How my son used the force and other things

So as the title implies, recently I stumbled upon a new ability my son has developed (much to my surprise and admiration). The other day I was feeding my son breakfast (or, more correctly, he was feeding himself breakfast) when he suddenly stopped eating his cereal, looked at it really hard, stuck his hands out and tensed. The whole time he was tensing, and reaching his hands out he was concentrating on the cereal. I thought to myself, "Could this be? Could Elliott be trying to use the Force?" then low and behold his bowl moved towards him!!! I stared at him slacked jawed in wonder, excited in discovering my sons new found ability. I then told him to "use the force" again and he was happy to oblige. When he did it at me it pulled my hand to his hand, I was touched by the obvious compassion he had towards his father who had no such abilities, but wished with all his soul he did. I was unable to capture him pulling the bowl of cereal towards him but I was able to capture him using the force on me and pulling my hand to his hand. Observe.

Pretty exciting stuff huh.
On a side note and getting everyone caught up on the goings on of the Ashley household. Earlier in the year, as in January 1st, I had the opportunity to do a polar bear swim at this little farm in Springville, UT with some friends of mine. I had never done this before and it was on my bucket list so I decided to seize upon the opportunity. On that day it was 17 degrees AT 12 IN THE AFTERNOON! Needless to say I was not excited about this.

In fact I would have to say I was a little pansy about it. But I had promised my friends that I was going to do this no matter what. Here is what the place looked like.

Yeah it looks cold right! Make no mistake, it was cold enough to make a grown man cry. I was not that crying grown man but I'm sure there was one there it was that cold. If you look closely you can see the expression on my face as to how cold it was.


I hope that you will be able to enlarge the picture because it was pretty cold! I'm pretty sure I've expressed that sentiment already. I must also admit that I didn't go all the way under, I went down to about my chin and then jumped out, cutting myself on the ice as I got out. As shown here.

You can't see it very well in this picture but it was a nice gash on the right shin. Show sympathy for me. I also had swamp weed attached to my rear. This is what you get for jumping into a farm pond. TADA!

Over all the experience was quite fun. So much so that I ended up signing up for another polar bear swim a month later, which according to the date of this blog was...last week.

On February 12th a group of my friends and I got together and signed up for a polar bear fundraiser for the Special Olympics so it was for a good cause right? Right!! In any case it was a much warmer day. I think that it was around 35 degrees so being outside was much more bearable. However, what I haven't mention is that for the three weeks leading up to the swim the weather had been in the single digits and they had to cut through about three inches of ice to even make it possible for us to jump in. For those of you who are wanting to know where we jumped in, it was in Utah lake.
The fundraiser was designed so that you could sign up as a group and name your group or as an individual. We named our group "The Ice Queens" and wore tiaras as part of our costumes. Actually they were the only part of our costume. Others got quite festive about it. One group dressed up as the minions from Despicable Me and The Wizard of Oz. I was pretty impressed.

The youngest in the Minions group was three! I think everyone was pretty shocked at that. The kid didn't jump all the way in. The adult holding him held him above the water and dunked his legs in and that was it. The five year old that was with them jumped all the way in and started to cry once in the water. Everyone gave him a big round of applause. It wasn't until I jumped in did I understand why he cried... Here is me in line to jump.


and here is me with my friend holding hands about to jump in.


I was barefoot in that water so a word to the wise, either wear sandals or wet shoes because you will need them when you're scrambling to get out of the water. So here is me hurrying to get out of the water.

This time I went completely under and I have to tell you I have never been so cold in my life. It was so cold I couldn't think straight. In the above picture, I'm not thinking; my body is on autopilot trying to get out as quickly as possible and I can't because my feet keep slipping on the ground. Needless to say I fell a couple time in trying to get out.
Fortunately this plunge was a big production and someone had brought a hot tub for the plungers to jump into after the cold jump. We took full advantage of this feature.


I know that most people think that polar bear swims are crazy and...they are. But I recommend that everyone try it. It's a lot of fun and gives you an adrenaline rush, not only that it's kinda addicting. So until next time...


Oh, and here are a couple of pictures of Elliott.




My son is ready to be a model.

The aquarium and other nifty things.

So first off I would just like to say that the latest Harry Potter film was quite good. Sara, me and a group of friends went to a showing (of course) and found it surprisingly good. The acting has really improved with the kids. I would have to say the most improved is Emma Watson, she plays Hermione for those of you who don't the names of the people who play the characters :). It is a little slow though because there is a LOT of walking around and hiding. While this is remarkably true to the book it does get a little tedious. But I get why they did it, you know, to show the dire straits the kids are in and that there really isn't any one that can help them and that this is something that they need to do on their own. I will say that there is a scene towards the end that gave me a little lump in the throat. The book did a better job of bringing a tear to my eye with the same scene. But I'll just let you kids watch it for yourselves. I'm pretty sure the second half of this film will blow our socks off. Hopefully I don't set the bar too high for this film.

Now on to things that most of you would rather be reading about. The life and times of Elliott Ashley. Since last week was a pretty busy week and we weren't able to celebrate Elliott's 2nd birthday properly we decided to take him to the aquarium; and let me tell you that this kid really enjoyed it. It was difficult to keep him contained in one area. He hopped from exhibit to exhibit. He especially enjoyed running back and forth between a fish tank that had Nemo in it and the seahorses. We took him to the exhibit that allowed you to touch some of the animals. However the only animals they had in the tank were sting rays. I was a little disappointed in the place but it was quaint and great for the kids, but I am now pretty convinced that he will need to either go to Monterrey Bay or the Baltimore aquarium. (This is Sara. I thought it was great, an awesome place to take kids on a cold day. Elliott had a blast, and he couldn't care less about the size of the place compared to Monterrey Bay. That is all.) With that said here's a few pics.

Isn't he sweet? After the aquarium we went out to dinner at a steakhouse, which Elliott didn't enjoy, then he was off to bed, which mom and dad thoroughly enjoyed. :) It's hard work entertaining a toddler all day! :) Elliott had such a blast, soon we'll upload pics of his mini-party. It went over much better than the even mini-er party we had on his actual birthday. Oh, and I know I've been threatening to make this blog private for a while now, and now I'm ready to do it for real. Email me or facebook message me with your email address if you want an invite, I'd like to get it done by the first of December.

Thanks all! Love you!! :)

Happy Birthday Elliott!

So I figured an appropriate time to post something was on Elliott's birthday. It's hard to believe that the little dude has turned two. I'm sure that many of you are nodding your head agreeing with me when I say "Holy crap! Where does the time go?" I'm pretty sure that I'll be saying that many times over in the years to come. So I enjoy the time that I have.
Elliott's birthday was pretty chill on our end, only because mom and dad have been extremely busy through the week trying to pass respective tests for work and school. One of us was successful at passing. Please give Sara a round of applause!
So the birthday boy woke up pretty happy to the song of "Happy Birthday" and had a pretty fun time at the babysitters until he was riding on a scooter, fell over and landed face first on the porch which resulted in a huge bruise across the bridge of his nose. It only looks swollen now but it's definitely going to have a color to it. So I know you have all been waiting for a picture of the man of the hour so

TADA!!

He always enjoys playing on the computer. Today we let him watch a couple episodes of Dora the Explorer. He really likes that show and so far it doesn't bother me. Hahaha, we'll see how long that lasts. So today, to keep it low key we just gave him a small birthday cake and some ice cream. Here's his birthday cake. Store bought of course because we're very unoriginal. However, when we have Elliott's birthday on Sunday I hope to have a homemade one.

We thought that it was right up his alley and that he would dig into that cake but I guess even he thought that it was a little too much sugar and didn't eat any but he didn't want dad to have any either. :)

However, he was a big fan of the ice cream-go figure.


I also didn't realize how creepy that cake looks next to him without its eyes. Hmm, no wonder he didn't feel like eating it. Kind of looks like a mutant Slimer (from Ghostbusters). We're looking forward to really celebrating on Sunday and actually giving him his presents but for now we'll take the creepy little monster next to his head.

Happy Fourth of July!!

I'm just going to start with "I win!" Why? You may ask? Because I beat Sara to the punch in actually getting a post out there. I realize that it's been a while since we last posted something, but that's how the Ashleys roll; waiting forever before we actually put something up on our blog. We want to keep the lot of you in suspense, keep you wondering what in the heck those Ashleys are up to. So in celebration of July 4th and because this is my first post on this blog ever, I will start with something cute and awesome. Something like this:

I don't think Elliott has had that much fun with a glass of water... ever, and it was golden.
I think that this video will be about as exciting as our 4th got because everyone with exception of Elliott and myself got sick. So just the two of us hung out and had some fun taking a walk and hanging out at the park.There comes a time when your child just refuses to be driven around himself and takes matters into his own hands and takes the wheel himself. In this case it's his stroller. Elliott loved being the big man on campus walking the stroller all over the place. . .



You're unable to see his face in any of these pictures because he was so worried that you would find yourself staring at his face for hours on end so he kindly pulled his hat way down, he also didn't want to be identified by police for breaking and entering, but I caught him being up to no good. Here's my proof.
When he saw that I had spied him trying to break into this school he made a mad dash across the country!

Then made a 180 back across the mid west wreaking havoc on Mississippi and Oklahoma ( I can't imagine why). Seeing that his father was closing in on him,
He saw his best chance for escape by running to the jungle gym.
He then ran across the bridge towards the spiral slide of freedom.
And then across the pits of despair!
Only to be caught by his father in the end.
And then he had to stand trial for his heinous crimes. But he held himself with dignity and aplomb during the ordeal, much like Napoleon when he was about to be exiled.
However, we just found him to be too dang cute so there was no punishment and then we treated him to a cookie.
He then got a sugar rush and went AWOL by hopping onto his four wheeler and making a break for Burning Man.

and pretending he was Ray Charles.
And then crashed after the effects wore off.
I don't think we'll be giving him another cookie any time soon since it's like crack to him, and thus ended the exciting adventure of 'Elliott and Dad Go to the Park'.
Until next time, enjoy your weekend and I'm sure it'll make more sense than this entry.

...I got carried away.