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.

A rose by any other (nick) name…

Over the years, Christi and I have had our share of difficulties in choosing names for the babies. We have our rule that we don’t use the same letter of the alphabet twice, plus we try really hard not to pick overly common names. Furthermore, although we don’t have anything against them, we don’t have any urge to use any of the more traditional biblical names. So you can see how we might have a bit of trouble thinking up names. When it comes to nicknames, however, anything goes.

It probably started for Jessica when her Grandma started calling her Tootsieroll because of her fondness for the candy. Christi and I didn’t really use that one though, we usually called her Jessy or Messy Jessy. Then one day, because of something she said, and I don’t remember exactly how it came about, we started calling Guss me (she had said something like, “It’s guss me, Jessica”) The one that has stuck though, has been Gussa. Her little brothers and sisters almost always said her name that way before they could speak well, calling her both Gussa and Gussica at one point or another. So Gussa has stuck, so much so, that I have her in my cell phone as Gussa.

Chad has gone through Chaddy, to Chaddy pooh, Paddy and Paddy pooh. Pretty much always something like that. There was however, a period when he was going through that grumpy teenager stage when we (mostly me) called him “Sunshine” or sometimes “Captain Sunshine”. I still call him Sunshine when he’s in a mood, but Paddy pooh is the one that has really stuck around. I even went into our cell phone account and fixed it so that his caller ID shows up as Paddy. If you doubt me, have him call you, you’ll see.

Dalton’s nickname…well I’m not sure where it came from. We started out just calling him Dalton-man, and we used to sing his name in that song by They Might Be Giants called Particle Man. We used that for a pretty good while, and Austin still calls him that, but then it somehow changed to Schmoo. I’m not really sure where we got it, but we began calling him variously, Dalton Schmoo and just Schmoo. His cell phone has the same set up as Chad’s, when he calls, you get Schmoo Cason. I’m hilarious like that.

Austin’s nickname was just a total case of being silly but having nothing clever to call him, we just rhymed our way to “Austin Bostin Schlostin. We use variations on that and add in other rhyming words. Trouble with this nickname is it’s kind of hard to say in an angry way, so you can’t really use it to yell at him with. AUSTIN BOSTIN SCHLOSTIN!! Just doesn’t have the right angry ring to it, know what I mean?

Bailey’s nickname probably came from the song “American Pie”, by Don McClean, even though Christi can’t recall for sure. But for as long as I can recall, we’ve called her Bailey Pie, or sometimes Pee Pot Pie, Po Po Pie or something else involving Pie. She is our little Pie. She too got the cell phone treatment.

Gage got his nickname as a direct result of his personality. When he was little and his personality traits started to become more evident, Christi and I used to say he had a little attitude. A Gage-itude, if you will. Well that morphed into Gagey-tooty, Tooty-booty, Gagey-booty and so on. We both still call him booty. And he still has a Gage-itude. It fits him as well today as it did when we came up with it.

Kaylee is our little “Cookie”. I’m not entirely sure how we got to calling her that, but over the years she’s been, Cookie-snookie, Cookie-frookie, and whatever other silly, cutesy things that we could think of. Hers is also one that has stood the test of time and she is still my sweet Cookie Rae (Rae is Christi’s middle name too).

Harper has gone through a whole bunch of nicknames over the years because we really had trouble coming up with anything really cutesy that rhymes or really fits well with her given name. We have at times called her Harpity, Harpity-Barpity, Harper-Barper but what we seem to always come back to is Harpy. It’s not very clever and it doesn’t have any real special or secret meaning, but it’s what we call our sweet little Harpy.

Emma has really had a lot of variations of her nickname such as Emma-memma, Meema-leema, Memma-lemma and when she’s in trouble, we fall back on her first and middle names: EMMA VEE!!

As they get younger, they obviously have had less time to develop multiple nicknames which is the case with Rebekah. One thing about her name is that we really didn’t want her to end up with the nickname “Becky” and one of Christi’s friends told her that as long as we never call her that, she won’t use it, therefore neither will others. We have pretty much always called her Bekah or Beeky-boo and that’s pretty much it. If you knew her, you’d realize it’s a pretty good fit. She is absolutely a Beeky-boo.

Trevor has always been our Bubbs. That’s pretty much it for him other than rhyming it by adding Chubbs to it. I just call him “My Bubbs, My CHUBBS!!” Sometimes a little variation like “Chubbsy-Bubbsy” but really mostly just Bubbs. I usually yell that at him as he’s coming up the drive from his bus. He’s the only one that takes a bus because he goes to a special class for the hearing impaired.

Walker went through being called “Wockitty, Woo-kitty, Walker Woo and now he’s just Mr Woo Tee. How we got to Woo Tee, I’m not sure, but he’s completely owned that one as he even calls himself by his nickname. Sometimes we’ll ask him “who is it? And he’ll say it’s me, Woo-Tee!” He is such a big little man!

Morgan has a couple of active nicknames. We usually call him Dee-Dee, which is short for when we call him Morgan Dee-Dee, which is sometimes Mogen Dee-Dee. We’re not really sure what started that one, but his other major nickname came because he looks EXACTLY like Dalton when he was that age, therefore we call him Schmoo-2 or sometimes little Schmoo. Not only does he look like him, but he acts just like him as well.

We somehow got started calling Laura, Lola Falana, after the singer from the 60s and 70s. Mostly just because it amused us, but we used that for a long time. That one has kind of morphed into calling her Lolee-lo and I also like to call her Gogly-Gogly because that was something she used to go around saying all the time. She could have picked that up anywhere because she is probably the biggest parrot of all our kids.

Which brings us finally to Sawyer. We started calling him Soy Bean even before he was born, because we knew if it was a boy, we were gonna name him Sawyer Benjamin. Christi’s favorite is to call him Soy Sauce and I usually call him Little Man. Sawyer-boyer also makes the rounds as his nickname at times.

I have to say, with all the nicknames and variations thereof that we have used over the years, it’s a wonder that any of our kids ever learn what their real names are. With that and our penchant for talking babytalk, I marvel that they can even speak English as well as they do.

I wonder what sort of nickname number 16 will inspire.