When Tracey and I married back in 1991, it didn’t take me long to come to the conclusion that she can’t cook. I mean, she’s a third generation German raised by Italians; and while you might expect some good cooking to come out of that, Macaroni and Cheese is her specialty – six meals out of seven. I cook the seventh meal.

Tracey’s mom works for Kraft, and Tracey loves Kraft Macaroni and Cheese – so you can see how we arrived at this situation. Perhaps I’m being a wee bit unfair here; however, for the first seven years of our marriage I only experienced my wife  boiling water, soaking some noodles, and either pouring something out of a packet or out of a jar onto them – and there is the meal! Well, she could always bake cookies like a champion – mmmm snickerdoodles!

Anyway, one day in 1998 I was in my home office working on some code. I had very unstable logic construct in my head and was sorting out how best to stabilize it when my lovely wife barged into my office and demanded to know from me what I would like for dinner – and it was only two in the afternoon.

(more…)

You would think it to be a rather simple thing, an email here, a phone call there, and perhaps a visit. Unfortunately, we find it difficult to maintain the lines of communication that keep us all in touch. Thankfully, there is a slew of technological options to assist in this.

For example, we have Twitter for micro-blogging (or mini-updates) throughout a given day, then we have the H57 Blog for more structured updates. The H57 Photo Album attempts to capture and archive those significant (and perhaps not so significant) events that occur in our lives. We can all be found on Facebook in some form or another, and this provides for much more group interaction on topics. Finally, we have the email, which has been our primary method of dispersing information for the past year or so.

(more…)

One year ago, today (Dec 17th), our family of four exploded into a family of seven. In one fell swoop, we added three additional young ones to the fold.

• I became a father of five
• Tracey became a mother of five
• Samantha suddenly had two younger sisters and brothers
• Bethany suddenly had two younger sisters and brothers
• The F150 turned into an E350
• All the bedrooms were populated
• The brief moment of more toilets than necessary returned to dreamland

(more…)

We have been struggling against complacency for some time now in an attempt to move from Dreamhost to Mosso (thanks to Joseph Szobody) and are finally making some progress. You will notice that we have now added this site (blog.hines57.com) to Mosso as well as our Photo Album (photos.hines57.com) which means we have two out of three up (we still need to get the wiki set up) and running.

We are happy with the green look and feel, so we will be sticking with that for some time to come. Bear with us while we continue to get our act together!

Here are some pictures to help sort out which name belongs to which kid, how they are related to each other, and ultimately how they are related to me. I suggest you keep this email handy so that when you read the others you can easily refer back to it and sort out who is who.

We celebrated Beth’s 12^th Birthday last Saturday! I’ve uploaded the pictures from the party to the H57 Photo Album, and you can see them here: Beth’s 12^th Birthday Party.

	Samantha She’s 14, in the 8th grade, loves to sing (Honors Chorus at school, Adult Choir at church) makes good grades, and is an all around Good Kid ™!
	Bethany She’s 12, in the 6th grade, loves to play her Trombone (she’s first chair!), is perhaps more full of fun and joy than any two other people in the house, and is our resident Fashion Diva™.
	Collin He is 3, in daycare, loves to be either Spiderman or Batman, beats up more bad guy’s before breakfast than most people do all day long, and is our resident Monkey Get In Trouble Too™.
	Abby She is 2, in daycare, loves all manner of beauty products, brushes her hair and changes her outfit before breakfast more times than most people do all week, and is our resident Drama Queen™.
	Ethan He is 1 (the one holding the green sippy cup!), in daycare, eats almost as much as I do (I’m seriously considering starting a savings fund now just to feed this kid as he gets older) loves to hug and give slobbery kisses (teeth coming in) that make the dog cringe! He is our resident Monkey Boy™.
	Daniel He is 4, in pre-school, and loves Power Rangers, Super Hero’s, and Playstation 2! Seriously, this kid rocks on the PS2, I hope he goes Pro when he gets older. He is our resident Monkey Do™. NOTE: This is Scott & Mary Ann Hines’ oldest son. Mine and Tracey’s nephew.
	Luke He is 1, stay’s home with mom (and dad), loves …. Mom (and dad), and has one of the most beautiful smiles you will ever run across. He has recently started walking and is our resident Cuddle Monkey™. NOTE: This is Scott & Mary Ann Hines’ youngest son. Mine and Tracey’s nephew.

Whoot! We did it – we completed the 30 hour training to become foster parents! Yeehaaaa!

You would think that after three hours a week for ten weeks they would give you a certificate of something – but no, they just gave us a list of paperwork that we will need to fill out now in order to get our license.

Seriously though, we can now start that application process and sometime in the next 90-days we should get our license and then some children to start living with us!

Tracey has been called back for a second interview today with a small company that manages Home Owner Associations. She’s really excited about the opportunity and is hopeful that a second interview is indicative of a promising opportunity.

Her interview is for 11:30am today – about 15 minutes from the time of this writing. So hopefully we will know more this afternoon!

Well, I’ve got a release tonight and I’ll need to be in the office until at least 6:30pm, maybe a little later – so I might be a wee bit late getting the fire lit. If you show up, and I’m not there yet – go ahead make yerself at home – you know the routine.

If you don’t know what I’m referring to – every Friday night at 7:30pm I head out behind the house and start a fire. Then I sit around to see who shows up, and I’m never disappointed, someone always shows up!

We then talk about faith, philosophy, politics, and whatever else strikes our fancy. Make yourself welcome and come on out any time!

Yep – that’s correct. They took off yesterday and won’t be back till next Monday. Leaving me in North Carolina as a veritable Geographic Bachelor – and all the glorious stuff that goes along with that.

Mmmmhmmmm. I get to clean up the kitty litter box, make sure the cats have food and water, take the dog out on multiple walks a day and pick up his poop for him (and my mother-in-law thinks I’m the spoiled one!), keep him feed, lavish attention on the animals, AND make my own meals!

I’m not as excited about this whole thing as one might think!