Toone Family

You know, I've had several people with bees in their bonnets over the fact that I've taken a teensy hiatus from blogging. What, a girl can't take a five month break without raising eyebrows? Anyway, my true motive behind this brilliant and diabolical plan was to weed out the "sunshine patriots." By now, only the really devoted readers are still following this blog. And by readers, I mean reader. And by reader, I mean my Grandmom. Thanks, Grandmom! So, let's do a brief re-cap of some of the previous months' events: Ah, the Fourth of July. My main purpose in selecting this photo is so that you can observe Lily's hair and compare it to this: The scene of a murder. The victim: Lily's hair. The weapon: the scissors at her feet. The scene: my craft room (where the accused had secreted herself away to commit the crime). The perpetrator: well, I think that's obvious. A little backstory about this. I think I may have mentioned earlier that Lily had a...

I know I just barely posted about Lily's "dreams," but here's a reprise. (This just happened a few minutes ago). Lily and Amanda had been in bed for a few minutes, but based on the noises we could hear from their room (jumping, screaming, playing, singing, banging feet on the wall, etc.) there had been no sleeping whatsoever. We heard Lily walking downstairs making kind of a soft whimpering noise that vaguely resembled crying. When she came into view, she had the biggest grin on her face -- yet she was still fake crying. Suppressing our laughter, we asked her what was wrong. She said (smiling and "crying" at the same time.) "I have a very bad dream." Kara and I smiled at each other with that "we both know where this is going, but we still need to ask anyway" look. So I asked Lily what happened in the dream. She lifted her nightgown, pointed to that dang freckle, and said, "It's this light brown one, right here." We re...

Not all of these are recent -- but they are ALL real. Amanda: When Lily declared herself "The Princess," Amanda's brow furrowed momentarily -- but her face suddenly brightened considerably , and then she said smugly, "Well, that must make me the queen." In Primary singing time the other day, children were being called on to share their favorite song, which all the children would then sing. Amanda's teacher leaned over to her and whispered, "What's your favorite song, Amanda?" "' I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night and Party Every Day'," she replied nonchalantly . When Amanda was called on by the song leader, she leaned over to her teacher and whispered, "I changed my mind." She selected "I Am a Child of God" instead. Lily: Like most two-year- olds , Lily doesn't pronounce every word with exact correctness. We'll sometimes try to coach her by repeatedly saying the syllable she's having trouble w...

Amanda sometimes has dreams which she finds to be rather upsetting. However, hearing her description of them is really quite entertaining. As she relates her dreams to me, I often find myself having one of those "even though it requires the use of every muscle, I am suppressing my laughter for now, but the minute I get a chance, I'm going to walk up to my room, close the door, and laugh out loud until I'm done" moments. Everyone who has ever been a parent of a young child knows exactly the kind of moment I’m talking about. One of my favorite dreams is the one in which Amanda's Granddad (actually her great-granddad) “turned into a fish”, chased Amanda down, and gobbled her up. Apparently the whole thing was realistic enough that it was scary to her, but to me, Amanda’s report of a kind old man morphing into a crazy child-eating fish was just odd enough to be funny … Of course, I wasn’t the one that got eaten … I may have reacted differently if I had been the victim...

Am I the only person whose children do VERY naughty things in the wee hours of the morning? From what we can piece together based on the evidence, the morning at our house went something like this: Lily got up to use the bathroom at some point (this would have been worthy of praise, since this was the first night she didn't wear a diaper to sleep and managed to keep her bed dry). From what we can tell, her billowing nightgown may have impeded her in getting to the toilet in time...so it was left in a soaking heap on the bathroom floor, along with her underwear and the innocent-bystander bathmat. However, something else must have gone awry, because there was also a trail of something-gross-that-rhymes-with-"floop" smeared on the toilet seat. Sigh. Anyway. Whether it was to reward herself for staying dry all night or to drown her sorrows about not getting to the toilet on time, we do not know -- but Lily then proceeded to the kitchen where she unscrewed the lid from the bot...

For several years now, Amanda has told us that she is going to marry Brad, who is the son of Logan's best friend Clark. She has also informed us recently that she is going to be a surgeon (yes, that's right; a surgeon) and can only marry someone who is also going to be a surgeon. Yesterday, I watched Brad and his little sister Lori while Clark's wife Lisa attended a class. Logan gave a family home evening lesson on modest dress. He made the statement that dressing modestly helps us to make choices that will lead us to the temple -- and then showed a picture of the temple. At this point, Amanda became very excited, bouncing in her seat and saying, "Dad! Dad! I have something to say!" Once we were all listening, she said, "Brad wants to be a surgeon too !" She sort of had her eyebrows raised with the "you-know-exactly-how-significant-this-is" look on her face. Looking toward Brad, who had a total deer-in-the-headlights look on his face,...

So. It’s me. It’s been a good long while since my last monster post; I’m overdue for another one. Since the only means by which I can remember the events of my life is the photos on my memory card, let’s just take a little chronological tour – shall we? Yes, folks, this is Easter. Here are the kids at the annual Easter Party at Logan's parents' house. The kids always come away with TONS of stuff from this little get-together (the Parental Candy Tax is remains in force, naturally). Benson had a new helper this year: Logan's brother Jordan is engaged to be married in July. He and his fiancee Chelsie were good enough to supervise Benson's egg-gathering. More egg-hunting at Grammy and Papa's house. We also did some egg-coloring. These cousins had a big time finding all their treats! Next was Amanda's end-of-the-year joyschool party. It was complete with water games, so everyone wore their swimsuits. Lily is modeling hers with that fetching beach body th...

Okay, so this isn't a real post, but I thought I should document today's events for posterity... The kids all needed baths this morning, so I put Lily and Amanda in the hallway bathroom and Benson in my bathroom. I decided to sit on my bed and do some work on my laptop so I could have a clear view of Benson. So there I was, busying myself with my to-do list, when I spotted a movement from the corner of my eye. I glanced up just in time to see Benson throwing a handful of his own poop out of the bathtub and onto the floor. WHAT?! Well, you can imagine the sight that met my eyes when I ran in to fully survey the situation. Oh, what is more gross than that? Anyway, this necessitated a thorough decontamination for both Benson and the bathtub. Once that was done, I refilled the tub and put Benson back in. Not three minutes later, I heard the sound of water hitting water and looked up to see that Benson was standing up in the tub, doing what he could to "fill 'er up...

Oh. Ohhhh. OHHHHHHHHHHH. That is my remorseful lamentation. Remorse because I don't even remember what happened in January of this year and the picture below is pretty much the only one that was on my camera: This was taken at my house the day I hosted a surprise birthday party for Logan's Grandma Neilson (in the center wearing the red sweater). Other than that, I really don't have a recollection of January at all. I'm fairly certain there was cold weather and many runny noses at my house. And so we move on! February is a little brighter in my memory. The girls had a big time making a snowman with Daddy -- and the snowman was pretty big, too! They were so proud of their creation. Every day he would melt a little bit until he was nothing but a straw sombrero in the front yard. Next we had Valentine's Day. Siblings are invited to attend Amanda's joyschool parties, so we all loaded up into the van for a valentine exchange, cookie decorating and making mailboxes ...