I can sit up!  Woot woot!

The holiday season has been busy busy busy here at the Hines' household.  That, along with my ever-so-slow and quickly-dying laptop, is the reason for the severe slacking on posting blogs.  I have good intentions and am often "writing" them in my head throughout the day, but these "drafts" never make it to the big screen.  

Christmas was great- we had my parents in town for a couple weeks starting in mid-December.  My mom's sister Helen also joined us for the holidays.  They left the day after Christmas and then Myke's parents arrived the following day.  We had one day "off" between guests and by the end of that day we were SO ready for the next ones to arrive!  It's so nice to have the extra sets of hands (and of course we love to see our family) around here.  I love that the boys get held more, get more one-on-one time, Chloë gets a play mate (most often Gramma or Mom-mom) to play Cars with her, and even the dog gets a walk and an extra pet.  Also, when we have guests here, our love seat couch is just that, a love seat couch.  When we don't have guests here, it is nothing more than a mountain of clean, ready-to-be-folded laundry.  You barely see the couch itself.  The moms and Aunt Helen were great about folding, folding, folding, as it is a non-stop job around here.  Folding, folding, folding and feeding, feeding, feeding.  That's the theme here!   The boys now eat solids 3 times a day and they are loving it.  They even took small bites of their first San Diego bean and cheese burrito the other day.  I was eating one and Eli was just eyeing it and drooling over it so I gave him a try.  He liked it!

In other developmental news, Owen is about to crawl (we think).  He has been up on hands and knees for over a week now, rocking back and forth and "almost crawling" here and there.  Eli started sitting up unassisted on Christmas day.  Owen can sit up as well, but he is more likely to topple over than Eli.  Also, Chloë now sleeps in a big girl bed (as of 2 nights ago).  My babies are all growing up!

Some photos:

All Chloë wanted for Christmas was "A choo-choo train, a spiderman, and a pirate ship"

Santa brought her this pirate ship!

Kyla gets in the holiday spirit

We had a full house in Christmas morning...and Kyla's stocking isn't even pictured...

Delivering a gift to one of her neighborhood pals

Little friends came over for a holiday cookie exchange the week before Christmas

Myke & Chlo

with Gramma on Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach

I love this shot of my dad with Eli

My parents and the kids

(after Chloë's school Christmas program)

Chloë's preschool Christmas program - Dec. 16th

Borrowing some kids bike at the playground 

Donuts with Gramma!

Hot cocoa (with Kahlua!) gets everyone in a festive mood!

Mom-mom  & Elijah

me and my boys

Myke and Maureen (his mom) giving the boys a bath in our double kitchen sink

Owen wonders why Eli has so much more hair

building towers with Pop

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas to all from the Hines Family!

(okay, I'm a day late...but you wouldn't have seen this yesterday anyways since you should have been spending time OFF the computer and bonding with your family instead)

A Week in Review

 It has been an eventful and busy past week.  I love this time of year and having kids really has made it all the more fun.  Especially since this year Chloë is just that much more aware and in tune with what is going on.

Thanksgiving feast at pre-school

Mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, pumpkin pie and pasta... ?!  Yup, no turkey for this vegetarian (and NO, I do not feel like I'm depriving her in any way, thank you)

:)

Owen is part monkey

Looking in the mirror

tandem feeding

(we REALLY are ready for them to hold their own bottles!)

It has become tradition to go see "Surfin' Santa" at Seaport Village.

This is year #3.  Just Chloë and I went this year.

Not a great quality photo with my phone...but a poinsettia Christmas tree at Seaport Village.

Sunday of Thanksgiving Weekend

Myke went sailing with the dog on his "solo outing" so I had all 3 kids.  

I thought if I texted Myke this cute photo of the kids he would miss us and come back.  However, he had no hands to check his phone while solo-sailing and trying to keep Kyla from falling overboard. 

The boys are eating all sorts of solids now...Eli christens a new white bib from Gramma with spinach.

A visit to the beach (Myke and Chloë)

Chloë's "Outdoor Class" visits Pat & Oscars - a local restaurant here in San Diego. 

The staff there taught 40 toddlers how to make pizzas and gave them a tour of the kitchen.  It was total chaos but the kids had fun.  There was one pizza for every 5-7 kids and they all took turns pressing the dough in the pan, putting on the sauce, and sprinkling cheese.  Needless to say, I stayed FAR away from that pizza once it was baked.  The kids loved it though.  

Chloë and some of her little girl friends

at Pat & Oscar's 

behind the scenes

"Mommy, look at the baby pizzas!"

December is here...

Got a jumperoo off Craigslist yesterday....Eli bounced so much that he fell asleep in it the first day!

Jax & Chloë 

Best buds

At the tree lighting/holiday event on Crystal Pier here in Pacific Beach

the fam shot

My friend Sony and her son, Lucas

3 little Santas

A Perfect End...

To a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend...

The boys watching the sunset on Sunday evening (11/27/11)

It's Still Kickin'

My laptop, that is.  Yay!

It's Sunday night, the kids are all in bed, it's raining out (yes! we do get rain in San Diego on occasion!) and we're just lounging downstairs enjoying the peace and quiet.  Ahhhhh.  A rare moment :)

I went out shopping on Saturday ALL BY MYSELF.  Gone are the times where I can just run out the door and do as I please.  I planned this way in advance, made sure Myke didn't have anything planned on this day, prayed that none of the kids would be sick (because one sick kid is equivalent to 3 or 4 healthy kids and I would feel too guilty leaving Myke with that scenario), and looked forward to my solo outing all week long leading up to it.  It was fabulous.  I loved every minutes of the four hours I was out at the mall and Target.  It was so nice to be able to just take my time, go where I wanted, browse around, try a few things on, etc, without anyone else to worry about than myself.  I'm not even usually that excited about the mall or Target--I think 99% of the excitement was the fact that it was ME time.  I could have been scrubbing porta-potties alone and been just as excited (okay, that is DEFINITELY NOT true...but you know what I mean).

Anyways, I got some shopping done for the holidays so that's good.  One of the other things on my shopping list for that day was to find outfits for the kids to wear for our family photo that we had done (at JC Penny- yah, that's how I roll!) today.

Coordinating outfits for three kids is a task in itself, but somehow I managed to find some cute duds for them to sport.  Then I raided Myke and my closet for something we could wear that would fit with their outfits.  It all worked out, though Myke said I was a stress-ball at the photo place today, chasing Chloë around trying to put a clip in her hair (if you've read previous posts, you know why this may have been a challenge), trying to wipe up any drool and spit up off the boys (just the babies, not Myke), then back to Chloë telling her to put her dress down as she has a tendency to lift up her dress or shirt and flash anyone who looks at her and she kept standing in the center of the waiting room with her dress over her head, etc.


There were a ton of families at the portrait studio and, even though though we had a set appointment, we had to wait for awhile for our turn.  Luckily, they had "Cars" playing on a tv in the waiting area.  Chloë was also endlessly entertained watching the families before us get their pictures done.  She mainly liked it because the photographer in one of the rooms would continuously pretend to sneeze REALLY LOUDLY in a futile attempt to get whatever baby or small child she was photographing to smile.  It was a very dramatic and obnoxious session of "sneezes" but you do what you gotta do in that profession!  What an unforgiving job!  Our kids were no better.  We had a very flamboyant young man named Sampson do our photos.  I've had him before when Chloë was a baby and loved him because he was the only person there who could get her to smile.  He did not, however, have the same effect on my boys today.  Owen just stared at him.  Stared and stared but would NOT crack a smile.  His expression was "what the...?!" the entire time.  Chloë did great and was a trooper and Eli smiled a bit...but not Owen.  He was just not feeling it.  It didn't help that the little room felt like 100 degrees and the boys were in heavy sweaters.  We were all sweating.  I'm sure the pictures will come out great!   At least one has to, right?!  

Hmm...an option for next year maybe?

Or maybe this when the kids are a bit older...

Time for some snapshots from our phones:




Both of the following pictures were taken by Myke while he was in charge of the kids on Saturday.  Jus' sayin'....

The boys really get around lately...end up all over the place...even wedged under the couch.

America's Cup boat from NZ 

(San Diego Bay)

I found this wine at Henry's Market and couldn't resist.

I wonder if Myke thought I was trying to tell him something...

Daddy & Eli

Chloë in hog heaven (they were repaving our street)

Uncle Hale sent the kids some Sesame Street gear

Eli gets a gift from his godparents

Chlo & O

Owen post-bath

 My posting days may be limited...I'm sad to say that my laptop is slowly dying and I think it is in its final days as I type this.  There is some issue with the connection with the screen and the computer itself and most of the time I can only see 1/2 the screen.  This laptop has lived a very long and fulfilling life.  It even traveled around the world with us back in 2006/07.  Myke has spent many many hours working on it and I inherited when he moved on to bigger and better Mac products.  Now it's time for me to move on as well.  The problem is I don't have anything to move on to!  Myke says I can borrow his iPad - but I don't think I'd do very well typing on something without a real keyboard.  I guess I could plug in a separate keyboard to it...but then I'd have to somehow pry the iPad out of Myke's hands.  That might prove to be pretty difficult as he has been on it a lot lately.

Santa, if you're out there: please send me a new lap top for Christmas!  I'll even take a non-Apple!  :)