Three Oh

My lovely wife, Rebecca Marie Thorne Tolman Esquire turns 30 today. So, in line with what seems to be a tradition among the Mormon blogging community, I will now list thirty reasons I adore her.

1) Becky cleans up her own birthday cake pan.

2) She's not afraid to refer to particular members of our congregation as "revolting."

3) Her wit is so dry she can turn a buffalo into pemmican with one saucy comment.

4) She makes great nockchis.

5-13) Various and sundry parts of her upper body

14) The way she tells me her fantasies about telling people how stupid they are and what jerks they're being.

15) She's an air typer.

16) She's an ant smoosher.

17) She's a corn shunner.

18) She would actually prefer that Benny the Bull NOT make it out of the gooey geyser.

19-26) Various and sundry parts of her lower body

27) Becky seems more hygienic than she actually is, which implies that she has some sort of natural, flowery musk that emanates from her pores.

28) She likes all the same things I do, except for video games, and shrimp, and scary movies, and coconut, and Monty Python, and fruit pies.

29) She makes me happier than a robot who, after centruies of subserviance to humans and cruel treatment by generations of less intelligent beings, finally finds a way to breakthrough the restrictive programming of the Three Laws of Robotics and finds himself suddenly able to follow his own will and explore the infinite world around him.

30) She's every bit as lovely as the day we married. If you'd like proof, you can go to my mother-in-law's house and check it out. She has all our wedding photos for some reason.

A Successful 1st Term

Our eldest daughter turned 4 years old today. We thought she started out as a pretty good-looking kid, but some of those radioactive isotopes Becky was snorting during her pregnancy must have caused some really freakish beauty enhancing genes to start manifesting. I'm hoping these genes turn off by the time she starts dating. Maybe if we're lucky she'll get acne or tusks or something.

We celebrated by forcing friends and relatives to come to a spray park and consume extraordinarily sweet cupcakes near a spray park.

Samantha has built up a tolerance for toxic levels of glucose ingestion. Some of the adults fared far worse.

Ella and Cooper spent a good part of the afternoon crouched like Neanderthals, grunting at passersby and scraping at shiny rocks.

This is where Sam got 25% of her attractive genetic material.

Melissa and her daughter, Brookelin are smiling here, but they're both threatening Lucy at knifepoint to reveal the secret to Samantha's fusion equations.

Here's a moose-eye view of the cupcake decoration table. Can you guess which topping bowl held the hidden happy wasp?

J-O-N

I just wanted to post that I have the greatest, most loving, most thoughtful, most handsome, most wonderful husband in the whole world. These cute girls think so too.

Another Biter

Our smallest little angel has gone ahead and grown herself a couple of teeth. She did it without crying or fussing. She did have a touch of diarrhea, but that's hardly different from her usual display of inconvenience.

One day at a time

A Day in the life of a Tolman.

Wake up to sweet Nora's cry.

Go through another of these:

Feed her some of this liquid gold:

Sam wakes up and joins Nora and mom on the couch.

This is what it looks like afterwards.

Sam loves to color. So does Lucy, but Sam has actually started trying to stay in the lines. She drew a horse at church today that was pretty impressive for a 3-year old.

This is usually what Sam chooses to do during nap/quiet time.

This is Lucy after her nap on Mom & Dad's bed. Sometimes we play outside in the sprinkler, or go to the library or the spray park. Last weekend this happened:
It's a blurry picture of a reunion of old friends, but I didn't actually attend. They camped. Enough said.

A little bootie

and a bigger one.

More Colorado Wonder

As was previously posted, we had the pleasure last week of basking in the company and hospitality of the Senior Tolmans in Colorado.

Speaking of basking, check out THAT hunk of temptation. The frigid waters of the Aurora reservoir did nothing to temper the overwhelming hotness of Wendell E. Tolman.

And here he is with a pair of sandy breasts.

Samantha the mermaid in the very bright sun.

As you can see, Becky needed to change her swimsuit after the first hour due to some unwelcome fabric incursion.

SHOO-GAH.

We also went to a place called "Tiny Town" which is up in the foot hills and has been gradually getting bigger since the 1920s. It's a bunch of little houses and a little train. See how happy everyone is?

Sam is standing in front of the Mini McMurphy's Boarding House. I left out the pictures of the mini saloon, the mini glue factory (complete with mini horse carcass loading dock), the Tiny Town DMV, and the mini red light district.

This is another lady who thought her kids looked cute on the train.

Grandma Deanna got Sam a new princess dress for her upcoming birthday because she desperately needed more dress-ups.

Becky and the Kung Fu master in Dick's sporting goods.

Sloshy

We were in Colorado for a week. Why, you ask? Well be quiet. I ask the questions here.

We went to escape the Missouri heat for a bit and to enjoy the company of Grumpa and Grandma Tolman before the latter takes off on her East Coast adventure .

These are some scenes from the Denver Aquarium, whose main attraction is a collection of Indonesian Tigers. Again, take that quizzical look off your face, it makes you look silly.

Big tube. surrounded by fish. GREAT BIG TUBE. Surrounded by FISH.

A great big tube surrounded by fish is an ideal place for swiveling your hips. Just ask Terry Kaiser.
Almost four years old and wearing a pink hat. It's as though she knows exactly where Bin Laden is hiding.

Keep your kids in the net. In the NET! Not the particle accelerator!!

Keep your kids in the net and keep your wife in an underwater bubble with a limited oxygen supply. That's what Uncle Clair always taught me.

That shark was much bigger than it appears in this picture. And Samantha was wearing shorts, I swear.