Monday Monday

This is pretty meager posting lately - two posts per month is pitiful. I will try to do better. We've been on a roll with school, outside time, nature walks, running, and keeping up with laundry (which is itself a full-time job) and I've been lax on getting to the computer at night. I've been reading some interesting books lately instead. :) "Marriage to a Difficult Man" by Elisabeth Dodds is one of them. And no, I didn't check it out because I might get some help with my marriage. :) It's a biography of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards - it's been on my "to read" list for awhile, so I'm glad I got to it. I also read "Mayada - Daughter of Iraq," courtesy of Daniel's aunt. She always sends interesting books for me to read, and this was one of them. It's an autobiography of one of Iraq's privileged elite, who ended up being imprisoned unjustly under Saddam. She tells the stories of each one of her cellmates, and it was just horrifying. So that's what I've been doing - what are you up to? Here are a few random pictures to accompany this post. The first is the big hole in the ground that will be our home two months from now. :) This hole worried me greatly because it didn't seem very big at all when I took a picture of it, and I thought, "THEY'RE BUILDING THE WRONG FLOOR PLAN! HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN?" I came to find out from two friends of mine who had built houses that this is a common visual distortion - they both thought they had made horrendous mistakes when their houses were being built. Weird. :) The house looks FINE now; it's all framed in and has a roof on it, and it is the correct floor plan. Phew. That would be a hard thing to explain during the walk-through to look for mistakes before dry-walling: "Umm, excuse me, sir. You've poured the wrong floor plan and framed in the wrong house. Can we have a do-over?"

I put Jackson in our room one afternoon for a rest because Nathaniel was bothering him, and here is what I found when I went to wake him...he found Daddy's slippers.

Daniel was making dinner one night and Nathaniel was hanging out on the counter watching him. Nathaniel said he was cold, so Daniel asked him if he wanted to wear his ear covers. He said "yes, please." :)

Abigail Ramona Houseworth? What do you think?

This is Shiloh's new 'do. She hates having shorter hair but I love how great her hair looks. It's so shiny and full of body. She looks like a young lady! That's all for now. We're traveling up to Ohio on Spring Break at the end of this week (what? doesn't everyone choose Ohio for Spring Break? :)) and we'll hit the Creation Museum on the way back down. Daniel might talk me into a Civil War battlefield (excuse me, I was just corrected - a "War of Northern Aggression" battlefield).

Oh - I have to share Abigail's latest paragraph from grammar. The title was "Things I Like About My Family." Now, the writing at this stage is rather rote as they learn the mechanics of writing, so the sentences are somewhat ho-hum. But I thought the idea behind the paragraph was pretty cute:

Things I Like About My Family

There are two things I like about my family. These things are that I have big sisters to warn me about what I shouldn't do, and I have a Mommy and a Daddy to protect me. The first thing that I like about my family is that I have big sisters to warn me about things I shouldn't do. I like that they warn me so that I won't get in trouble. The second thing I like about my family is that Mommy and Daddy can protect me. I like that because some nights I am scared. My family protects me on both sides, and that is what I like about them.

:) Basically she's saying that we have her back as her family. I like that idea. :) Adah's was not as funny in its concept, but it was heart-melting. Her concluding sentence said, "Both of the things I like about my family show that they love me." And that was her own, not-prompted, not-solicited idea! Yea for bonding!!

I'm off to hang out with the family and possibly go to the library. We have to have goals, people.

Love,

Casey