My Baby Sister

My "second" baby (my first was younger brother Tim), Deborah, my youngest sibling, turned 16 today. I can't believe it! I was 12.5 when she was born and everyone thought she was MY daughter! (I guess I looked and acted older than I was, but gee whiz!) Don't tell anyone, but I started wearing fake wedding rings after she was born. I figured if people thought she was mine, they might as well think she was legitimate. Shhh....don't tell. :) LOL.

Anyway, Deb's growing up quite nicely...and I'm proud to say she takes after her big sister in a lot of ways. She's a great cook and took up cake decorating a few years ago. She loves to work with fondant (I do not!) and has made some great cakes! Here she is with her self-made birthday cake.

Happy Birthday, Deborah!

Poor Baby! But awfully cute!

Poor little Andrew has been sick with a cold and bad cough this last week. The worst was last night when he had trouble sleeping and kept Mommy up from 2-4 am. Not fun. He was inconsolable. :( I took him to the doctor this morning and they said he didn't have a chest infection, which is what we were concerned about and that he should be getting better soon. Anyway, despite his malady, I got these super cute pictures of him yesterday morning.

This is one my favorite pictures of him so far!

As a point of comparison, here is a picture of Joshua at the same age.

And Caleb at about 9.5 months...one month older than the other two.

Trying to get this kid to crawl...we've been making him spend lots of time on this tummy. It's starting to look promising!

Mommy and her littlest guy. :)

10 years!!

Ok, quick poll. How many people reading this blog post celebrate the day you and your spouse met? How many of you even KNOW the day you met you spouse?? Well, any of you that know me well, know that I am kind of a date freak (Which is why I have suddenly posted three blog posts tonight after not posting for a month...I HAD to post this one today and it HAD to be chronologically after the other two. yes, I know I have a problem and I am ok with it. :))

So, anyway, on to the actual point. The greatest thing about meeting someone on the other side of the country and having a long distance relationship (and of course keeping meticulous journals at the time), means that our relationship was so well documented! I love it! Pictures of every time we were together, etc. Not to mention stacks and stacks of emails, cards and letters. Ah, what a glorious sight to behold. (Too bad I don't get them anymore...why does that stuff always stop when you get married? Bummer). Anyway, I am still digressing. The point here is that a very fabulous thing happened the evening of January 15, 1999! I know you're all thinking that I am referring to my 18th and half birthday, but people, I was born at 6:00 in the morning, so that had already occurred. :) No, that evening all the stars lined up (or all the duds dropped out! Two of them turned down the same invite!) and my life has never been the same. You all probably know the story. I went to Seattle to visit a girlfriend, who had just gotten engaged and happened to be friends with this guy who happened to agree to go swing dancing with us (after almost dismissing the invitation and going to build speakers that night instead....let's see...meet your future wife....go build speakers with your fellow geek-friend....hmmm...tough choice. :) Anywho, common sense got the best him and he came...tada! Insert Philip into the life of Angela. :) Our friend Laura, who introduced us, maintains that she had never seen Philip as focused any other time as he did that weekend. Fun times. If it weren't already 9:00 pm and I wasn't still trying to recover from a horrible, nasty case of strep that's had me bedridden since Sunday, I might regale you with stories of the fun times we had that weekend or the romantic breakfast Philip made for me the morning I left (which, according to his roommates, who were not very good liars, "he does this all the time"). Right. But, sadly I am very tired and my bed is beckoning and I should spend at least 10 minutes with the man who captured my heart and fancy 10 years ago tonight. So, for a laugh, I'll leave you with the photographic evidence of that night, as well as us....10 years later.

Cheers!

Two Buddies

Joshua and Andrew really are nuts about each other. It is SOOOO cute to watch them play together. Joshua just loves to make Andrew laugh, and Andrew loves to laugh, so it's a great combination! About 2 weeks ago, Joshua was pretending Andrew was pushing him over. It was adorable.

The push:
The fall:

Andrew, by the way, is now 8 months old. He has 4 teeth and getting better about hanging out on his tummy, although he has still yet to roll over. That's right folks...another lazy roller in the Hines household. I don't know what we're doing wrong. However, we are forcing him to spend time every day on his stomach and he appears to be contemplating thinking about considering the possibility of pursuing the idea of crawling...one of these days.

He loves to eat solid food...as long it doesn't come in a jar. He doesn't like baby food. At all. But will eat chunks of anything you give him. So, he eats lots of cheerios and steamed carrots, peas, bananas and other assorted items that make nice little pieces.

He responds very well to verbal cues and makes the sign for "milk" at the seemingly appropriate times, so I am hoping we may get some sign language out of this kid. He is babbling a good bit too these days, practicing those consonants!

As you might guess from the pictures, he still Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky and just a joy to have around!

Christmas!

We had a wonderful week over Christmas in PA with Philip's parents. The boys had a blast with their Grandpa and Grandma, who as always had fun activities planned. One of the highlights was a trip to the Hershey Chocolate Factory. The boys had visited in May when Andrew was born and Caleb insisted that I had to visit. :) So, we took the tour, had some dinner and then drove through the Hershey Christmas Lights display. Caleb declared it was the "best day" of his life, which is quite a compliment coming from Caleb! The tour isn't of the real factory anymore and I would describe as aimed at ADD children rather than people who are interested in learning about the chocolate making process (like me!), so that was a little disappointing, but it was still fun to see it through the boys' eyes.

Here we are at Hershey. Behind us is a store with LOTS of chocolate!!

The boys also had fun making and decorating bread dough ornaments with Grandpa.

All week we talked about the Advent calendar, lit candles for the Advent wreath and did the Family Life "What God Wants for Christmas" nativity, which includes a series of "gifts" for the kids open...each of which is a character from the Christmas story. Then on the last day, Christmas Eve, the box holds a mirror to show the child that what God wants for Christmas is US! It was so neat to see him get all excited about the boxes and understanding how much God wanted his heart. He actually prayed to ask Jesus into his heart that day. He is pretty young, but does have a good understanding of the Gospel and we are definitely following it up with appropriate conversations to make sure it "sticks". :)
The weather cooperated so that we were able to go out for a nice Christmas Eve service at a local church. In fact, all the BAD weather that was supposed to happen never did. The boys were disappointed by the lack of snow, but it sure makes driving easier!

Christmas morning was fun. Of course we started the day with Swedish Pancakes and then a reading of the Christmas story. The boys got some great new books and games. Caleb has particularly enjoyed Connect 4 and some cool connectors called Magnaformers. And of course Joshua's very favorite gifts were the VeggieTales videos and Thomas the Train drawbridge.

I, of course, had fun doing some baking while there were extra mouths to consume. Here I was caught red-antlered in the kitchen while whipping up some pie crust or something. :)


Myrna's brother and some of his family came down for the last day of our visit. We enjoyed meeting Rachel and her new fiancee, Steve, and everyone had fun playing with the boys.

And since no post is truly complete without a super cute baby picture, here you go!

Terrible Blogger...

I am a terrible blogger right now...I know. Between being gone for Christmas, and then celebrating New Year's Eve "Italian" style, some sick kids...and then working hard on shrinking myself, I've been a little busy.

Maybe next week I can catch up. :)