Birthday time!

Our oldest girl just turned FOURTEEN, and we had her family celebration last night.  We'll go ice-skating with friends for the Birthday Celebration, Part Two. She always wants apple pie since she doesn't care for cake, and because she wanted a family movie night, she generously chose a movie the boys would enjoy as well (instead of the Masterpiece Theater Pride and Prejudice we've been watching lately :) ).  Abigail and Adah took over decorating duties while I took Shiloh to Target for some fun shopping.  As you can see, they did an excellent job. :)  Cora was in bed most of the day with a cold :(  but she rallied to celebrate.  We are so thankful for our beautiful young lady, a young lady who's just as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside.  It's a privilege to be her mom.  (Oh - we did cross a major milestone for this birthday.  Shiloh didn't want the traditional birthday signs/scavenger hunt clues this year.  She just wanted a big sign.  *sniff sniff*)

Here's to many more, Shiloh Elizabeth!  And what a way to kick-off birthday season in the New Year - Abigail Emma is next!

Beautiful Birthday Girl

We aren't "celebrating" Shiloh's birthday today because the evening is packed with activities, but we had an unexpected snowfall this morning, and Cora captured some beautiful birthday pictures of her big sister that I wanted to share.  I'll post some later of her birthday celebrations.  She is such a blessing to our family, and I'm so thankful the Lord saw fit to give her to us for fourteen years so far.  It's so bittersweet as they get older to realize that this precious time together with her under our roof is coming to an end sooner rather than later. :(  I try not to get too melancholy as I see the fantastic young woman she is becoming.  I'm excited to see how the Lord grows and changes her in the coming years.  Love our precious first-born!!  Happy 14th Birthday to our sweet, fierce, helpful, friendly, competitive, speedy, precious SHILOH!

Basketball!

Poor Cora got short-shrift last year when I took a "blogging break" that lasted about a year and I never posted anything about her basketball season from 2012.  I'm determined to do better by her this year. :) 

Here are some pictures from her first game this year.  Her team, called Liberty, won by a good margin and Cora scored two baskets!  I had some great videos, but Blogger is not cooperating with me.  Rats.  I'll try again in a bit.

A Masquerade

I said I wouldn't try to post anything from 2012 because it was too overwhelming, but I couldn't resist when it came to Cora and Adah's birthday party.  It was Cora's brainchild...she came up with the theme, the menu, the invitations, the decorations, and the agenda for the party.  Adah was the beneficiary of all her planning and her only job was to invite friends. :)  The plan was to have a "masquerade" - to dress up (Cora found her dress at Goodwill and added straps), make masks, have a photo shoot, eat some fun food, and do some dancing.  Cora just handed me a list for the grocery store.  I felt like I needed one of those "Easy" buttons from Staples because this party sure was easy for me!!  I thoroughly enjoyed myself watching the girls create their masks for the photo shoot, listening to them giggling downstairs as they posed, and then watching them dance.  Special thanks go to Shiloh, who helped me clean up the mountain of glitter left on the floor by giggling girls creating masks.  Glitter is evil.

Onward to basketball season pictures (I hope!).  Cora had her first game last Saturday - a win and two baskets for my girl!

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! :)