Finished up filming for TLC and The BBC.

Remember in August when I posted this? Apparently since the BBC documentary will also air on TLC, they wanted a bit more footage for the U.S. version, so they sent a second crew out to film us. The crew included our Director/producer Gwen Isaac, of Midnight Swim productions, Cinematographer Gavin Brennan, and our sound technician, whose first name was John, unfortunately I didn't get his last name. As we got acquainted with our crew, Christi was beside herself to discover that Gavin had worked on the Deadliest catch on the Time Bandit boat and John had worked on the crew of the Ghost Hunters series on SyFy. These are a couple of the family's favorite shows and everybody had lots of questions for the guys. While the last post was titled "The British are coming!", in this case our crew were from New Zealand; (Gwen), Australia; (Gavin) and America; John. Gwen was Fabulous and has been all over the world, Christi did not enough time to question her too much.
It was a pretty good day, and the kids had a lot of fun playing soccer in the front yard for the camera. It was funny as Gwen kept telling the kids to kick the football and the kids would look at her and she'd have to say, "soccer ball". Afterwards, Christi and I did a pretty candid interview regarding our ability to have so many kids and our experiences with birth and such.
All in all it was a pretty good day and I hope the footage they got makes for a great documentary when the final cut is done.

The British are coming!!

Actually, they were here on Sunday, but that wouldn't be a very catchy title, would it? The film crew showed up around 11 am and although Christi and I were a bit nervous, we were as ready as we would ever be as we stepped into the living room to meet them. Our fears were quickly allayed as the director and producer turned out to be very nice and very laid back people. Nat, the director was charming and friendly and the kids took to him immediately. Emma, our producer, had talked extensively both on the phone and via Facebook to both Christi and I, so she was more familiar, but it was great to actually meet her face to face. Our cameraman, Julius was quite a lot of fun and probably the kids favorite. With them also were Kris and Alan, both locals (from L.A. and Murrieta, respectively) a couple of nice guys also. The day went very well and the kids performed amazingly well. There was no pressure and Nat guided us through our various shots with ease. The day flew by and we were sad to see them go, but anxious for them to get the film back to London and finish the documentary, the quicker to see how it turns out. I was able to get the following pictures using the amazing camera that they provided me for filming the birth. I'm no photographer, but with a 21 megapixel Canon, I could hardly go wrong.This one was taken by Julius, it's all 17.9 of us on the lawn under our miyamosa tree. They had us wearing those orange nametags for the first couple shots.
Rebekah gets her closeup as Julius operates the camera, Nat the director is at far right and production assistant Kris is behind Nat. Trevor is at the table waiting for permission to dig into the pizza with Emma standing up in the middle of it all. Harper is at the left, talking with the sound guy, Alan.
It was great time and we had a lot of fun.

Just a little update

Christi has been posting on her facebook about various events that have occurred in our lives recently, so I'm going to try and update on these things and fill in some details about what has been going on with us lately.

Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea: The Cason News Update!

For those of you wishing Dalton well, he has an appointment on the 20th to have some upper GI and lower GI scans and an ultrasound to have a thorough look at his innards and see what this mass is all about. The Doc at Loma Linda said that whatever it was, it would most likely involve some sort of surgical intervention, we just need to find out more and see what is what. We hope that those of you that pray will do so for a simple diagnosis and easy treatment. He says it's not hurting much anymore, but we want to get this thing out and finished so he can get busy with college and work and whatnot.

On the home buying front: Some of you know that we were in a contract for a house that was a short sale and were waiting to hear if we had bank approval on the first mortgage (we were told that the second mortgage holder had approved us). Apparently, without contacting us, the listing agent heard from the bank that they wanted an offer of at least $6500 more than we had offered and they chose to go with a backup offer without contacting us and giving us the chance to counter. We had been waiting just shy of 6 (six) months thinking we had it in the bag, when I just happened to drive by the house and saw that the swimming pool was full of clean water (it had been near empty with some stagnant rain water at the bottom when we saw it). Curious, and knowing that our agent had been unable to reach the listing agent for some time, I thought I would just call the main office and inquire about it as though I were just looking. I called and asked and was told that the house was set to close escrow the very next day, but they had many more lovely houses in the area to show me....

W.T...um...Heck????

I was obviously quite upset by this, and made my displeasure known to the agent who had answered the phone. She didn't have any answers and was, honestly, pretty dismissive of my outrage. After several messages left for the listing agents and having our agent make some inquiries, we figure that one of the listing agents probably screwed his fellow listing agent by dumping us and taking the bigger offer without notice and may have taken the lion's share of the profits too. While I know we could probably have raised a legal stink about this, it would have cost us money we can't afford to lose and so we took it as a sign from God that the house was not the right one for us. We have since made a couple offers, on which we stand as backups and are continuing to look.

We will find a house.

We have also been contacted by a young lady from the BBC and it appears they would like to interview us for a documentary on the human body. We will be featured in an episode on reproduction, (naturally!) and we're told that it will air on TLC in the U.S. in 2011. They originally intended to film the birth of #16 but the hospital balked for safety reasons (read: liability) and so it will just be the interview. That's going to happen on the 29th, we'll let you know how that turns out.

Speaking of #16, Christi is scheduled to be induced on the 1st, because the Doc likes to keep as much control due to the high risk associated with numerous pregnancy moms. Of course, that is assuming that the baby will let us get that far in the first place. Christi has been having some interesting contractions lately and the thought is creeping in that we may be in for an early arrival. Kids never pay attention to schedules, do they? This one we'll definitely keep you up to date on. Certainly on facebook, maybe on twitter if the laptop we bought arrives in time. That's another small piece of news, we bought our first computer in 8 years and we're excited about not having to wait 20 minutes for the computer to boot and then logon and access the web. We have been using Chad's laptop, but he needs it for school now, so it's gone most of the time. Got a really sweet deal on ShopNBC.com too.

Along with the contractions, Christi has been having a really hard time with migraines. She has had to deal with them on several pregnancies, but this one has been the worst. Her Doc has given her some stuff for pain, but it is of limited help and nothing works completely for her. It will ease off and get better, but she has headaches that last for days. At the moment, she is headache free, and I hope she can stay that way for awhile. She's been to the hospital several times for these migraines and while they eventually get rid of it, they pump her full of meds and she feels hungover all the next day. Pray for her to have some relief until the birth.

Also, as you may have seen on my facebook, I was in Washington D.C. recently for some work training at our company HQ. I got to walk around and see some great sights, but it really made me miss Christi and the kids not having them to share it. I got a few good pictures, but the camera gave me some trouble when I tried to photograph the White House and some other neat sights. I am already hatching a plan to get the family there for a vacation as soon as I can swing it. I'd like to make a loop through Philadelphia, D.C. and some Virginia Civil War sights. Maybe in the Spring so it's not so hot and humid as it is now. I'll try and get a few of the D.C. pics and a post on my blog when I can.

That's about it for the update, but with us, there will always be something coming up.

Stay tuned.

An anniversary, of sorts

It was 3 years ago, on Saturday that we began the filming for our TLC show Kids By The Dozen. Christi and I have been reminiscing a bit as our little Laura Mae (She was in the belly for the filming) has been asking to watch the show very frequently in recent days. "Watch Mommy-Daddy!" she says and we or one of the kids will bring up the show on the DVR.

Christi and I were talking about that first day, meeting the crew and the producers. We had already met Laura Swalm by that time as she had come out for the initial meeting with the executive producer, Bernadette McDaid. On the first filming day, however, she arrived with an assistant, two cameramen, Dane Lawing and Ronny and our sound guy, Brad. We were introduced to everyone and over the course of that week, we got pretty familiar with them. Christi reminded me how nervous she was on that first day, compared with 4 days later, we came to expect to see the crew sitting around the living room every morning, Starbucks in hand waiting for us to get the kids up and presentable. We had a lot of fun filming that show, we got to see a lot of cool insider stuff that happens when filming TV shows (we still point out stuff on other shows) and we made some friends. Christi is still in touch with Laura via Facebook and Chad still talks to the production assistant Trevor.

It was really a great time and I think we'd do it again if the chance came up.