The time has come for #17!

Well folks, we have finally passed a hurdle that we have been working hard to jump and we have decided to make an official announcement:

We are pregnant with our 17th, wonderful baby!!

As many of you may know, we have been trying to conceive and have had 2 losses.  We are at the 11 week mark with no issues, a perfect ultrasound and we have passed the 10 week mark where we lost our other 2.  Christi and I had told a few people, some via Facebook and a few in person, but we finally feel comfortable sharing it here in a blog post.  In Christi's words:

"11 weeks today 11 weeks today, wooohoooo finally past my last 2 losses at near 10 weeks, first milestone, getting to 6 weeks with no issues, then 8 weeks with a great ultrasound, now past 10 weeks, wooohoooo hope to hear a heartbeat on Thursday 4-11. Woohooooo our 17th child so far is really really on the way God willing."

She has a way with the woooohoooo, that's for sure!  This is her 24th pregnancy in total, and at 11 weeks, it looks like this:

http://pregnancy.baby-gaga.com/calendar/week11?ref=nf

Needless to say we are extremely happy to finally be able to share this news!  To those of you who already knew and offered congratulations, and those who have offered up prayers when you knew we were trying, we say thanks!  We look forward to more good news and updates until the ultimate update, which should be around October 26th.

God Bless!

We have an air date thank you Barcroft Produtions and National Geographic, so the Cason family will be on TV one more time.

I have told you an amazing prodution company Barcroft Productions did some filming on our family for Nat Geo and we are now on the Nat Geo site, 7-10-2012 it was so much fun thank you everyone
Megafamilies Megafamilies

Getting two kids out of bed, dressed, fed and out the door can be a challenge for any family, so imagine what its like living with 13 children or more a lot more. Youve heard of the Duggars, but in California, the Casons and their 16 children struggle to find a home with enough space.Then theres 67-year-old Ziona Chana in northeast India, who, with his polygamous family of more than 160 all living under one roof, gives the term megafamily a whole new meaning.
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/schedule/ngc/?source=NavNGCHome

Our little Mega Family


Here is a little shopping video of Kaylee and I.
 http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/national-geographic-channel/all-videos/ngc-shopping-for-16/

Bumps in the road

We posted before about the house on which we made an offer, waiting for the approval of the short sale by the bank. It appears now that we have crossed the final hurdle of approval and now are merely waiting for the bank to open escrow. When we last posted about the house, we were going to see it with Christi's dad and some of the older kids. The house we saw that day, was not the same as the one we had seen and placed our offer. Since that time, the owners had moved and left their mother in charge of the house. She apparently had 3 little shaky dogs that had been having some accidents on the carpet. Sadly, at least 2 of the rooms in the house now had distinct dog urine odors. We left that day after having our agent contact the seller's agent and extracting a commitment to double clean the carpets upon completion of their move. Fast forward to last week and the owners had gone, and the carpet had been double cleaned. Sadly, the urine smell remains. It appears as though it has completely soaked through the carpet and padding and into the wood of the upstairs floor. The downstairs floor is concrete, but the carpet and padding will have to go. It is my hope that only the two main rooms of concern will need the carpet ripped out, but that remains to be seen. Christi was extremely disappointed because she had wanted to have a home that she could be proud to invite folks into and now it appears as though we may have bare floors for awhile because we won't be able to immediately afford to replace that much carpet. And when we do, it will be the good stuff with extra thick padding. This is going to be our home for a long time (God willing) and we want it to be right. We feel certain that we lost that previous house because it wasn't the right one for us. This one has all we wanted and more. We won't be letting our hard work go for nothing over the removal of some carpet, that's for sure. Christi, in particular has worked her little tushy off calling, calculating, and negotiating to make this work. I did my part, working every scrap of overtime I could get, but it was really her that made it all possible. I thank God for my wonderful wife and kids and now for this opportunity to put my family in a home they deserve. I'll be praying for a quick opening of escrow so we can get started on this new path before us.

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.

Introducing...Nathaniel Frost Cason

As many of you will know from Christi's Facebook, our Nathaniel was born on September 1st. He weighed in at 7lbs, 13oz at birth and he is, of course, absolutely beautiful. He was a total surprise as Christi had come to think it was a girl and so had I. I was completely shocked when those boy parts came flopping out. Previously, we had mentioned that we had an ultrasound picture with the sex info written on it, stashed in an envelope that I had hidden from Christi. Well, we successfully avoided the temptation, but were convinced it was a girl due to Christi's feelings, cravings and the fast heartbeat we always heard on the doppler in the Dr.s office.
Enter Nathaniel.


The first thing the nurse pointed out was the size of his hands. He really does have big hands and feet for a newborn. You know what big hands and feet mean don't you? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It means shoes and gloves will be hard to find when he gets older...why? What did you think I meant?


So the name...we had been thinking about Xander, but Christi really didn't like it much. She was thinking Zane, but I didn't really like that one, so we were tossing out some names and Christi said Nathan. I've knew a Nathan and didn't like him much, so I threw out Nathaniel, which we thought sounded better anyway. We hemmed and hawed and mulled over a few others, then when it came down to it, we asked the kids to vote, for Xander or Nathaniel. We went with their choice. I think Christi is just beginning to warm up to it. The middle name Frost comes from Christi's mom's family and was originally after Robert Frost.
Just a week after Nathaniel was born, his first checkup with the Pediatrician revealed that his bilirubin was high and the Dr. sent us back to the hospital for a dose of light therapy. Christi stayed at the hospital with him and he was home the next evening looking a much more normal shade of caucasian instead of jaundice flavored yellow. Most of the kids have had a bit of jaundice after birth, but he is the first one called back in for the light treatment, although Morgan did get the lights while he was in the NICU at Loma Linda.
Nathaniel is now home enjoying Mommy and his brothers and sisters, all of whom want to pick him up and carry him around all the time. We're sure happy to have him home and will enjoy watching him turn into the little person he's going to be.

Welcome Home Nathaniel!!

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.

Things that make me go hmmm as a Mom, Random Thoughts...

This is Christi and these are my RANDOM thoughts about items and kids, lol.

#1 Kids and the things they do, item, permanent markers, and how they can pick the ONE permanent marker out of 20 washable markers, makes me wonder WHY, and how dumb am I to own such an item. So they take said item and mark their siblings, ok not so bad, then the walls, ok, can fix that, then the bed, and do it all in less than a minute, hmm, I need a lock box and I "Think" have no proof but think my kids can move at the speed of light.

#2 Kids again and item scissors, I am not even sure I need to say anything else, maybe they think they are saving me haircut money, maybe, or learning a new trade.

#3 Anything sticky, they can smell sticky, their sticky sense is amazing. They have ex-ray eyes and see things that get sticky, make sticky messes, through any object, like in a drawer, or in your purse, and they don't seem to mind being sticky either! I think when I buy things, I go hmmm, what is the sticky factor, is it worth it. Also when they find, smell, get sticky, they must get their siblings involved in the sticky gooey whatever. Just the other night my 3 year old Morgan broke eggs on my floor, like 5 eggs, now this has the sticky, icky, and smell factor, eggs smell. I won't even tell you about maple syrup, YUCK.Finally when they are at their stickiest that is when they want me, ohhh they want to touch my face and hair, they know , I can't prove it but they know, I am going eeew ick ick ick ewww on the inside.

Well I need to end it here for now, call of the wild needs me.

Christi Mommy to 15 or will this be changing soon ;)
Now you'll have to come back and see......... ha ha ha ha muwahaha :)