Wood

So, I made a porch swing. Turns out, all you really need is some wood, a few power tools, and a willingness to ignore your children for a couple days. It's also helpful to have a wife who's willing to do the more annoying parts like sanding and staining.

Another recent project:

Avid tolmanitude readers may recall that we have a big shed in the backyard where we keep tools, sleds and corpses. Behind the shed, we had this:

<- This picture was taken a couple years ago before the weeds got out of control.

So now it's this.

With cute little squash and pumpkin plants like this.
And now we can do something productive with those decomposing Albanians.

Las Mesas

Here are two girls, one of which has recently had her first authorized haircut. They are painting at a table in the yard. In the shade. Twitter tweet.

Here are those same two girls on the same day, sitting at picnic table constructed by their parents. Out of lumber. Brrrrzzzzzzzz.

Here is a third girl being held by her shiny-headed father on a Sunday morning. Aaaaaaaamennnnnnnnn.

Don't be jealous.

"Who's the sassy miss mixy?"
"LUCY!"
"Who can make the trick tricksy?"
"LUCY!"
"Who gives Gandalf two goosies?"
"Whoosy?"
"It's always gonna be Lucy!"
"LUCY!"

Tranquil Females

This one time, I was riding through the park on my bicycle, and a bird flopped in front of my wheel. I ran over it. It was still alive and flopping around, I felt a duty to stop its suffering.
So I picked up a pinecone and smashed its head. Then it died.

This post was just an experiment to see if anyone actually reads the text of our posts.

Oh, if anyone is more into reading than looking, I've started my own opinion-centered blog. It was started mainly in response to a good friend who has a blog with opinions that I wanted to disagree with.

http://jonsshallowthoughts.blogspot.com/

Hippity Hop

Once again, we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ by eating obscene amounts of food and hiding treat-filled plastic eggs for our children. The Thorne grandchildren haven't increased in number over the last year, but they have increased in volume and mass. Here's the traditional pic-on-the-stump.
It's not perfectly clear from the group shot that our children are better than the others, so here's some ancillary evidence.

Exhibit A

Exhibits B&C

Our daughters have plenty of dresses, so they got Easter play clothes instead.

We have family that are...well...they don't live in our neighborhood. A few of the eggs turned out to be filled with things that are less exciting for small children, but much more exciting for older children. Sam ended up with one of the really good eggs.

They're so pale. It's like they're about to start controlling people's minds and taking over the town. That's Zoe. She's closer to Sam's age, but she and Lucy are actually getting along pretty well.

Duhn

Ok. Here's this is the last post about our floors. As you can see, we made some some other changes besides the tile on the floor. We took all the stuffing out of that brown recliner and weaved it into an area rug. Then we took the wood from that armoir and carved a bunch of little wooden rings to hang behind the TV. Finally, we sculpted a yellow lamp out of clay from from our backyard and saliva from our two younger daughters.

BEFORE
AFTER


BEFORE

AFTER
The kitchen isn't as dramatic, but man, creating paint out of crushed lilacs, goat oil, limestone, and elderberries is not the easiest process in the world.

Conviction

Over the past couple weeks, we've been spending all of our spare time and some of our not-so-spare time tiling the kitchen, bathroom, and living room of our house. This was not easy.

Above is our bathroom/cranny. (I call the little hallway thing between our bathroom and the rest of our house a "cranny" because I've never actually seen a "cranny," but I figure they must exist because you look in them at the same time you look in the nooks. Becky actually did most of the tile cutting and grouting. I did all the setting. Thank you to Papa Thorne, Jenny Thorne, and Larry Clarke for your assistance, and to all the good people who watched the girls.

I don't think Becky would be very happy if I posted a picture of the living room before she gets it looking the way she wants. We're trying to craigslist our way out of thrift store purchase.

This is Nora after being told that she's had enough Cheetos.

And Lucy.

Spacers

We've been busy. I accidentally wrote, "We've been busty" there, but then I changed it.
Anyway, we've been very busy with work, and school, ward talent shows, pre-school, ward choir, and a couple very time-consuming home improvements. We'll post on that in a couple days.
I think Becky and I have decided not to go forward with the private blog thing, mostly because we're too lazy to get the email list together. Sorry for those of you who were really looking forward to being exclusive.

This is Sam, peeking through at us from an alternate universe in which car tires are made of hardened cheese, congressmen behave like adults, and Evan Lysacek is known more for his skills with a switchblade.

A haiku:

Two daughters staring

Pillows don't need fluffing here

Sticky with ennui.

This is bread made to look like people's heads.

You might notice some residue in this clip that could hint at what's been going on around here.

Angry Beaver

Do you remember this little girl? This sweet little Nora?
Well, this girl doesn't like going to bed. We've tried a number of times to just put her in her crib and let her cry herself to sleep. This doesn't work for two reasons:
1. She screams loud enough and long enough that it keeps the other girls awake, which is pretty remarkable since Lucy and Sam sleep like grim death.
and....

2. Can't see it? Let's zoom in...

This little angel gnaws on the crib while she's screaming and ends up with a mouthful of wood splinters. What is she? Part gerbil? I wonder how long it would take her to chew all the way through.

Dad got a fancy-schmancy pull-up bar thing for his birthday since Becky is into bulging pecs and biceps. Sam's gotten more use out of the thing.

Most of February

We've obviously been slacking in the blogosphere lately, and that "going private" thing hasn't happened yet. It probably still will. We're just lazy.

In the mean time, we've had a month here at the Tolman household. Lucy spent most of her free time yelling at us with phrases like "I DON'T WANT TO!" and "I DON'T LIKE YOU, DADDY!" and when she wasn't doing that, she was staying up late watching Mr. Ed re-runs and Saw IV.

This is her hair.

Samantha let us do her hair. She's making some spectacular progess in the reading department, and she occasionally retreats to her room because she "can't stop thinking about what people are saying." Seriously. Becky's family has some OCD tendencies, so we're thinking she might have some of that going on. She's otherwise a very well-adjusted kid.

These are our three girls' 1-year pictures. No, your children are not as cute, but I'm sure they'll be good people eventually.

Nora Deanne had her first birthday. Here she's wearing the magical T-shirt made by her aunt Chrissy. Too bad it's only accurate for 24 hours.

Dad also turned 32. This is not as exciting.

As I was going through our camera, I found some pictures we took quite a few months ago from when Jeremy Shakespear visited. Our older girls treated him like Dick Clark treated that Albanian gentleman back in 1974. Youch!

Nora don't budge. She's progressed from this to hitting us in the face.

Sometimes we'll hear them putting their toys in mortal peril, or dying, or informing other toys of their mother's death. Imagination is wonderful.

Nora is a toddler. A lazy, spoiled toddler, but a toddler nonetheless.