Somebody changed their hair.

So I suppose it should be Sara telling you this but I'm the one that does the posting around here so I get to tell you about her little transformation. In my opinion I think it loos really good. It took me a little getting used to but it's pretty rad. She has been wanting to do something different with her hair for quite sometime and so a little while ago she told me she wanted to dye her hair blonde, like platinum blonde. At first I wasn't so sure I would like this that is because I saw a picture of her with blonde hair from 10 years ago, but style can change in ten years right? You know, getting married, having kids and such can change things like style. And yes it has been good. So, ladies and gentlemen without further adieu I give you Sara's new look.

I'm not entirely sure that this is the picture she would have wanted me to pick but it's all I got. Doesn't she look good! I think so. I'm sure that some of you have seen her new do on facebook but for those of you who haven't, you saw it here.
As for me? I haven't changed a darn thing, well maybe my gut, but that's kinda a givin now a days. I think someday I'll work it off...someday.
Finally, I would like to leave off with Elliott and a friend having lunch and Elliott dancing his bum off.

This recording is actually the second recording of Elliott dancing. I can't remember what the first song was, but in the video he's dancing to Ceelo's "Forget You". We have quite the little air guitarist.

Good times.

Jenna unsuspecting

This is all.

It's been a while

I'm thinking that the title of this post should be the title of our blog. All things considered I had no idea that it had been almost a year since I last posted. Why didn't anyone tell me!?...Actually, I'm pretty certain that a few of you namely my sister Rheanna and my mother had mentioned on the rare occasion that I needed to update our blog. Well...wait....hold on Elliott just got up from bed and I have to put him back down. What is it with three year olds and delaying the inevitability of bed time? The only thing they are missing out on is sleep. Don't they understand what a commodity sleep is? Apparently not or else they would be sleeping in until 12. I guess I have to wait until he's thirteen...damn. Ok, hold on. (Noise in background: Elliott! No, there is no more potty runs! Buzz can fly all by himself he doesn't need your help. Wait! No! Keep your underwear on! Why do you insist being naked all the time? Ok, I love you too-goodnight.)
Ok, I'm back. Kids these days, never respecting their parents. I'm told he acts a little bit like me at that age. Hardly. I was the best little runt a parent could ever ask for.
Well since the lot of you are probably wondering what the Ashleys have been up to for the past year I will tell you. Prepare for a long and lengthy, step by step play of the past 12 months.
Elliott has started speaking more coherently, Sara grew an additional 3 inches and enrolled in wilderness survival classes so we should now be good for December 21, 2012 which is, for those of you who don't know is the end of the world and my birthday. Coincidence? I doubt it. !(3#&@ Mayans! always want to put a rain on someone's parade.
We have both started working out and are attempting to lose "some" weight but that isn't going as well as I would like it to. I have one more semester of school left and am looking forward to doing my student teaching this fall. Last semester, woo hoo! It's about time I have a bloody degree. I've spent more time in college than I did high school, something doesn't seem right about that. Anyway! I'm getting side tracked here! So I graduate in December with a teaching certificate ready to teach all sorts of falsehoods to your children like how Fox news is the most accurate place to receive your news, death panels seem to be the most legit way of keeping the population down, and of course you can make a difference in politics, especially as a minority party in Utah.
Oops! I got off on a tangent again. Sorry, you guys are reading this to know what we've been up to, not petty rantings on politics. Where's my head. So yes, the Ashleys have been busy. We've taken up mountain biking (actually riding in the mountains and not just on the street with said mountain bikes) one of us has fallen down the side of the mountain trail not once, but twice! Can you guess which one of us it was? I also got involved in playing Dungeons and Dragons, which is, by the way very fun although Sara has threatened to leave me a couple of times as a result of this live action nerdery (not really). Sara continues to play bunco and Elliott makes friends with just about everyone he meets. He's such a social little guy, I don't know where he gets this extroverted personality from. However, I guess now would be a good time to teach him about stranger danger. Look, Elliott. Just because someone offers you candy doesn't mean they're a good person. There, I taught him; I just have to remember to tell him to read this post. We're still consistently poor and living paycheck to paycheck so if anyone would like to buy a 20 year old Lexus let me know :) I think that about sums it all up for us over the past year. Like I said, very exciting and very busy. Sara recently had her birthday and we had a fun little BBQ in her honor. So to make up for that I leave you with this short clip of Elliott reading. I apologize for it cutting out a little early I hadn't cleared the camera's memory yet. Oh, and more pictures will come of only Elliott, because that's they only person everyone really cares about seeing anyway.

The above image is of Elliott playing Temple Run upside down on the couch. What else would it be?

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!! :)