Topper

I think I failed to show our awesome tree. Becky and the girls made the topper, which is a dual representation of Yuletide wonder and guilt. Many of the ornaments were also created by small hands. You can really sense their anger.

Grease? I'll give you GREASE!

This is the face Lucy makes when nobody seems to care about previous posts that involve her.

These are two girls getting all boozed up for a day on the slopes.
This is story time. Nora is not normally involved, as she eats books.

You'll note that her front tooth has not fallen out, but merely turned a pleasant shade of grey. "Pleasant Shade of Grey"... is that one by the Mommas and the Papas?

GO-RI-LLA!

The Fruit of Sue's Loins

Last week, from Tuesday to Thanksgiving Thursday, Terry and Sue Thorne and their descendants descended on the Great Wolf Lodge, a hotel with a water park and an arcade and Magiquest and what-not.

You'll note that our children are the more attractive ones. A two year comparison can be made here.



Lucy, Samantha, and Zoe Ralston enjoyed free, late-night HBO episodes of My Little Pony.


This is a photo featuring Grandpa Terry's gut, his wife, and his immediate offspring.

Chrissy enjoyed screaming at the babies. She didn't scream anything coherent. Just horrid, guttural screams that seemed to last for hours.

I believe Lucy is contemplating the acquisition of Kim's wallet.

That look from the tall, bald one may not be mere goofiness. I may have been losing it a bit due to the fact that I was unable to participate in any of the water-oriented fun due to a relatively fresh pacemaker incision. Lucy is either embarrassed, or spreading snot up to her forehead.

Pachalla's Blade

This will be another conglomeration.

First: Cute baby.

Second: Cute girls snuggling while they slumber.

Third: Two girls doing dishes just like their mother does.

Fourth: The pacemaker. When I awoke early Tuesday to go to work, I felt an unusual amount of pacemaker activity. I continued to feel it at work whenever I sat down, so I put on one of the heart monitors and had a look at my rhythm (one of the perks of working on a telemetry unit). Indeed, my pacemaker was not behaving as usual, so I spoke with one of the cardiac nurses and one of the cardiologists and arranged to have mt pacer interrogated that afternoon.

Now, when I say "interrogated," I'm not necessarily talking about anything involving Dick Cheney or electrodes. Well actually, I guess it does involve electrodes, and I suppose there's really no way of knowing whether or not Cheney was involved.

So it turns out that my battery needed to be changed. When the battery is low, the pacemaker reverts to a power-saving mode in which it only fires in one chamber, and the minimum rate is 65. My lower rate had been set at 50. So, ironically, the power-saving mode was shocking me any time I stopped moving.

With some cajoling, I managed to get Dr. Sarat Pachalla to agree to switch out my pacemaker on Thursday. It's a good thing I know the man, because I seriously never saw the guy's face. I spoke to him briefly from under the surgical field, but then the drugs kicked in.

So here's number 2...

And here's number 3.

And here's some proof that our daughter is pretty much the most awesome.

The Magic of Descriptive Language

A quote from our oldest:

"Yesterday, I made a poop, and it was shaped like an 'L' and this long."

Amberthing

Octoberween

The spookiest and least diabetic-friendly holiday has passed over the Tolman household. Come to think of it, Halloween is a lot like Passover, but with fewer feasts, more costumes, and less Judaism.

Our youngest was an apple. Or a strawberry. Or a chili. I think it was probably an apple, since it had a worm on it, but she's shaped more like a chili, and she tastes more like provolone.

Lucy was an African version of Cruella DeVille. Has no one else heard of "101 Wildebeasts"?

Samantha pranced about as an adorable invertebrate.

Superdad. Delivering chilis to the hungry children of the world.
There was actually a version that involved red jocky shorts instead of running shorts, but we figured that if Dad's superness was making us uncomfortable, it would likely make the neighborhood children and their parents uncomfortable as well.

Rebecca Tolman, the unwashed lima bean.

It was a theme. All things from nature. An apple, a ladybug, a zebra, and a creepy doofus.

Poops, Moves, and Emotional Fats

There are pros and cons to having all girls. Potty training is one of the pros. Lucy, our 28-month-old, snaggle-tooth muffin with hair like Frasier season 1, just decided the other day that she wanted do her business in the toilet like her big sister. She's even pulled the little stool over to climb up there and drop a couple deuces that looked like infant Klingons. Two down. One to go.

Becky REALLY likes this show. I keep finding myself wanting to see how many crossbow darts could be shot into those whiny fat people before they finally shut their pie-holes. Seriously, all the Biggest Loser contestants do is cry. Wah wah wah, my whole life has been about tacos. Wah wah wah, I miss my mommy. Wah wah wah, I have a jelly bean embedded in one of my back folds.

And all that blubbery blubbering is rubbing off on MY wife. We need to get back into Heroes.

And Nora can crawl now.

Sicks and Giggles

Sam is learning how to read and write. We need to work on vowels and we need to work on looking at the word instead of making it up based on the picture. She made this crown all by herself the other day. I guess we also need to work on connotation.

Is the whole world ill right now? Holy cow pox. At least one member of our family has been dripping something from somewhere since July.

This one kind of goes on. But you're here, so this is probably the sort of schlock you're looking for.

Go. To. SLEEP.

PLEASE