Happy New Year!

Well, that blogging break was a bit longer than I intended. :)  After Daniel got me a laptop in February, I always intended to work on the blog with my laptop, but I never got around to downloading pictures onto the laptop from Carbonite.  (I really have no idea what I'm talking about - Daniel just gives me these explanations and I nod my head.) 

ANYWAY, I'm back.  Who knows for how long?  :) I'm not going to try to catch up on 2012; the thought is overwhelming to me. I'll try to keep current for 2013, though, so I can keep a journal of our family's life and times.

Right now we're still on a break from formal schooling, which is why I'm blogging in the "wee hours" of the morning (7:30) while the children are still sleeping.  Sometime next week we'll return to our lessons, but not until I get a whole day to sit and read a book (that's my definition of a break). 

Here are some (completely random and out of order) pictures from our break.  There are some Thanksgiving photos in there as well.

These are completely out of order, but I'm out of time and can't fix them right now.  I'm planning (hoping) to do a better job in the future.  We have birthday season continuing with Shiloh's 14th on the 24th!  Yikes. 
Happy New Year to everyone!  Much love from the Houseworths!

A Problem with Vocabulary

Daniel got out of the Army too soon and left critical gaps in the girls' education. Case in point: Abigail was drawing a picture and wanted to know what a cannon looked like. I drew a picture for her. She looked at it, shook her head, and said, "No, no, a cannon like...a cannon on...a TRUCK CANNON!" The rest of us looked around at each other, I asked a few follow-on question, and then I ventured, "A tank?" "Yes, yes, a TANK! That's what I need!"

Jackson looked at me, flabbergasted and then disgusted. He walked away from the table, throwing up his hands and muttering, "A TRUCK CANNON?! A truck cannon? I thought maybe she was talking about a mortar!"

Girls.

More Redneck Stuff

Daniel wanted Jackson to organize his magazines so that he could put them on his bookshelf and keep them handy for reading. Here are the categories for his magazines:

Boy's Life
Scouting
Guns and Ammo
American Rifleman
American Hunter

He's a real Renaissance man, isn't he?

The Real World

In our household, kids get the day off from school on their birthdays. Last night, Abigail asked, "Does Hannah (our pastor's daughter) get to come home from college on her birthday?" We said, "No, you don't get out of classes for your birthday in regular school or in college."

"YOU DON'T GET OUT OF CLASSES? WHAT?!?!" She was horrified. :)

Coming Soon...but meanwhile

I'll have a basketball post and a birthday post soon, but in the meantime, I need to give you an example of the dumbing down of America right in our own household - largely due to YouTube. :) We were riding to co-op yesterday listening to the classical station on Sirius XM. The William Tell Overture was on, and Nathaniel piped up from the back, "Is this the 'Mom Song?'" :)

Here's the link if you aren't familiar with the 'Mom Song.' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxT5NwQUtVM

Wow!

It's like the Internet is a magic genie. I asked for a joke book, and the mailman delivered one today!

Let's try it again. Someone send me a pony, pronto! :)


In all seriousness, thank you to whoever send the joke book. The package didn't have an invoice included, so I have no idea who the good fairy is (I have an idea, though :)). Jackson seized on it right away and read me a joke that was actually FUNNY. He then proceeded to walk around the house reading jokes to anyone who was sitting still. He's trying to memorize some of the knock, knock jokes to tell his friend Isaiah.

This is a much better situation, people. Thank you, Internet genie.

Wha?

One of the sweetest, most endearing things I've found about adopting older children is that the biological siblings will implant the adopted siblings into all of their memories. Very often Abigail will say, "Do you remember when we went to that place, Adah? Do you remember how fun it was?" and I'll have to say, "She wasn't home from Haiti yet, sweetie. She wasn't there." And Abigail will insist that she was, that she remembers her being there (and then she usually asks Adah if she remembers being there, too - because she's contrary like that).

Jackson gave us a twist on this infusion of memories the other night. I saw a picture posted on Facebook of a friend's new adopted daughter - a real cutie about 6 months old with big eyes, HUGE cheeks, and LOTS of hair pulled up into two puffballs. I called Adah over to look at the picture because she loves anything to do with babies. I told her I thought she must have looked like this little girl when she was a baby because this little girl was so adorable and she had such beautiful big eyes, etc. Jackson was there when Adah replied, "I wish I had some picture of me when I was a baby. Or a picture of my mom." (yes - talk about a stab through my heart for my poor girl who longs to have that piece of her history and identity :( ) Anyway, Jackson says, "Of course we have pictures of when you were a baby. We have pictures of when you were in the hospital with Mommy. We just have to find them."

Adah and I looked at each other. Adah started laughing. Jackson realized what he had done and his ears got FLAMING red. Adah says, "You know I didn't come from Mommy, right?" Jackson walked away quickly, muttering, "Right. Right."

After I told Daniel that night what had happened and we both laughed, I almost cried. Because how beautiful is that?
*sniff* My knuckle-headed boy and my beautiful Haitian-born girl - gifts of God, that's for sure. Even if one didn't come from me. :)

The Joke Phase

Have your kids gone through the joke phase? Are they in it right now? I feel your pain if they are. I don't remember it being this bad with the girls, but the boys ARE KILLING ME with their endless, not-funny jokes. :) They are now making them up, which is even worse. Here's Nathaniel's latest joke this evening:
Nathaniel: "Where is peanut butter and jelly's home?"
Me: "I don't know. Where?"
Nathaniel: "In BREAD!" And he and Jackson laugh hysterically. And I'm expected to laugh hysterically.

Yeah.

Somebody please send them an actual joke book, pronto.

Ice Skating boys!

On our second day back to school, a friend called and invited us to homeschooling day at the local rink...it's half off before the kids get out of school, so we jumped on that! Jackson and Nathaniel have never been ice skating before, so I was a little worried about how this would go, especially since I wouldn't be on the ice. I shouldn't have worried. I made Jackson wear a helmet at the beginning and use the buckets that they give the little kids to help them with their balance, but Jackson ditched both in short order. He landed pretty hard more than once, and he noticed how wet he was when we got back in the van, but he had a great time. Nathaniel and his friend Joseph liked to play bumper cars with their buckets, and they were not really observing the "everyone skates counterclockwise" rule. :) It's amazing that they both emerged unscathed. I had to run some errands after we skated (yes, while everyone was wet and cold - good planning, Mom!) and everyone FELL ASLEEP in the van on the way home after that. They all got showers, ate dinner, and went to bed. Even Shiloh and Cora were asleep by 9:00. What a fun day!

I'm so sorry these pictures didn't turn out! My camera is doing weird things lately (or maybe it's operator error) and I need to get another picture of Nathaniel, because...did you notice anything different? He lost his first tooth!!! We knew it was loose, but Daniel didn't know how loose until he gave it a pull on the previous Sunday night and it came out! I thought Nathaniel was kidding me when he came running to tell me that his tooth was out. My baby has lost his first tooth - what a milestone.

Stinkin' camera! Ugh. I wish you could see the smile on Nathaniel's face. He was genuinely having a great time, giggling and skating everywhere. He was entertaining! :)

More Wedding Dress Designs and a Ball

Abigail didn't want me to forget these pictures! This dress was a creation by Cora.Abigail does drama well. Have I mentioned that before?

A classic pose for a bride, don't you think?

Cora had a friend over, and she mentioned the wedding dresses they had made the day before, so her friend decided that sounded like fun. Cora's dress was designed by her friend. :)

Should I wear the pearls or the gold earrings, she thinks?

I think Cora designed Adah's dress, but I'm not sure.

The NEXT day (yes, this has been a marathon design session), the girls decided to have a ball. Here is Adah's ball gown.

Here is Abigail being...Abigail. Notice the outfit that doesn't match. She also wore unmatching socks for three days. I think she's channeling Punky Brewster.

That's better, Abigail! (Notice the gloves and how they add that certain something that we all look for in an outfit.)

The ladies are chatting as they wait to be announced at the ball. I wasn't aware we had duchesses in the house.

Abigail dances like a whirling dervish.

Now they're all dancing like whirling dervishes. :)

Oh, the joy of having girls. :) Meanwhile, the boys were downstairs having nerf war guns. I was asked to make tea for the ball and to share my orange slices (Remember those candies from childhood? Our Mennonite grocery store carries them). It's a sign of how much I love them that I shared. A good time was had by all.

Happy New Year!

Since Tuesday of this week, we've been freezing. But this is what the kids were dressed in on Saturday, December 31st:These are their new soccer jerseys to go along with the soccer goal Grandma and Grandpa got them for Christmas. (They've been using the soccer goal since October because "someone" didn't want to wait to get it out - wait! Who said it was I??)

Team Houseworth!! :)

New Year's Eve we went bowling with friends to ring in the New Year. We had such a good time! The kids got bumpers, but Daniel and I had to do without. Daniel got progressively better as the night went on, but I discovered that I am a WILDLY inconsistent bowler. I got three strikes in one game, two of them right in a row, and I still didn't break a 100 (yes, that would mean that I only knocked down two pins on other tries :) ). Daniel and I didn't pull anything, and the kids had a great time, so we counted the evening a success. Adah grabbed the title for "most stylish bowler with most unorthodox methods." She barely got the ball down the alley because she was wearing a slim skirt and didn't want to move too much. And yet she won every game in her group! She was also wearing a lot of bling, which helped to earn her the title of most stylish.

See the sparkly headband on Adah? Helps with the bowling.

My white shirt was glowing in the black light. :)

Jackson had the best time! He kept bowling even when the other younger boys quit and he was bowling against the adults in his lane. He was excited by every pin he knocked down, and on one turn, he and Daniel bowled strikes right next to one another.

Our New Year's cards and family newsletters will be going out shortly; I'm just waiting on the cards to arrive from Shutterfly. Happy New Year, everyone! We're enjoying our last day of break today, and tomorrow it's back to regular routine and learning. Yea! This year we had a good balance on our break of fun, crazy busyness and quiet, relaxed downtime. Cora sat in the chair by the fire all day one day to read an entire book. Now THAT'S what I call a successful Christmas break. :) I hope 2012 brings much joy for y'all!