It's done

We originally estimated that our little construction project would be done by Thanksgiving. ThanksGIVING. Well, it turns out that we had to work and eat and pay attention to our children occasionally and go to the bathroom and several other things that take time. But the carpet went in this last wednesday, which was the only part of the project we paid someone to do for us. A big shout-out goes to Kyle Cromar, who engineered the structural changes and did a good portion of the early construction, Joseph Dawson who assisted with the roof, Jesse Neidholdt who kept our house from burning down from an electrical fire, and Becky's family who helped watch kids and helped with mudding and painting.
So, this:



Became this:


And this:


Became this:


And this:


Became this:


For these:


Yes, that is a dog collar around Nora's waist. She is a puppy.

The Icy Tundra

We finally had some snow. It was enough to cancel school which meant that dad didn't have to work on his birthday. Sam decided to break out the psychedelic snowman kit. I'm sure Mr. Pschedelic Snowman would agree that global warming is a myth, but we didn't really get a chance to have a long conversation about it since his first opportunity to exist happened February 13th, and he's pretty much gone already. Oh, well. We'll discuss it next year.

Toothless Joe Jackson

Sam lost another tooth. And she looks cute, and we had some nice soft lighting for this picture.


The ball's in your court, Hyrum Shakespear.

Dinner

So, Becky made a lovely meal last night, which included cupcake meatloaves, mashed potatoes with secret cauliflower, and some warmed-up canned green beans. We emptied both cans into the warm-up-the-vegetables-in-the-microwave pot that everyone has, and then we warmed them up in the microwave, and then we began to serve everything up onto our plates.

Yes, that is a bright red grasshopper with its legs cut off. Whether it became red due to the preservatives/salt in the greenbeans or it was born red because it was a grasshopper from hell, I cannot be sure. We threw away all the greenbeans.

Tertiary

Our youngest child turned three today. She's not sure if she likes puppies or horses more, but she enjoys both with mint jelly.


The other day, Nora came up to me and said, "Dearest Father, do you think that our lives aquire more meaning through our relationships, our personal accomplishments, or through the ritualism of worship?"
I said, "Eh? Oh, the last one I guess."

This horse galloped into our lives Christmas morning. We are very grateful that, as a three-year-old, she is thusfar unaware that her best gifts come from the thrift store. Yesterday, she was riding her steed and she put her hand over her brow and shouted, "Land HO!" Seriously.

We haven't blogged much lately. Sorry about that, but this is getting tantalizingly close to done. We'll have our lives back soon.

Christmas 2011

We don't go a-wassailing, so let's all get together for a good, hardy, noggling! It's the most wonderful time of the year, according to the retail sector, and everyone is all yuley with joy.

Once again, we decided that the world doesn't want hard copies of Christmas greetings from the Tolmans enough to warrant paying postage to send them. As is oft said in our home, "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit."

It's been an adventurous year for the Tolman Five. Jon altered his career pathway and is now teaching nursing at Colorado Technical University. There should be another shift in employment by next year's end, seeing as the Kansas City Campus for CTU is no longer admitting students and the nursing program will be kaput at the end of 2012. This had very little to do with Jon's addition to the faculty.

Becky has acquired some new skills as a homemaker, including several that literally make homes. She's a more than capable drywall-mudder, tile-grouter, and project manager. The current and ongoing project is the finishing of the attic, which included re-routing the heating and A/C ducts, relocation of a load-bearing wall, and construction of stairs. Though Jon and friend Kyle Cromar have been doing more of the brute labor, it's Becky's soft, yet firm looks of direction that have kept the workers on task.

Samantha has been excelling at everything. She has gained numerous compliments from her coaches and teachers in gymnastics, piano, hog-wrestling, bread-flipping, and competitive water-boarding. She is the child that will one day do something that requires as much ambition but more morality than holding elected office.

Lucy does not care about excelling at everything. Even though she's the best and smartest of any of her peers, she would rather pretend that she's disciplining her class of ponies than practice doing something more measurable. Her arson case is currently in the jury-selection phase.

Nora is cute, in the way that a murderous, possessed doll is cute right before its head spins around and it starts stabbing people. Her most-honed skills include whining, Gregorian chanting, and depriving her parents of sleep.

It turns out that this is being posted about 10 days after Christmas, which is good enough for the folks in Sweden.

"Farväl!"

Nobody's very interested in home improvement, so here are some shots of the people whose lives are being torn asunder by the home improvements:
Lucy no fits into the knit dress made by her paternal grandmother. Grandma Deanna created this using the tendons of fourteen robust wildebeasts.

It has gotten cold, as evidenced by our daughters' hats.


However, the hats are not always worn at appropriate times, so don't trust your eyes, people.

Awkward looking facial hair has popped up on people. Sometimes it happens prior to moustache/sweater parties. Sometimes it happens overnight. Sometimes it happens right after eating corned beef hash.

Nora and her evil clone, Nora.

Progress

Yes, I realize that late November is not the best time to be tearing holes in the structure of a house and re-arranging furnace ducting, but it wasn't late November when we started, and I don't see you over here helping, so shut your pie-hole, smart-alec.
Sorry. We're a little on edge over here, what with the layer of plaster dust in our underwear.
We've gone from this:

To this:


And more impressively, this:

To this:

To this:

To this:

To this:

We got a lot of the ducting done today, and the particle accelerator only needs a couple more components until it's operational.


Meanwhile the girls have become fed-up with the whole project and moved in with Wiley the Wolf. Their hyper-luminescent eyes fit in better with nocturnal beasts anyway.

Nutrient Dense

We tried to get Nora booked on the new VH1 reality show, "Toddler Rehab: Kansas City", but they wanted more minorities. We'll just start sprinking her Cheerios with Antabuse.



Dora and Boots being stalked by the Mutant Butterfly Woman.

A neuron typically has one axon that connects it with other neurons or with muscle or gland cells. Some axons may be quite long, reaching, for example, from the spinal cord down to a toe. Most axons of vertebrates are enclosed in a sheath, which increases the speed of impulse transmission; some large axons may transmit impulses at speeds up to 90 metres (300 feet) per second.

Wh-what?????

The Shuffle

We went to St. Louis.

It's nice that our three daughters are all able to sit together, facing the same direction while they watch movies and bicker and poke eachother and scream about their sister leaning too far.

This was the main reason we went to St. Louis.

We met up with the Shakespears. We watched their kids Friday evening at the park across the street. This picture doesn't really show off the fact that Nora is providing a majority of the swinging force.

Justin is giving Sam a piece of his mind. No wait, he's giving her a piece of a squirrrel's mind that he found buried in the sand.

Hyrum is about 6 months younger than our oldest. They made out about 5 years ago, and there's been a romantic tension ever since.

I can't remember if Hunter was trying to defend himself against a brother-afflicted wet willy, or a brother-inflicted smooch. I never had a brother. I bet a smooch would be worse.

Saturday afternoon, we went to the St. Louis zoo. The hippo exhibit was by far the best. If you're willing to spend some money, you can pick one out and eat it, like lobsters at a sea food restaurant.

I kinda wish we had splurged and paid for a $10 parking space, because when we got about 50 miles down the road, we discovered that our laptop had been stolen while we were parked on a residential road near the zoo. I wonder if those kudus had been involved.