Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Our new office!

Finally, here are the long awaited pictures of the new office. Now presenting the new and improved TOLMAN DENTISTRY! Don't you just love that sign! It is lit from within at night.

We used a lot of natural elements; river rock, exposed beams, natural tones. I wanted the inside and outside to be very soothing and outdoors. I wanted to bring in several elements that would "introduce" Nathan and his interests and personality to his patients. You'll see...

Looking out the front door. Nathan and I used glass etching cream and did the fish on the mirrors. We found the mirrors at IKEA. It is meant to look like salmon swimming up a waterfall. We love fishing and love waterfalls.

The waiting room. Very earthy tones and some fishing decor. I wanted the patients to feel like they were sitting in some one's comfortable and relaxing living room, not feeling stressed out waiting for the dentist.

Another angle of the waiting room. Nathan put together a DVD with a video loop of ads for dental services we offer, dental products we endorse, and thank yous for our patients. These are broken up with slide shows of Nathan's dental trips to Guatemala and relaxing fish scenes. Who needs a fish tank? Just put it up on the screen! He did a great job! He is so talented and I really enjoyed helping him on this project. The children's play room is also in the background.

Here is a closer view of the children's playroom.
Another view of the waiting room. This is the reception window where patients check in and the door that leads back to the operatories. Don't you love the tile work?! More natural elements. And check out the back of the chair in the bottom right corner of the picture. The wavy back is also suppose to remind people of waterfalls and calming lines. The rainglass on the door and sidewindow are also more of bringing the outside in with the intent to be calming.

Here is an up close of the wood molding and logo under the reception counter. We had this custom done and it turned out beautifully! If you click on the photo you can enlarge it to see the moulding closer. It is little molars!

Here is the consultation room. I am not done decorating this yet.

The business office. That large window looks out across the reception office to the check in counter. That way if someone is in here they can see if someone else needs help out there.

Another view of the business office. You are probably wondering why we have so few files. We have been working for some time to go paperless. All the patient files that have been converted to digital are in storage. We have three storage rooms in the office plus a large attic space! We love all this space!

This is the right side of the hallway as I stand at the waiting room door. The door on the right is the consultation room.

Here is the left side of the hallway. Those are Nathan's diplomas.

Here is the long hallway at the back of the building. We have large IKEA frames with Nathan's photography along the wall on the right side under each sconce. They are very nice! In fact all the photography in the office is Nathan's. Another way I am trying to introduce the doctor to his patients. The doorways on the right are all operatories. The first doorway on the left is the panoramic x-ray machine. We have all digital x-rays now which the staff and patients love! Where the first EXIT sign is the hallway I just showed you that comes from the waiting room. Beyond that is one of the storage rooms and then the tray-prep and sterilization room. And beyond that is another hallway that I will show you later. On the ceiling are skylight tubes all down the hallway.

Here is our new panoramic x-ray machine.

Two of our operatories. Aren't they nice? More calming and natural tones. More of Nathan's photography. Each operatory has a large window that looks out at a fenced backyard with trees, bushes, grasses, and a dry river bed. It is also meant to be calming.


The tray-prep and sterilization room. We did this room more "hospital" or "clinic" like with stark white and grey tones. Patients see this room as they walk back so they see how sterile it is.

Here is Nathan's personal office. It is the only room we used knotty alder in. We like it so much that we wish we used it in the reception, business office, and staff lounge too. Oh well, Nathan is special. We used Guatemala decor in his office. He even has his own private bathroom (not pictured)!

Another view of his office. The collage frame on the left is family photos. The large frame on the right is...

...this! A collage of all of Nathan's trips to Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras overlaid on a map of the area. It was an idea I saw while in LA and Nathan did it on photo shop. I love it!

Here is the hallway at the end of that long hallway that I showed you earlier. The first door on the right is Nathan's office, the second door is storage and on the left is the lab. At the end is the staff lounge.

Here is some more of Nathan's photography. This is on the left side of the above hallway. This faces Nathan as he comes out of his office.

One view of the staff lounge. I didn't get the other view, but you can see it here on our open house post.

The staff lockers off of the staff lounge/kitchen. I am standing in the doorway of the staff bathroom (not pictured).

So there you go. I didn't get a few pictures that I was wanting, like the reception office. Oh well, this is good. Hope you enjoyed your tour! Please let me know what you think!

Monday, December 21, 2009

Skiing at Hoodoo

Nathan and I went skiing up at Hoodoo. It was a beautiful day! The snow wasn't that great, but there was hardly anybody there so we pretty much had every run to ourselves! We both advanced to the "intermediate" runs and are pretty happy about that. We love going, spending time together, being in nature, and feeling the rush!




Nathan's birthday!

We celebrated Nathan's birthday last week! First I had my good friend and neighbor come over to teach me how to make some authentic Mexican food, yep she Mexican and the best cook ever! We made Strawberry orchata (a delicious drink!), chorizo with beans, chorizo with eggs, and homemade tortillas...YUMMMMY!!!! Ben and her daughter helped make the tortillas. Here is Ben pressing down on her tortilla maker, aren't they both so cute?!

Nathan came home early and surprised us so we had Mexican food for lunch and dinner! He has such a nice boss to let him leave early on his birthday! LOL!

It was really nice that he came home early so we could both go to Nick's DARE graduation (see next post) at school. After dinner Nathan opened presents. We just got him a few little things for his office and some special M&Ms. He had purchased a bunch of backpacking gear this past summer so that was his early birthday present. Plus we were going Skiing the next day for his birthday. Oh, and his staff got him a panini maker so we have been enjoying those too!

I made Nathan an ice cream cake upon his request. It had a brownie layer, with mint chocolate chip ice cream (Nathan's favorite). It was awesome!

Happy Birthday Honey!

Nick's D.A.R.E. Graduation

Nick's 5th grade class recently completed the D.A.R.E. program. Drug Abuse Resistance Education. They had a nice graduation held in the gym. Congratulations Nick!

Here he is with the D.A.R.E. officer, Officer Wilson. Nick really likes him. They all received cool t-shirts too. Pretty neat.


Ben's nativity

I taught Ben's preschool last week and one of the crafts we did was a stand up nativity! Here is Ben with his three classmates showing off their fine work. Aren't they cute! I am keeping the nativity forever! I am keeping Ben forever too!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Holiday fun at the Children's Winter Festival

As Nathan stayed home with a napping Andrew I took the older three to the Children's Winder Festival at the local community college. It was a lot of fun! They had sugar cookie decorating, face painting, balloon animals. They did a lot of crafts and learned about Kwanzaa, Hanuka, Chinese New year, and Christmas. And it was all free!

I wish Andrew was with us because this would have made the perfect group shot of all of them. Maybe next year, he was a little too young for everything else anyway.

Petting one of the lions from the Chinese lion dancing performance. This was amazing to watch! Nick absolutely loved it! Nick loves the Chinese culture!

yummmm!

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

The children have their own tree. It is the tree that Nathan and I bought when we were first married. It is sentimental and we cannot get rid of it. When we moved into our house with the vaulted ceilings, we needed something a bit taller than the cherished 5 foot tree. So now we have a "theme" tree in the piano room, and the children's family tree in the family room. They decorate it all by themselves and it looks great every year!

Tatiana helping Andrew place an ornament.

Nick, Tatiana, and Ben working on the tree.

Ben checking out the ornaments.

Nick and Tatiana getting into the holiday spirit.

Andrew after just knocking the "almost finished" tree over. Everyone stood their stunned form a minute and then we picked it up and put it back together. We also put weights at the base so it cannot be knocked over again, by Andrew or elves or anyone else!

Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Our BIG Thanksgiving trip...make sure to read the ending!

Usually we stay home for the holidays. But this year the kids had the day before Thanksgiving off and Nathan only worked a half day so we decided to "go home for the holidays", Nathan's childhood home that is. They always have such a huge get-together and we missed both reunions this summer so we wanted to go and see everyone. It was a WONDERFUL and HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I am so glad we went!

This is just the Tolman side, meaning Nathan's dad's family. They hold it at the church because about 120 people came! It is crazy to think we had Thanksgiving dinner with that many people, all the turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing to feed them all! The food was great and we had everything! Nick and I were hoping they would have deviled eggs, since that is one of our favorites. Guess what? They did! I helped in the kitchen when I could so I felt like I was doing something. I brought a few pans of pumpkin bars and the cranberry sauce.
Ben got his "finger olives", a happy boy!
Andrew helped with clean-up! Everyone pitched in so wonderfully!

After dinner the kids played basketball, several board games were set up, and we did a lot of talking and visiting.

Tatiana and Nick with one of their favorite cousins, Tracy. We love her!

After dinner, the kids and I stayed at the church with most of the relatives while Nathan went Chucker hunting with his cousin, Randy. They had a really good time and I am so happy that Nathan and Randy were able to spend that time together.

The next day we went to Nathan's mom's sister, Cindy's, home. We went to eat leftovers and watch the Boise State game. It was a lot of fun and good to see a few of that side of the family. They also have a new home which was a lot of fun to tour. Tons of ideas for our next home rolling around in my head now! Here is Nathan's mom, Connie, Aunt Cindy, Nathan, and uncle Steve.

Tatiana enjoyed playing pool upstairs.

Nick and Ben got into the team spirit with some of Cindy's props. Go Broncos!

I had to include this picture. No one taught Andrew how to do this. He just saw Ben doing it and copied. He is such a little copy cat!

On Saturday, the kids helped Grandma put together and decorate her Christmas tree. This was a real treat for everyone involved!

Later that afternoon we all went to the movies. We saw Planet 51. It is very funny! The kids really enjoyed it. We brought their cousin, Aubree, along. She is such a cutie!

On the way home we stopped in the pass to go sledding. We drove the truck and packed all our snow gear and sleds with. There was not any snow at Grandma and Grandpa's so we stopped on the way home. We spent several hours there and had a really great time!
I love this picture of Andrew with his daddy! It shows how big our baby is getting and is a great candid shot.

After several runs down the hills on sleds, the kids decided they wanted to dig out snow caves. Nick got a pretty good one dug! He takes after his daddy!

You can tell how late it is because you see the sunset in the background of this one. We got there at around 3:00PM and stayed until the sun went down.

We actually were not going to stay that late but the kids were having a great time and everyone was being good that we thought, "why not?!" Nathan took Andrew back to the truck once the sun started to go down because the temperature was dropping.

Then just after giving the other kids a 10 minute warning a woman came running up telling us about someone who had been seriously hurt. She said her husband was over there on 911 with his phone. I asked her if anyone helping was medically trained. She said she didn't think so and offered to watch my kids. I had been talking to her a little before and she was there with her 5 year old son, so instinctively I felt that was okay. I ran around the hill to find a man having a seizure. I have never seen a full scale, foaming at the mouth seizure in real life. But I had been trained so I jumped in. I started to give orders and relay important information to the man with 911 on the phone. We stabilized him and treated for a head injury and shock. He is a 24 year old man about 220 pounds and he decided to go off of a jump (keep in mind it hadn't snowed up there for days and the "snow" was packed ice). He flipped up and landed on his head. He suffered from shock (beaded perspiration), brain injury (several seizures, non-responsive pupils, unable to speak and only made grunting and moaning noises, wouldn't respond to anyone by squeezing our hands in response to questions, etc.) obvious concussion, and possible neck injury. I am hopeful his spinal cord was uninjured because he could move all his extremities. It was very intense and scary. I handled things really well during the incident. Then afterwards felt a little shaky and sick, the adrenaline coming down and possible a little shock myself from seeing someone like that. I am not use to it. The next day I was shaking for most of the day. It was weird, I couldn't even poor Andrew a bottle without spilling some. But eventually I calmed down. I am so glad we were there. I am so glad that we didn't leave earlier like we had planned. Because no one else there had any medical training at all! Nathan was in the truck with Andrew and I was properly trained to give the aid needed. If he needed stitches or something more that only Nathan could do, then I would have taken the time to have someone run for him and then fill him in. But he was where I needed him, taking care of Andrew and I was where I was needed at the moment. It worked out. The most amazing part of this tragic situation is how so many strangers came together and selflessly helped without any second thought or worry for themselves. It was a terrible start to the holidays for this man and his family, but I hope they also felt the love of strangers and realize the Lord's hand in helping him. We really were planning on leaving about an hour earlier! The Lord is mindful, this I do testify!