Tooth Fairy Alert

A very sleepy Jackson greeted me with this announcement this morning: "Mommy, the tooth fairy took my sock in the night. I can't find it anywhere."

I told him the tooth fairy really only takes teeth, but I don't think he believed me. And we haven't found the sock.

Two Posts! In One Day!

I am waiting for Daniel to return from Kroger with a movie for tonight, so I have time to get a video on as well. Here is Jackson, who is at his present age the cutest boy who has ever lived. What is it about an almost four year-old? I love this age for some reason. Maybe it's the moments where they break out into being a kid but they still have the adorable expressions and gestures from their last moments of being a toddler. They're trying so hard to be big, but they're just not quite there yet. Whatever it is, I could just eat him up right now. :)

Visit with Friends

The S family took Daniel in at West Point, and then took me in by extension. They were one of the mentor couples through Officer's Christian Fellowship, and they were wonderful to Daniel and to me. They fed us real food and sympathized when we had huge problems like a *gasp!* paper that was due in a few days!! :)

We've kept in touch through the years, and two years ago we met up with Mr. S and their eldest son at a conference at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. We said at the time, "We really should get together again!" Well, they took us up on our offer of coming to visit, and although Mr. S couldn't come on this trip, Mrs. S came through on their way to Nashville with their seven children. We had such a good time catching up, realizing how gracious the Lord has been to both of our families, and laughing at our kids' antics. I also got MUCH encouragement from how they are living out their convictions and what their family life looks like now that they have teenage sons (yeah - sons that we HELD while at West Point - we are OLD!). We took a walk to our neighborhood ice cream shop (have you picked up on the fact that we very much enjoy having it so close? :) and we got a few stares on the way. Picture two mamas in skirts, thirteen children and Daniel bringing up the rear. I wanted to wave and say, "Well, hi! We just arrived here from Waco! How are you?" :) I just loved to see how their older sons in particular interacted with our little ones. They're so used to having little ones around that they step right in when they're needed/wanted. Abigail took a fancy to their second oldest, and she ran around trying to capture him with the jump rope. By the way, we compared notes on naming children Abigail (their youngest is Abigail) and our opinion is that you don't want to use it unless you're specifically aiming for a spunky child. One of my favorite pictures didn't turn out - Abigail got a shoulder ride from the oldest son all the way home from the ice cream shop and Daniel thought he got a picture of it. Bummer. Abigail told me later that he asked if she wanted to get down and she replied, "No, thank you. I would rather ride to settle my tummy." Uh-huh.

Jackson also enjoyed hanging out with Jonathan and Joshua. Yep, three J's. I wouldn't call it hanging out so much as running around the outside of the house over and over, brandishing swords and yelling. Those three were LOUD. Nathaniel tried to keep up, but he got lapped with his little legs. He contributed to the noise, though. Adah summed it up best as we waved goodbye when she said, "I wish they could stay for one hundred days!" :)

A Self-Realization and a Metaphor

And both of the above came from Abigail. :) Abigail is very blog-worthy these days, I must say. Here's the story:
I took Adah out on a "date" last Saturday. After eating lunch, we ended up - where else? - at Walmart. I had to run some errands, and she had $4 of her very own money burning a whole in her very cute purse. She considered her options carefully, asked me about fifteen times, "Can I get this thing AND this thing?" and finally decided on a purple camera and a Princess Bride coloring book. (Not THE "Princess Bride," just a princess getting married, and in Adah's book, that's perfection indeed.) p.s. Am I getting a little wordy here? :)

Anyhoo, I told her that because she bought these things with her own money, she did not have to share them. However, I encouraged her to do so. Later I heard Abigail ask if she could color in the coloring book, and Adah quickly offered the camera to her. Abigail was content with that. Adah did offer the coloring book to Shiloh, however.

Here was Abigail's observation to me after bathtime that evening:
"You know, Mommy, how those pesky raccoons come into cornfields and peel the corn and take a little bite out of EVERY piece of corn and then all the corns are ruined? You know about that? Well, I think I'm like that with Adah's coloring book. If she lets me color, I will just color a little bit of every page, and then the whole coloring book will just have little bits of coloring, and I don't think Adah would like that. So I decided I would play with the camera. That's okay, right, Mommy? You know what I'm talking about with those raccoons, huh?" And I nodded and said yes, I knew about those raccoons and that I was happy she was content with the camera. I also suggested that we would get her her own coloring book where she could color little bits of pages to her heart's content. :) Sometimes (very often!) you just don't see these conversations coming, do you?

Love,
Casey
p.s. I have a big photo post coming from our visit with mentors from West Point. We had 13 children under our roof last Monday. FUN! :)

Independent Ladies

Yesterday, Adah and Abigail were playing at some length with their dolls. They set up an elaborate feast for them complete with candles and music. All at once, they decided to go on an extended train trip. They packed their bags and announced their intentions to me. I asked if they wanted me to watch their babies for them while they were gone.

Abigail: "No, thank you. They're both six years old, and they're perfectly able to take care of themselves. You might have to drive them to Kroger, though."

May I just say for the record that I have never left a six year-old alone to go on an extended train trip? Poor babies. :)

Glorious Day

We promised the kids some sort of end-of-the-school-year blow-out and with the exhaustion of the move into the new house, we still hadn't done anything. So then we went overboard and told them we would go to the Massanutten Water Park. Then we came to our senses when we looked at the price for four hours of fun plus two hours of driving and looked for an alternative plan. With some trepidation, we decided to try out our local lake, Chris Greene Park. We discussed the plan with the kids, who looked fearful at the thought of swimming among little fishes. We decided to go ahead. BEST DECISION EVER, Mommy and Daddy. "Thank you, Mommy and Daddy!" "We had the best time today, Daddy!" "We liked those little fishes, Mommy!" "It had sand, Daddy! Like at the beach!" "We played all day, didn't we, Mommy?" (We were there from 10:30-4:45!) "When can we go again?" Oh, yeah. We were heroes. For only twelve dollars' entry fee and 10 minutes (literally) from our house. Life is good.
Love, Casey

Abigail is relaxing in a pool of sand and warm lake water.

Nathaniel's and Jackson's drawers were so full of sand that they were both sporting "plumber" looks by the end of the day. :)And this is what happens to one little boy who's had a lot of sand, sun, and water. He crashed in the sun shelter for an hour and a half! (I crashed in there with him for a little bit!)This is the fountain on the "kid's side" of the lake. There was a beach in the middle with a deeper part on one side and a shallow side on the other.Chris Greene Lake as we were leaving. The beach is way out in the distance.

And more videos

I was on a video kick, apparently. Here are two more for you to enjoy. I just had to capture the sound of Adah's braids click-clacking because I love that sound. She certainly can't sneak up on anyone! The second video is of Abigail and Adah singing a song from their Latin curriculum (Song School Latin, Heather - from Veritas Press - highly recommend it so far). They are singing "Quid est tuum praenomen?" and then "Meum praenomen est..." which mean, respectively, "What is your name?" and "My name is..." You can see Nathaniel's little hand sneaking over to Abigail because he was trying to look into the camera. I'm surprised he didn't chime in with "Cheese!"

Love,

Casey

Homeschooling Begins for Nathaniel

Hey, all! We have successfully completed our first FULL week of school, and I am pleasantly surprised at how well it has gone. We actually got everything done! That's crazy, especially when we had piano lessons, a baby shower, and a meal to take to a new mama. My two big girls are so diligent to move from task to task, and the bickering problem that cropped up during our break has been minimized as they realize that they now have limited time to play with one another. That makes mama VERY happy. :)

Nathaniel was being so cute yesterday morning as I worked with Jackson and he worked on his puzzles. I decided to take a video to show you how well he's doing with words. One of his favorite sentences right now is "Gah-gay did it." (Jackson did it!) I seem to recall that that was one of Adah's first sentences: "Abbygail did it." Huh. Nathaniel does know the word tractor, but he started getting confused when I took the video and kept saying it was a train. Notice the word he uses for train. Cute.

Love,
Casey

ARGH!

I started this post on Tuesday evening , thought I sent it to the blog, but Blogger was down and decided only to save one paragraph of my post. ARGH. So I'm finally back to finish the post.
So it's been quiet on the blog, but noisy and busy around here! We started back to school on Monday, and things are going swimmingly. I know we'll have our rough spots throughout the year, but I am so glad to get one awesome week done at the very beginning. (Well, four days anyway because we took a day off for Daniel's dad being here!) We charted the kids' heights as we do each year at the start of the school year, and Jackson grew THREE INCHES since OCTOBER! (Not sure why we took heights in October as well as at the beginning of last year :) ) He won the bean plant award.
Speaking of bean plants, Shiloh's has produced quite a harvest so far. They are YUMMY. We have also had one yellow tomato, a couple of squash, and a green pepper. I put the squash and green pepper in spaghetti sauce, and the kids thought they were palatable then. :) They like the beans raw.
And the main reason I've been silent here is that we've spent so many of our spare minutes in our neighbors' pool. Yes, the same awesome neighbors who have supplied us with fresh produce have also given us access to their pool. May I just say they are awesome? And incredibly generous? AND...Mary Rose doesn't like being cold in the pool at all, so they have a pool heater. As someone who enjoys pool water that approaches the temperature of bath water, that makes me VERY happy. The kids are getting quite brown (or browner, as the case may be :) ) and they are all such water babies. Adah and Abigail are out of their vests (in the shallow end), learning to swim, diving for dive sticks, and doing somersaults. The handstand evades Adah, but she perseveres. Jackson is also out of his vest for swim lessons, and he's all about jumping in over and over. Nathaniel is out of his floatation boat and into a vest, where he's learning not to swallow too much water. He likes to jump in as well. Shiloh and Cora are learning to tread water, the requirement for swimming in the deep end by themselves. They all LOVE the pool, and I'm so grateful for such generous neighbors. Last Friday night we swam and swam and swam, then grilled out, then walked down to our neighborhood frozen custard shop. Life is good. In fact, Daniel bought me a car sticker and mug that say that because it's been my motto lately. I just met a homeschooling mom today who lives right down the street with her kids - 9,7,5, and 3. Praise God for answered prayers! She's running in her first 5K on August 16th, so we made plans for me to run with her. She's also part of the co-op that we've joined, and her 9 year-old is taking sewing and needlecraft along with Shiloh.
Well, here are some pics from recent days (which are just as much for my viewing pleasure as yours since I didn't know half of them existed until I downloaded them from the camera):
Adah smiling sweetly. What a beautiful girl she is, inside and out.
Some of my bathing beauties before pool time one afternoon.
Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ear...
Extreme close-up - self portrait? Who knows?

Out riding bikes and trying to avoid crashing on our long, hilly driveway.
Dr. Adah R. Houseworth, MD taking care of the household.
Crazy hair photo after swimming.

A picture of Roscoe trying to join the kids' campout. I think he's taking up Shiloh's entire spot, though.
All of these plants are much bigger now...these were the initial photos. Abigail's squash plants are especially huge.

BEFOREAFTER - the amazing squash plant!
This is what Adah thinks about her shower cap that's way too big. :) Not really...she and Shiloh were having a photo session after shower time one night and this was one that Shiloh took.

Hope you're enjoying your July (almost August!!)!

Love,

Casey

Summer

Dear All-
Is it just me, or is moving in exhausting? :) I think it's because we're getting older, we have more kids than when we started moving, and as a consequence, we have more STUFF. Also, our standards haven't changed with regard to HOW we put everything together in the house (that's the royal "we," by which I mean Daniel.) He still measures and uses the level to put up pictures, so it takes awhile. :) But we see the light at the end of the tunnel. He put up the ceiling fans on Monday with minimal help from me, and we are waiting on two chairs that we ordered for the study to come in. And then I THINK we're completely done, or at least until the next project comes up.
We had a great celebration for Independence Day, and I'm sorry I didn't get any pictures. We read some books about the day, made flags to hang everywhere, had some friends over, grilled hotdogs and hamburgers, had red,white, and blue popsicles, and met some more neighbors when we went to the cul-de-sac across the street to investigate fireworks noises. Then the kids had a camp-out on the family room floor, and I put on a video for them thinking it might help them settle down after a big day. BIG mistake. I went in at ELEVEN O'CLOCK to check on them and they were ALL still awake. Yikes. We didn't get out of our jammies the next day until it was time to go to our next social event - dinner at a friend's house. :)
So we're continuing along on summer break right now, and it's been very refreshing for me and I think for the kids as well. We've been doing some sewing and art projects. I'm preparing for next year's school and smelling all the new curricula. We're studying the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation for history. How do I get all that into one year? It's my favorite period of history! Next week we get to do the back-to-school shopping. I love new pencils. :) Our neighbor Oscar has started the kids on a garden project where they each adopt one of his vegetable plants, chart its progress, and harvest the bounty when the time comes. Shiloh picked the bean plant, so she'll be harvesting some today. She figured I might make them eat what they harvested, so there was no way she was picking squash. :) Jackson picked tomatoes, and he's thrilled to see all the flowers on his plant. Our neighbors are awesome. I joked with Oscar that he wanted to do this project to have the kids weed for him, and he said that works for him. :) He's in his late seventies, maybe early eighties, and he gardens with a pith helmet on. He also has a cool accent, saying "peppahs" for peppers. His wife Mary Rose already made us some cucumber soup from the cucumbers in her garden.
Before I go get ready for the day, here's an Abigail story. I was on the treadmill yesterday and saw Abigail twittering about, going in and out of the house. She looked pretty excited, so when she came out with her little pink plastic trash can and a Tupperware, I was a little curious.
Me; "Abigail, what are you doing?"
Abigail (excitedly): "I'm going to catch that chipmunk, Mommy! He's pretty fast, but I got a trash can and I think I can get him in there!"
I was pretty sure she couldn't actually catch him, but even if there is the slightest doubt, I say err on the side of caution and give the talk about rabies and the big shot you would have to get if the cute little chipmunk bit you. :) She gave up her adventure to catch a chipmunk and settled for some beetles.
Love,
Casey
p.s. Julie - Adah LOVES the video and attempted to do one for Beverly yesterday, but there was too much background noise (i.e. Nathaniel wanted to do the video, too). We'll get to it soon.
p.p.s. For those who can commiserate with me, we will be doing the "pooper-scooping" today for testing again. We had Adah and Nathaniel tested when they first got home and they tested negative for any parasites. However, after giving it much time, Nathaniel continues to have some...shall we say...odiferous problems, and we want to make sure. We will be testing every day for three days. Adah seems fine, but we might as well test her while we're testing Nathaniel. Ugh. Adah is grossed out by the whole thing, so the toughest thing will be getting her to agree to help out and do her part. :) At least she understands a lot more now...you should have seen the looks we got when we first tested within a week of her being home!! This is how I interpreted that look: "You white people are crazy, and I think I want to go back to Haiti now."

Phase Two: Completed

*Public service announcement* - Julie, scroll down to the next post just in case you don't realize it's there :)

We are completely moved into our "big house" - boxes unpacked, pictures hung, and curtains put up. It's been...exhausting. My man is the hardest worker I've ever seen, and he's been putting in some serious hours trying to get everything done pretty quickly so that we feel settled. His ankle (the previously patched-up one, three times over) has been swollen for the last couple of days, so now we're hoping to take it easy. The kids and I have taken it easy while he's been at work. :) We've found a pool where we've been swimming twice, and we plan to go again this week after I get over my sunburn. All of the children were fine, but I couldn't reach my back well enough to get good coverage and I'm recovering. :) Adah took right to the pool - putting her whole body under and wanting to learn to swim. She's a pretty brave kid. Her favorite thing was swimming through my legs. Nathaniel loves to splash, splash, splash and then splash some more, giggling all the while. I don't have any pictures - I think I'd need to grow a few more arms for that. Shiloh and Cora only took breaks when the lifeguard blew the whistle; other than that they were in constant motion. Abigail and Jackson only took about two minutes to recover their love of the water from way back in Florida. All in all, it's been a great stress reliever from moving in! We've been reading for the summer reading club, taking walks in the neighborhood, and going to Target WAY too many times. :) Adah is learning to be confident on her bike (still with training wheels), Jackson has transitioned to the top bunk (what a big boy!), and Shiloh and Cora have begun piano lessons with their new teacher. She is truly a gem, and they are learning hymns right now. How wonderful to have daughters who can play the piano! Abigail Emma is DYING to lose a tooth since Adah has just lost two more, but we keep telling her not to MAKE it happen. Abigail and I went to run errands the other day just the two of us, and her constant chatter was so cute. She is really quirky. Daniel saw her bunny hopping naked into the bathroom to get her bath the other night and said, "NOW I know who she reminds me of - RAMONA!" She even looks like Ramona on the cover of the books. Jackson is just really entertaining right now. He has funny observations about life, and he's always ready for an adventure...preferably an adventure that involves some sort of a battle. Nathaniel is talking a lot more and even says words we can understand. :) He is very affectionate and greets us with a sunny, "Hello Mommy!" or "Hello, Daddy!" when we get him up in the morning. He was fun to watch in the pool as I got to experience a "first" with him.
Well, I better wrap this up since it's late Sunday night. Just wanted to let y'all know we survived the move - barely. :)
Here are some recent pictures:

Guess who greeted me with newly pierced ears when I came home from the homeschool convention?? Adah Tomata decided she wanted to get hers done when she saw that her good friends, MeilaRose, Mylee, and Mia had theirs done! Daniel said she did a GREAT job, and she proclaimed, "It not hurt like a shot, Mommy! You said it hurt like a shot, but it didn't!" She is happy with her sparkles, but she wants to change them every day like the others do. (Sorry for the weird camera angle...I need to take a class. Seriously.)



The following pictures are from Organizational Day for NGIC. The weather was perfect, and we agreed that it was the best Organizational Day we'd ever been to (I also won some prizes, and prizes are always good). They had lots of things for the kids to do, as you can see from the pictures. They also had free snow cones, free popcorn, a magic show (fabulous!), balloon shapes, face painting, fire trucks, a SWAT team, and lunch. We enjoyed ourselves very much. And Daniel got PAID for the day. Nice.

Adah on the big slide. Everyone went down MANY times.

Abigail and Adah in the bouncy castle. Abigail got some SERIOUS air in there. She's so light and she's so bouncy anyway (think Ramona) that she was in her element. The only problem was that she became a dangerous projectile when she couldn't control her bounces. Jackson got taken out a couple of times.

The following pictures were taken at the Lewis and Clark Exploration Center (Expedition Center? I can't remember) which was located at the park where the picnic was held. It was open for the day for the kids to explore. And do you know why the Lewis and Clark center is in Charlottesville? Anyone? Lewis was born in Albemarle County, VA, and Jefferson was the president who sent them on their famous expedition (little bit of history for the day). Anyway, the kids got to see a mock-up of a riverboat they might have used, practice using a pulley system to lift a log, and carve out a canoe using a chisel and mallet (Dad - am I saying the correct tools? Probably not.) Jackson liked pretending he was steering the boat. Nathaniel liked running up and down on the boat and scaring the living daylights out of me because the boat was elevated pretty far above the ground.

Here are my handsome men sporting their caps and fire helmets (and leis, which are oh-so-manly).

Jackson got up in the fire truck. He was pretty silent with the firefighters, but Daniel and I asked a lot of questions and Jackson showed later how much he was really listening.

Again with the photo skills. *sigh* I had to hurry up with the picture because the helmet was making his head fall to the front or the back (which, by the way, was hilarious). He liked the armor the SWAT team had. He's also holding the sword the balloon man made for him. He even got a belt with a sheath to put the sword in (it might have popped by this time).

For Beverly

Beverly, Adah wanted to say hello to you when she heard that you like her singing on the computer!

University of Virginia

We wandered around "The Grounds" when Jamie was here, and I would be perfectly happy to attend a graduation at this beautiful campus. :) We said hello to Mr. Jefferson, and the kids ran around the lawn. I peeked into the pavilion gardens, but I wasn't sure if they were private or not, so I curbed my enthusiasm. (It turns out that even though the residences are private, the gardens are not, so I was a legal peeping Martha. :) ) This is only a very small random sampling of the many photographs Jamie took. The children enjoyed having their very own one-person paparazzi snapping photos all day.


This was Nathaniel the morning of our tour saying, "Let's go already!"

Mr. Jefferson was enjoying some champagne in honor of graduation the weekend before. :)

This is the the "chalk outline" photo. Cora was tired and hot, so she took a little rest in the shade. :)

Shiloh was being introspective...and lovely.



Jackson was all about the silly photos that day (we did a posed one earlier, so he thought he'd ham it up for all of them after that point -*sigh* - boys!).