Oh? Is this my blog? Do I write here?

Yes, apparently I've forgotten the purpose of the blog, which is to provide my mother with updated photos of the children. :) I'm also supposed to keep y'all up-to-date with what's going on in our lives, but I can't very well do that if I only post every two weeks or so, because A LOT can happen in the Houseworth household in two weeks. Let's take a look, shall we? In between numerous house showings, homeschooling, and feeding the growing horde, my dad came to visit on February 21st, Nathaniel's 2nd birthday was the 26th, my birthday was the 1st of March, and ohbytheway, we found out we're not moving to Texas. Yeah, that happened last Monday, so it's just old news by this point. But here's the good news. We're moving to Charlottesville, Virginia!!!!! As you can see by the many exclamation points, (which I love to use but which irritate Daniel) we are very excited about this. Here's the backstory to the new location: I get a call February 6th after Daniel's interview with the folks in Charlottesville (Can I post the agency's name? I think it's okay, but Daniel's asleep, so I can't check. I won't, just to be on the safe side. Don't worry - he's not a spy or anything like that. :) ). ANYWAY, this is Daniel: "Casey, I totally bombed that interview. I mean, I can't even tell you how awful I was." Me: "What happened? You never bomb interviews. Could you not answer the questions?" Daniel: "I don't know what happened!! I had to do the interview in the car and after I got on they told me it was going to be an hour long and I looked at my phone and thought, 'I'm not gonna make it! I'm not gonna make it!'" His phone was about to die, and he was slightly panicky. He was still a little panicky AFTER the interview. He brooded about it for about three days, every once in a while looking at me dolefully and saying, "Man, I can't believe I totally bombed that interview." But since we thought we were already on our way to Texas, it didn't really matter. So, Daniel was home on February 25th because he wasn't feeling well. He took a phone call upstairs, talked for awhile, and then came downstairs laughing. Uh-huh. Totally bombed the interview, huh? They offered him the job he wanted. A BETTER job than the one in Texas, (qualitatively speaking, not monetarily speaking :) ) a GREAT location, WITH the opportunity to get an advanced degree, WITHOUT deployments except for some sweet TDYs to places like Germany. And we think we found a church home as well from talking to (interrogating, whatever) the pastor of an OPC congregation. There are only two downsides: we were looking forward to being near Daniel's sister and her family, and it's cold in Virginia. Okay, that second one is just according to Shiloh and me. Everyone else is excited about not enduring San Antonio heat. We also have an additional month here before Daniel has to report to whatever-the-agency-is on April 3oth. That gives us an extra month to sell the house and experience all the fun of house showings. :) We've had 13 showings but no offers.
Okay, so without further ado, I now give you pictures of the wild and wacky kids in the last couple of weeks. Adah has REALLY gotten into birthdays around here, having experienced four since she came home. She made Nathaniel and me presents for our birthdays, and she was talking about her birthday daily until we counted how many days there were until November 13th. She got awfully quiet, and then said, "Too long. That's too long." She doesn't really talk about it anymore. :) The girls made and decorated the birthday cake for Nathaniel, and I stayed out of it except to get the pans out of the oven. I think they did a nice job, but it was much too subdued for them. "Mommy, we need blue icing, or red icing, or both! Or something! More sparkles maybe! Can we put M&Ms on it? What about whipped cream on top of the icing?" That last one was Abigail, of course. Nathaniel seemed to enjoy everything, and I found myself alternating between total joy that he was home and wondering about his birthmom and how she remembers that day. It was an odd, disjointed feeling. I can't write too much about it as I'm still processing it and my thoughts probably wouldn't make any sense. So, on to the pictures...
The first picture is Jackson's impression of the Home Alone kid, I think. The second is my little Mommy Cora Dora snuggling with Jackson. She had a boo-boo on her nose; she hasn't gone for plastic surgery. The rest of the pictures are out of order, but you can get the idea. I love the picture of Adah and Abigail hanging out; they are becoming good friends during their alone time in the afternoon while I'm still doing lessons with Shiloh and Cora. In this picture they were discussing recipes. :) With Adah this mainly consists of turning the pages very quickly and saying, "Oooh, I like dat. Oh, I no like dat. OOOOHHH, I like dis one. Mommy, look at dis one. This one yuummmmy." Sorry my arm is in the picture of Nathaniel with his cake. I just didn't want him to incur second degree burns by sticking his face in the candles.

And that's all folks. Nathaniel was up quite a bit last night coughing, so I'm hoping for more sleep for everyone tonight. Daniel got a head start on me, so I'm going to go catch up.

Love,

Casey

p.s. Ange, we're also so sad that we won't get to be near your family and meet your three girlies! Adah still wants to pray for them, and she wanted to write them a note the other day!

p.p.s. Sorry for the red-eye, folks. I'm too tired to fix it tonight.

Edited to add: Daniel laughed when he read the post. It's not a secret where he's going to be working - the National Ground Intelligence Center - and he shook his head at my ignorance. :) He said, "People are going to think I'm working for the CIA." Which is akin to working for al-Qaida in his mind.