Elliott and his nap

Sure I don't write things often on our blog but that is probably because I feel that it's necessary to write long and in depth stories about our family and what Elliott does. Well, for right now I'm not going to do that...but I will, and soon. But as the title of this particular blog says it's about Elliott and his nap. And the short of it is he did fall asleep and slept for about an hour and a half, woke up, and then proceeded to be mighty mad at the world around him. I said "kiddo, do you need more quite time?" he replied in his angry voice "NO DADDY!! NO QUITE TIME!!" He's currently on his bed crying about quite time...and it sounds like he just passed out. Fingers crossed.

Hey! This blog thing is fun!

So...we went to the zoo and other things

As stated in the previous blog that had no pictures; just a brief story I figure that it is due time to put some pictures on here to let EVERYONE know what the Ashley's are up to these days. Other than Sara driving me stir crazy with all the legos she has laying around (she recently picked up the hobby of building weird buildings out of legos and muttering something about Gozer's return, yeah I don't get it either).
I on the other hand have been more productive with finishing up summer school. Yes, that's right kids I have officially completed all my math requirements for my major and good riddance. Who needs math? Oh, wait, I forgot I am supposed to teach kids math once I get my degree. S*%@. No fear family and friends your kids will be safe with me :) So now that that is finished I can enjoy the last two weeks of August before school starts. I will be doing nothing other than playing withe my son and playing video games because that is what 32 year old adults do now a days right? I just keep telling myself that AND that I only have a year and a half left till I graduate. OH! and don't let me forget to tell the lot of you that I graduate in December of 2012. So yeah, I get to graduate and then the world ends. How is that for a pat on the back. Thank you Mayans.

So enough of that rambling and let's get to what everyone really want's to see. Pictures of my son kicking ass.

This is Elliott and his cousin Tamsine on the bathroom counter a little while back putting lotion on their hands and then rubbing it on the mirror saying "It rubs the lotion on the skin". Cute and kinda creepy at the same time, but hey, they look like their having fun.This was the product of a rainy day and Elliott wanting to be a monster for 2.35 seconds. I believe I had more fun with the monster bags than he did.
This was Elliott's first experience at the zoo needless to say he liked it. Now if I had blogged shortly after this experience I might actually remember all the funny things he did that weren't captured on camera.

The above picture is actually pretty funny. That dinosaur is a Diloposaurus. You may remember this dinosaur from Jurassic Park, the one that spits acid in peoples faces and then gobbles them up. This little animatronic would spit water at you and on a hot day it felt pretty good.
He didn't want to his picture taken but I ignored his request. Take that baby Elephant! E really dug the Elephants.
Funny story about the T-Rex and Elliott. It was big, loud, and scary. Every time it would roar he would yell back at it telling it to "stop it".

In the above picture he's covering his ears and shaking his head at the T-Rex.
Elliott loves this elephant. If it was up to him he would still be sitting in the trunk.


After the little expedition to the zoo Elliott was a little tired so he did what he does best and played dead.
He now currently resides as a ghost at our place but now we have saved lots of money on toddler stuff, cleaned up the house and go dancing every night. It sure is nice. Oh wait, that didn't really happen. He likes to be tickled fall over and say "I'm dead". Rinse and repeat.
He's becoming quite the chatter box and soon I'll be able to provide you cats with some pictures of E being Buzz Lightyear. I cannot tell you how many times I have watched Toy Story 3. So far I'm not sick of it but man! have I watched that movie a lot. Now if only I can get Elliott to watch Empire Strikes Back a lot then we will be making some progress! Until next time...don't drive like my brother.

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.