South Carolina and Chicago!!!

Here's some pictures from our recent trips to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina and Chicago.

Here's Kristy from one of the glass boxes on top of the Willis (Formerly Sears) Tower. Pretty freaky!

Hey I was tired and I forgot my blankey!!!

I've NEVER seen a dinosaur before so I HAD to take a picture. . .(inside joke. . . I grew up in Vernal)

On Navy Pier in the stained glass exhibit

This dude tried to grab Kristy's leg and I cut his hand off with his own sword. He conveniently had a hook he plunged into his stump. . . and plastic heals really quick!

I have a parachute under my coat.

Rexy from night at the museum

Beautiful Chicago skyline at sunset on a walk home. We ditched the kids at home with Grandpa and Joanne. . .

Just getting on the double decker bus for a tour of the city.

Millennium Park in downtown Chicago.

Uncle Nolan trying to act cool. He was digging sand out of his good eye for the next week.

We rode bikes around a lot on the island!

This is a rare popsicle fish Emily caught off the coast. Don't even have to cook them at all! Very tasty!

Laney liked the taste of sand dollars. NOT fun diapers to change after a couple handfuls.

Lily trying to escape from all the noise of my girls screaming.

Aly and Bailey on our dolphin tour.

Girls trying to wake up. If you look close you can see the neon green boogers under Laney's nose. A highlight of our trip. It's good on toast!

Did I say we biked around a lot??? It's the only way we could get Laney to take a nap.

Hang 10 dude!

Did I mention we biked around a lot???

Family Bike Racing

Ok I know this bloggin thing has been the bottom of my priorities.  If you want consistent updates, then join Facebook cuz we update there a LOT more often.  

Here's some of the fun things we've been doing this summer.

Here's Laney at my last Crit race this summer.  She's walking/running around everywhere and Dad doesn't get anything out of church anymore cuz he's constantly chasing her everywhere.  I need to get the treadmill routine out and have her get 5-6 miles in before church. . .then she might not be so happy to run everywhere!  We're still working on perfecting pushups.  Her "guns" do have some definition now though, so I won't push too hard. . . yet. . . just call me Valentine 

for those of you who are scratching your head, go read the "Mortal Instruments" trilogy.

Here's Bailey in the last stretch of the "kiddi-kilo" at the last crit.  She's actually on her 10th lap instead of just one.  Can't have my girls grow up to be sissies.  As you can see those are tears of joy. . . I'm such a great father.

Here's the whole crew.  We're mapping out our strategy.  Emily is gonna take out the shrimp to her right with a booger to the eyeball and Aly is gonna take the win.

Emily edged me out for 2nd place though.  She's fast!

Laney, Laney, Laney

To keep up with my last post. . . I continue to go to BSA (Blog Slackers Anonymous), but the meetings don't seem to be helping me much anymore.  I'm on step number 3 of their 7 step process which is to feel remorse for those I may have wronged by failing to blog, but I haven't yet contacted everyone I've wronged to ask for forgiveness so I can't move onto step 4 yet. . .the last person was Greg Hansen and he's been in the Himalayas for the past 2 weeks so I couldn't ask his forgiveness.

Ok now onto my post.  My computer is being Ghostbuster Slimer slooooooowwwwww so this is what you  get for now.  

Updates on Laney:  Here's a lovely pic after having a biter biscuit (I didn't tell her it was a dog biter biscuit, but she didn't seem to mind). . . she seems to enjoy it.  She gave Mom a great big kiss after it!

She wasn't quite sure at first since Dad gave her the biter biscuit, but since it is her Dad, she knew she could trust him :):):)

We couldn't take the stench of Kibbles and Bits anymore from the biter biscuit so we threw her in the tub (which she loves. . . belches bubbles for the next 20 min)

We wanted to give a little bit of privacy. . .

NEW POST. . . ATTENTION MARGARET!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, Ok, we've been total bloggin SLACKERS!  I'm surprised Margaret hasn't given me a blog ticket for not posting in a timely manner:)  

Quite honestly, I've just been enjoying Facebook more than our blog. . . for any of you out there that have a Facebook account, look me up!

Here's some various pics of our family.

During Dr. Suess week at school Wednesday was crazy hair week.  Here's Aly's crazy hair.  Yes the picture is crooked in the background. . . so what!

Here's Laney giving Emily a shiatsu massage.  She's getting pretty good at it.  All those weights she's been lifting are making her hands pretty strong.  

"I wear my dark sunglasses at night."  I guess Bailey took my "Be Prepared" talk a bit serious the other day. . . in case a tsunami hits Eugene in the middle of her nap at least she'll be able to see where she's swimming.

Bailey taking off with the last cookie.  Cookies are one of the 4 major food groups right?

Laney practicing her doggie paddle in the tub.  Whoever gets to bathe her never gets away dry.  We actually do it this way so we can mop the floor AND bathe the kid at the same time.

Laney is in the drool stage where everything of hers comes with a bit more "surprise" than normal.  Sometimes it has chunks. . . hence the "surprise." 

Multi-Tasking

You may have read recently in the blogosphere that a severe attack is currently underway on the abilities for men to multi-task (you may have seen it on CNN too).  I have proof that men really can do more than one thing at once:)

Just here we are witness to a man trying to keep his 4 month old daughter entertained by bouncing her on a exercise ball, somehow keeping a hold of her preventing her from falling, while trying to keep her shirt dry by her overactive drool glands AND tackling a couple of very hard levels on Mario Kart Wii (not to mention bouncing on the ball gives his lower back a pretty good workout).

Here again we see another man trying to get a workout in by taking 2 of his daughters in a running stroller while the other rides her bike alongside BUT he doesn't account for the fact that the 5 year old on the bike can't make it the full 6 miles. . . SOOOOOOOO the 2 person stroller becomes a 3 person stroller AND a bike rack.  Talk about a workout!  We added up the weight and it was about 120-130 lbs of weight, but he was still able to average about 5:40 per mile pace for the last 2 miles!

Take that women nation!  (I think I'm in for it here).

Family Christmas

First of all Merry Christmas from the Tolman Household.  To start this post out we got a chance to go up to the temple as a family to one of Jeremy's friend's wedding and what better place to spend some Christmas time then at the temple.  It was a pretty cool day!

Laney got to wear her silly (but warm) hat.

We got to take some really good photos at the temple as a family.

Backing up. . .this is Christmas morning and Laney is very happy to have her new outfit on. . .2 seconds later she throws up in mommy's mouth. . .it was quite the present. . .brought a tear to my eye (because I was laughing so hard).  

This is Kristy telling everyone that this didn't really happen.  If you didn't know by now my husband is a dork who likes to make up stories.  I do try to clear everything up when I can.

What Christmas isn't complete in our household without more barbie stuff. . .they got a community barbie house to play with

Dad got a vintage Mt. Dew shirt. . .he has to be careful cuz if he flexes his massive muscles he'll split the shirt (especially around the biceps).

This is a Dora couch that turns into a bed.  She hasn't slept in her real bed since.

Matching jammies!!!!!:)))

Our gingerbread house that we somehow got pieced together.  We didn't think there would be enough candy with all the kids we had running around here:)

Here's the crew that came over for our traditional gingerbread house extravaganza.  I just put this particular pic in because of Brooke's face!

Bailey helped make the houses.  Mom was VERY happy she has such willing children. . .

Bailey took honors of putting the angel on the top of the tree because we couldn't quite get Laney to do it.

It's a tradition in our household that the youngest gets to put the angel on top of the tree.  I thought about duct tape, but then we'd have to leave Laney on top of the tree.  Dad was willing, but Mom somehow saw the light. . .she's no fun!

We went up north to get a tree and found the perfect one (the furthest tree from the van).  Dad thought with his huge HULK muscles that he could carry the tree back to the van.  He made it about halfway before the lightbulb came on!

This is after Laney's blessing over Thanksgiving weekend.  Grandma Tolman always hand makes booties for their kids to wear during their blessing.  Pretty cute eh?

Here's her dress and a blanket that her great Aunt Lori made for her.  

Things that make me go hmmmm. . . .

This past week I've had some time to think ("a terrible past time I know". . .name that movie) because Kristy has been in Utah with Laney and I've had a chance to play Mr. Mom. This has prompted me to do some thunking about a few things. So here are my "deep thoughts by Jeremy Handley."



1. First of all, when did men become incapable of taking care of their own children??? As I've been hauling around 3 of our girls to school, swimming, the store to try on boy clothes (I can dream right), the people I've encountered have been shocked that a man would try something like that. I mean I know those Carls Jr. commericals "without us some guys would starve" have labeled us men to be stupid and incapable of turning on a stove (they are really funny commercials that I actually laugh at), there are still some of us out there that love to cook, spend time with our kids, clean the house and yes even take a hot bubble bath and read a Twilight book. . . . . . .sniff sniff I need to change the subject or I just might cry. Now I know how all blondes feel. . .no more blonde jokes for me.



2. I haven't taken a day off in a long-time just to sit at home and bask in the sunshine of normalcy. To be a single parent for the week has done my brain good. It's been a good stress relief, I got to read "The Hunger Games" and of course catch up on everyone's blogs. . .sorry Margaret I still haven't got through half of the Twilight trailers or what not that you send to Kristy. . .where do you find all of those??? Is there a Twilight heaven I don't know about? Heck I got crap for a week or more because Brady and I went on a "date" to go see that movie. Anyway, I digress. . .not to take anything away from Mom's role, I know it has its ups and downs, but man I've enjoyed the role reversal. I'm sure Kristy would love to go to work for me every once in a while just for a change of pace. I'm pretty sure after another week I'd be going crazy and want to get back to work.



3. My kids grow up fast! I just realized that Aly is almost 8 and I can't believe that I'm really that old. I have some runner friends that I see every once in a while that are still single and when I tell them I have 4 kids, their eyes get really big and they open their mouth like they want to say something, but the only things they can get out is a "well good for you," it never ceases to surprise me. I know they're probably thinking "well you're Mormon and that's just what they do."



4. "I'm not as good as I once was. . . I got a few years on me now, but there was a time back in my prime when I could really. . ." You fill in the blank. . .as for me my back hurts when I get out of bed. My arches hurt the day after playing b-ball or football. My stupid scale is broke cuz every week it tells me I'm a couple pounds heavier than I was in college. I need to chuck the thing I know.


5. My wife is a pretty amazing woman! We've been married almost 10 years now and every year she has to learn yet another way to put up with me. I'm not the easiest person to get along with (although I think so), but she has been patient, loving and very forgiving of all my mishaps. . .whether they be big or small. I love her to death and hope that when I'm old and can't get out of bed to do the smallest things that she'll be there to feed me my pureed Honeycomb cereal, help me drink my prune juice, and most importantly take me to the bathroom to help me wipe my. . . . . . . .nose. Love you baby!



6. And last but not least. . .in my own words "Toby or not Toby. . .that is the question." As many of you know, we got a dog a couple months ago (we named him Toby) and it probably wasn't the best timing to get a dog with a newborn in the house, but we've really been struggling on whether to keep him or not. The girls love him and he's actually a pretty good dog, but there are days when he's pooping on the carpet or pulling gingerbread houses off the table and eating them when I think I could probably throw him over our fence from our back door. I know those are the growing pains with dogs, but we've been going back and forth on that. We'll probably keep him just cuz he's so darn cute.




All-in-all, life in the Tolman household is a full one. . .that is full of screaming at the top of their lungs in that ear-splitting girly scream, full of barbie this and barbie that, full of those stinkin little polly pocket things that have shoes the size of a pinhead, full of dress up clothes and feather boas, full of chicken nuggets and ketchup (Emily puts ketchup on her ketchup), full of laundry heaped up to the sky, but most importantly full of LOVE!


Thanks to all of you out there that help us out and keep us sane! You're an inspiration to us all!