road by 8:15am, and even though we got to the show an hour early, around 400 other people had gotten there even earlier.

We got signed in, were donning our AinO wristbands, and found a place in line awaiting the opening of the doors. Nearby, there was a booth for a radio station and I watched as kids would go up and come away with an AinO sling-style backpack. I told Elliott to go ask about them, that I would hold our place in line. He came back with coloring pages. He said I should go ask for the backpacks since I was so much more "outgoing". So, I gathered up all the kids and stood at the booth and just asked how to get backpacks for the kids.

The woman at the booth asked the kids what they listened to on the radio on Saturday mornings. The children shouted, "Adventures in Odyssey!" Then she asked the children what station they listened to it on. I cringed knowing we have no idea what the stations in Dallas were. Then I noticed the number for the station was right on the sign in front of us showed the station call number as 90.9FM. I tried to point it out to the kids to answer her when Noah boldly proclaimed, "90.9!". The woman was shocked by his correct answer and handed out backpacks to each kid. Then, she asked me if I would like VIP tickets, and I said, "Yes, thank you, that would be such a blessing." Elliott laughed at me when I came back with the tickets, shaking his head.

Finally, after waiting in line for about twenty minutes, the doors opened for us to go find seats. We acted like sheep and just followed the people in front of us. One of the people from Focus on the Family, who was running the event, came over and told the folks in our line that we had headed toward the wrong door, a different line was lined up for that door, our line was supposed to be going into a side door. I apologized and made sure to gather everyone and head to the correct door, others in front of us just kept going into the other door ahead of people who had been waiting longer in that line. When we got to the correct door, the same woman from Focus on the Family handed me a postcard. I said thank-you and started to ask what it was but she interrupted me and said to put it away, I would find out what it was later. Thanking her again, I was swept into the crowd looking for seating (first come, first serve).

We found some seats mid-way back, claiming them before Elliott went and asked what it meant to have the VIP seating. As soon as he came back we moved, there was a whole reserve section in the lower front of the auditorium which was set apart for VIPs. Once we finally found seats we were in the fourth row in the center of the stage. I could not believe it. We got settled and the kids opened their backpacks. Each had a CD of three AinO shows, a chapter book, pens, coloring books, Mr. Whit tattoos, and other goodies. I discovered that the postcard the woman had given me was autographed by all of the actors. Wow! We were all in awe of our blessings, showering down so amazingly on this trip.

The show was awesome. And funny. Really funny. And long! We definitely got "our money's worth"! Being that it was so long, well over an hour, the littlest ones in our group were in dire need of a potty break before the Q&A was over. So, letting the olders stay with Elliott for the Q&A, I took three of the youngers and we found the restrooms. Not wanting to disturb the rest of the show, we asked where the autograph session would be. We were pointed in the right direction and told that it would not start until 12:30pm. EEK! That was an hour away! Oh well, the three littles and I headed off just to see how long the line would be, figuring we could make a decision as to whether or not to wait once we were in line.

We wound around the building, the signing was neatly tucked away from the entrance to the show, I am sure for crowd control's sake. We snaked through the line set up to create order for the over 2000 people who would be standing in line for autographs and found ourselves second in line. When I texted Elliott to let him know where we were, he said to stay put in line. It was a while before we met back up with E and the other kids. As it turned out, the postcard that the woman had given us meant that we won a door prize and Elliott and the older kids were off turning in the card to claim it. By the time we were all reunited there was only about twenty minutes left until the autograph session would begin. We decided that being second in line would mean that we would get through pretty quickly, so we stayed.

While we had brought a piece of paper for each child to have signed in case we got the opportunity, but the kids decided to use their new books instead. We prepped them, as did those running the event, that the actors would just sign their names and we would move through quickly. However, we were shocked as we were going through the line, each actor took such interest in our children, asking them about pets, favorite shows, "Wait, are you two twins?!?!?"... some asked for their names so they could address their autograph personally. A few times, different actors took out their personal cell phones to take photos of our kids because they just thought they were so cute. As we neared the end of the table, "Chris" asked for hugs from the kids! We were so impressed, not only with each of their very impressive voice talents, but also with how personable they each were and how kind they were to our children. When we left, we realized that it had taken us nearly thirty minutes to go through the line with the actors.

As we drove back to our RV, we were each marveling at the blessings from the day, the VIP tickets, the door prize (which we pointed out to the kids was a blessing of joyfully submitting to the authority of the people running the event), the free gifts, the autograph session, the show. We were driving home when we found out Noah had no idea that the station in Dallas' call number was 90.9FM, he had answered that because it was the truth, we do listen to AinO on BBN in San Antonio, which just so happens to also be "90.9FM". Later, Elliott noticed on the Facebook page for AinO that our kids were in more that half of the photos from the morning show. We also found out that after 2 1/2 hours of signing autographs they actually had to turn away folks who had been standing in line that whole time. WOW! We were now even more in awe of our special experience. Every time we talked of it through the weekend (and we still are), we are quick to recall how God blessed each moment.