Olivia's birth day - October 21st, 2008!

Olivia Grace Dotson was born on October 21st, 2008, at 12:55pm by C-Section. She cried as she was delivered and as they were working on her, but within a few minutes, she settled right down and almost looked like she was going to sleep - a mellow, laidback baby even from birth! And she loves her sleep! :)


Olivia weighed 8 lbs ,4 oz and was 19 1/2" long at birth!! She had a head full of soft, dark hair with a little waviness to it. What a precious, beautiful blessing she is!
Madalyn came over in the afternoon to meet her baby sister for the first time and she was very excited!! She wasn't quite sure what to think at first but she really wanted to hold her!! Our family of four!!

Madalyn brought a special gift that she picked out herself for baby Olivia, a sweet bunny rabbit with blankie! She was very excited to give it to Olivia!

Baby Olivia had a few special gifts for Madalyn, too - a special t-shirt which has Madalyn's name and says "I'm the big sister", as well as a special doll. This way she could have her own baby to take care of when Mama is taking care of Olivia - the doll cries and coos, drinks from a bottle and even wets her diaper. Unfortunately when we got the doll, there were only boy dolls left, so we thought we could just change the blue clothes to pink and then she'd have a girl doll. Little did we know that the dolls are anatomically correct - definitely all boy! :) So, it's a little different than what we were hoping, but she still loves her doll and will put him in Olivia's swing, car seat, etc and burp him, feed him, just like we do with Olivia.

She's finally here!

We are excited to announce that Olivia Grace Dotson was born on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008, at 12:55pm. She weighed 8 lbs, 4 oz and was 19 1/2" long. She has quite a bit of dark brown hair, a little less than her big sister, Madalyn was born with. Already, she seems to have a very sweet, easygoing, laidback personality and she loves to sleep! :) Big sister Madalyn loves her new sister and always wants to hold her and kiss her! We are so blessed to have her as part of our family!! Pictures coming soon!

Another local pumpkin patch!

We decided to head out to another pumpkin patch at the end of the weekend since we never actually got any pumpkins at the first farm! We drive by this farm almost daily and Madalyn's been enthralled with all the pumpkins and the big "spiders" in the fields!



She loved the "cowboys" as she called them and had to have a picture with them! Madalyn was quite happy to find a field full of pumpkins just her size!!There was a fun kids activity barn with all sorts of cool things to do! She loved banging on the noisemakers - anything to make music!! She is our musical gal and she'll use anything she finds around the house to turn it into a music maker!

She also enjoyed the Rubber Duck races!
Another highlight was seeing all of the animals - chickens, baby chicks, goats, donkeys, and more!

Pumpkin Festival in Town

We made a quick stop to the little Pumpkin Festival in our town this weekend. It was pretty tiny but Madalyn loved that they had a big slide! She'd just spent a few hours at a big jumping place for a friend's birthday party, so she was anxious for another chance to slide. Daddy had almost as much fun as she did! :)
Posing in front of a pumpkin pyramid!

Madalyn singing the ABC's!

Madalyn put on quite a show the other night....even though she does not like having her picture taken, she does love to have videos taken of her and then she'll watch them over and over and over again....laughing hysterically at herself everytime! This video cracked us up because she got mad at Daddy for "helping" her get back on track with the singing after she got distracted! "Don't say ABC's!" And if you're wondering about the hat, that's actually a hat for baby sister that she found while we were putting away baby clothes and she squeezed over her head. She wore it ALL night long! :)

Fun at the Pumpkin Patch!

We took a fun trip to a nearby Pumpkin Patch the other day! They had lots of great activities, especially for the toddler/preschool crowd! We spent so much time doing all the activities that we ran out of time to actually get pumpkins (it got too dark). Madalyn had a blast, though!

Look at those chubby cheeks!! She's always had these adorable chubby cheeks that we just love to pinch!!
Madalyn's new "thing" is tractors - she loves to spot tractors when driving (we've seen quite a few lately in the countryside since we have to drive by a lot of farms on our way to our small town).
We both LOVE corn on the cob!! You can't get that corn away from Madalyn once she's started!

One of the highlights for Madalyn was the Cow Train! She wasn't sure what to think at first and didn't dare let go of the seatbelt, but she loved going up and over the hills and bumps!

More tractor fun - the perfect size for Madalyn!

They even had a kid-sized mini golf course complete with kid-friendly putters! Madalyn could have done this forever - she loved trying to get the balls to go into the holes!

This was a big room filled with tons and tons of corn kernels and hidden below were lots of rubber duckies just waiting to be found! Madalyn wasn't too sure about this area at first, though - she didn't warm up to it until Daddy joined her and helped her search for the ducks!

A shot of Mt Rainier peeking thru the clouds!

Jen at 38 weeks pregnant with the beautiful sunset in the background!

Before we left, we had to take a quick visit to the animal barn - Madalyn loved seeing all the animals - especially the rabbits!

New Family Blog!

We've decided to create a new blog for all of our family and friends to keep up with what's going on in the lives of the Dotson's! Considering it's been about a year since we updated our old "MSN spaces" site, we thought it would be easier to just start over with a new site! Hopefully we'll be better about updating this site more regularly with pictures and updates!

As most of you know, we just moved into a new house at the beginning of September, so we've been feverishly working hard at getting unpacked and settled in before our newest addition arrives in a week and a half. Baby Girl Dotson is due to arrive by C-section on October 23, 2008 so we are getting very close to meeting our precious baby girl! Madalyn is very excited about the arrival of "baby sister" and keeps saying "baby's coming"! She will be a great big sister!!