The Nightmare Before Christmas

I'm in my parent's basement, which is actually Angela Leone's old basement, and I have a tickle on my right foot, so I look at it and see a little piece of what looks like...um...you know how when you are writing on paper with a pencil and you mess up so you erase the whole first paragraph and then you have all these little pieces of dirty eraser, well it looked like a little eraser shard so I went to sweep it off my foot and it doesn't sweep, so I pick it up with my finger and I realize it's attached to me, which is gross, so I pull it and pull it and it gets bigger and bigger and then I realize it's a worm and I can feel it unwinding inside my big toe as I'm pulling it out. And also it has this weird winding thing that is wrapping around the worm and looks like the left-over fat from a roast or something, all wound up and sucking on the worm. So then I start seeing these shards all over my foot and I keep pulling them out one after the next and the worms get nastier and nastier and it starts hurting because, well...because I'm pulling a fat old worm out of the pores on my foot. So I finally get the last one so I stopped to go up and tell mom that I had just pulled worms from my foot. So now I'm upstairs and mom and dad are in their room and I tell mom I have just pulled worms with roast fat out of my foot. She looks at dad and gives him that, oh dear look and then turns back to me and says, "It's happening." I was like, um, what is happening? I'm dying? I'm getting old? I'm going crazy? What? She says, "when I was younger I started pulling worms out of my foot too and now I pull them out of my bones and it's just part of life dear." And they start going on with their day like it's all fine and dandy that my life is now doomed to worm-feet. After some thought I decided I should at least go pick up the worms off the carpet downstairs so they don't infest someone else and when I get downstairs to do it, mom had already picked them up and put them in a tupperware container for me, what a sweetheart.
So that's it. I think they decided it was a parasite that maybe could be taken care of but we didn't do anything about it in my dream. Maybe tonight I'll be able to go through radiation or something.
Merry Christmas to all,
Becky

Coolin' out, coolin' out...

The Kansas City metropolitan area came through this week's ice storms relatively unscathed. The temperature never dropped to a sufficiently cold level to freeze the rain that fell onto the streets, though we did manage to get a crystaline sheen over our lawns and trees.





One of our next door neighbor's trees split down the middle and fell mostly into the street.

The really cool part is that a front end loader came by in the morning and moved a large portion of the branches into OUR yard. Maybe we can get Sam to take up whittling.

Still fits, Mom.

'Tis the Season to be Hoary

Merry Christmas and Happy Winter Solstice and Cheery Kwanza and Plentiful Chanoonacka or whatever it is.
The yuletide season seems to have struck Independence Missouri in a fury. One day you're sitting around enjoying autumn and then all of a sudden you're lying frozen in a ditch with your fingers turning black and none of your shopping done.

As you can tell, Lucy's rash is beginning to subside. Santa brought her an early treat of expensive, steroid creme and about 40,000 bibs which help protect her waddle from exessive moisture.

After we threw Sam up on the roof to secure the Christmas lights, she didn't want to come down, so I had to go up to retreive her.





As the cold sets in, we find ourselves seeking out indoor activities such as the play area at the Independence Mall. They have lots of things to play and climb on and for a bit of spare change, a child can experience his or her dream of driving a forklift.

We discovered a new method for setting up an artificial tree. We didn't install the branches on the backside. This lets us position the tree closer to the wall, saving space in our tiny living room, and it keeps us from having to put lights on the back where no one can see them. Make sure you anchor the tree to the wall with some duct tape, though, or it's libel to tip forward and crush your baby.

Fun on the Bed

When Becky and I got married, my parents bought us a bed. They got us a luxurious, pillow-top king-size bed which has ruined every other sleeping surface's chance of fulfilling our resting needs.

Over the last 3+ years, many wonderful things have happened on that mattress. The following videos illustrate two of them.

No longer pending, but dark

Grandma Sue was kind enough to purchase a couple water-proof cameras to document all the frivolity that took place in the Great Wolf Lodge water park. Unfortunately, such cameras are designed for use on bright, sunny beaches where flashes are unnecessary. The indoor water park was not bright, and the camera yielded few distinguishable images. Alas.

Ella and Baylee submerged in both their pseudo-angst and the lazy river.

Cooper, the future locker-room towel-snapper.

It took a skilled photographer to capture an image of Cassie Ralston without her finger up her nose.

Marc Varone is truly a good-looking man. It's not hard to imagine this scene in a beer commercial.


There was another picture that flaunted Becky's marvelous anatomy a little more, but I was vetoed.

27 Reasons to Avoid Eye Contact

Terry and Sue Thorne and almost all their descendants reunionized at the Great Wolf Lodge for a few days before Thanksgiving Day. Becky (Thorne) Tolman, the most attractive and corn-intolerant of the clan designed official Thorne Reunion T-Shirts for the occasion. Most of every one's time was spent playing in the rather impressive indoor water park. Surprisingly little time was spent complaining or bickering.
Sadly, two members of the Thorne Family were not able to attend, though they are included in the picture below.

The last picture shows the Lodge Employees who were approached for taking the Thorne Family photo. I don't know their names, but I bet one of them had a mother named Mabel.
Pictures of the aquatic activities are pending.

Oddum and Rashes

Lucy's rash is starting to take on a sort of alien virus vibe. I suspected that she was allergic to the baby powder that the doctor recommended to keep her neck dry.

It was this bad a few days ago.










Then it blossomed into this:
So now we're putting a steroid and a lotion on it, though I suspect that my sister might be right in her assertion that Lucy's rash contains a yeasty component.
I'm hoping that last picture will fall into the hands of Ty Pennington and he'll want to alleviate our suffering by building us a multimillion-dollar home with super hypo-allergenic filters and a LittleMermaid/Godzilla room for Sam, since that's what she's into this week.

After Sam raked all those leaves, we had her clean up the inside of the house. It's so annoying that it takes her so long to vaccuum. We could hardly hear our Wheel of Fortune.

I found this on YouTube. Sam really likes the end.

Sippy

Becky's friend, Audrey (Sorensen) Lake came for a pleasant visit. The last time Audrey and Becky hung out on a regular basis Audrey was still in braces and Becky had just stepped on a rusty nail in Audrey's back yard. Look, they've both got their smiles back.



"Trot along my little pony
where it's rough and
where it's sippy..."

Lucy now fits into the Christmas outfit that Grandma Deanna made for Sam two years ago. There's nothing funny about this. Absolutely nothing.

Our two-year-old cares for all of God's creatures, even those that have been mutated by nuclear radiation.

The Passion of the Quilt

Every once in a while, something lights a spark within my bosom and the flame of womanly craftsmanship sets my soul ablaze. Recently, I quenched this flame by producing a quilt of exquisite exquisiteness. This blog posting will attempt to chronicle the extensive and laborious process which finally culminated in an object of exceptional warmth and everlasting joy.
Meticulous planning is the first step. Only a complete imbecile would try to put a quilt together without multiple drafts and 4-dimen-sional computer models. This particular quilt required the invention of three new geometric theorems: Parallel Isolinear Convergence, Fractal Polyhedral Cohesion, and the Ultimate Law of Twos.
Next, the Creator of the Quilt must choose the colors. Each color must have signifi-cance. In this case: green for the envy of my peers, yellow for putrescence, blue for Asian antiquity, and pink for sensuality.

Initial designs for the individual squares called for elaborate fabric kitty cats. This plan was forsaken when I came to the realization that I hate cats with every fiber of my being and to stitch their image into my daughter's quilt would only glorify that which I vehemently despise.
Each length of fabric must be painstaking-ly cut into even strips. You'll notice that purple was added to the spectrum. This color was added to symbolize the evil that began to creep slowly into my heart during this stage of production.
Separate squares are constructed from the strips of fabric. The preliminary blueprints called for somewhere between 16 and 47,000 individual squares. A mixture of baking soda, lye, and beaver musk was used to wash away the bloody stains which saturated the squares as the flesh of my fingers began to crumble under the strain.

Oh, the irony! After the squares are assembled you do not have a quilt, but merely another series of maddening fabric strips which must once again be wrestled and arranged and attached to one another. I began to hallucinate and imagine that my own skin was a patchwork-conglomeration of iguana hide, balsa wood, and chocolate ship cookie dough.
So close. So very very close. What began as an impas-sioned, spiritual beckoning to the alter of hearth and home now draws to an end with the bitter stench of domestic despair and the wrenching of carpal tendons. Will the horror never cease??


And here's Sam with her quilt. Looks nice, eh?