Here are a bunch of photos from the last three months!

Ned Sleeps for Two Months

Yaaawwwn...

What, is it March already?

Wow.

Anyone still visiting this blahg? Amanda... haven't given up yet?

Well, let me think on what has been happening...

Simon needs all of his friends in his bed with him (Mimi the boy bear, Kitty-Cat, Camel, Ernie, Giraffe and Tad). He still doesn't say sorry to anyone no matter how hard he throws things but we did get a very sincere apology from Kitty-Cat to Elliot when Simon through a rubber puck down a flight of stairs and it hit Elliot in the head. We take what we can get...

He often puts himself to bed. A couple of days ago he was playing lego with his mom in the evening when he suddenly went to our living room bookshelf, grabbed a book and his water and starting heading up stairs. I could hardly keep up but ending up meeting him in his room. He is the easiest kid to put to bed of all two of our kids. Even more so than Elliot.

Simon hasn't many friends his own age but loves playing with Elliot's friends and calls them his friends too. He really enjoys going to Elliot's school and playing with the kids there when Mom is the parent helper.

Elliot is doing really well at school, where they are learning letters and just went through a month of learning about dinasours. He really enjoyed that and has decided he wants to be a
Paleontologist, though at dinner tonight he decided he wants to be a teacher and a dad.

Elliot is eating a lot better at dinners now which makes dinner, in general, a more pleasing affair.

Tales from Ashton Manor

Simon is talking all the time now. His words are clear, his sentences are well-formed. He loves to ask questions. His favourite question is why we say certain things. Say, for example, that I dropped a boulder on my toe and said "Shoot!". Simon would follow with "How come say shoot?"
He has a teddy bear which we received as a gift from the hospital where he is participating in a study. His teddy bear has been named Mimi and is a boy. When Mimi first moved into our house, he mostly just said "mimimimimimimimimimimimi" in a high-pitched voice. Now Mimi has begun to talk quite a bit too. Simon takes good care of Mimi, feeding him, fixing any ouchies he might have and making sure mimi gets his naps.
Simon is also getting sneaky. He approached his mom today and used a disguised voice to pretend to be another toy he had in the house. The toy, the voice stated, was hungry for chocolate. So mom gave Simon a chocolate to give the toy. But, after giving it to the toy, Simon discovered that the toy didn't actually like chocolate after all. So Simon had to eat it instead.
He loved Barney the large pink dinasour and his favourite song to sing before bedtime is "Oh Canada".
He is also beginning to use his imagination in very creative and astonishing ways. Today he used a box as a hockey net, a basketball for a puck and a container of glue for his hockey stick.
Simon will be, if all goes according to plan, in Boot to Blades in January.

Elliot passed his level one skating class and is going into level two in January. He has been really glad to have his Aunty Amanda back from school for the Christmas holidays and he is looking forward to his uncle Clayton being back after his Christmas holidays in Saskatoon.
Elliot is doing really well in school, enjoying being with his friends there and loving his teachers. He also loves Sunday School and his pastor Liz.
We still read a Cam Jansen story nearly every night but recently Elliot also recieved a dinasour book unlike any other. It is a huge pop-out dinasour book that you really need to see to believe. Anyhow, Elliot loves it and I don't mind the break from Cam Jansen's clicking. It was getting on my nerves.

Elliot has loved the snow, Simon is warming up to it.

No pun intended.

Ned's family is snowed in

Official Verwoerd Immediate Family Christmas(OVIFC2008)

Elliot passes level one preskating!

And Aunty Shelley visits...

Simon's Birthday at McDonalds

Simon goes adventuring through the tunnels at McDonalds for the very first time!

Simon's Birthday at Whitespot

Simon's Birthday at the Christmas Train

Hello there, Ned.

How do you do?

Tell me, tell me

What is new?

Elliot is four

Simon is two

Pictures to come...

I just downloaded (uploaded?) a boatload of pictures. Simon's birthday, Christmas, Snowdays and other cool pictures. I'm just away from the main computer right now. But I'll get to them as soon as I can so you can see them too.

curiouser and curiouser...

In a Wonderland kind of way, our kids are crazy.

Case in point:

Elliot: Simon, do you want to play Uncle Bridge?
Simon: Yeah.

Elliot and Simon (while running around the kitchen table): Uncle Bridge!! Uncle Bridge!!

Elliot: Simon, who is Uncle Bridge?

Post-Halloweeeeeen Post Post-Five (AKA Six)

Finally, Halloween Night arrives and the Ashton men head out for some real, honest-to-goodness door-to-door trick-or-treating. Simon lost a boot, but we got it back. He wore his orange rain coat over his pirate costume so most people thought he was a pumpkin. Elliot went with his friend Tate, who was dressed up like Jack Sparrow. Elliot's pumpkin bag was literally overflowing by the time we finished our townhouse complex. Our house only saw thirty seven kids this year. Great weather though.

Post-Halloweeeeeen Post Post-Four (AKA Five)

Elliot's preschool Halloween party, which mom volunteered to help with, which meant Simon had a chance to attend the party as well, which meant great fun for all!

Post-Halloweeeeeen Post Post-Three (AKA Four)

Here we are, us Ashton men, working on our Halloween crafts.

For the pumpkins, Elliot designed the faces and Mom and Dad did the carvin'.

Dad only cut himself fairly severely once this year. Mom is thinking of buying a plastic knife for Dad, corked-fork to follow.

Please note - Roughrider shirt on Elliot, as Oct 30 was the day Saskatchewan defeated the Toronto Argos to take home advantage for the... oh sorry, you stopped paying attention didn't you. More pictures you say? Alright...

Post-Halloweeeeeen Post Post-Two (AKA Three)

Simon Arrrrrrrie Ashton and his dad, Captain Yellowbeard after a long and treacherous journey.

Back to the great and proud Ship Dodgecaravan to head for home with our many treasures!

Post-Halloweeeeeen Post Post-One (AKA Two)

Arrrrr, we saw some scary sights on our journey through the dark waters of 176 and 176A St, but we wernt afraid. Nah, we kept on treckin from business to business repeatin our pirate words "trickortreat" - wait for candy to hit bottom of bag - "thankyou".

Arrrr....

Post-Halloweeeeeen Post One

Yo-ho-ho and bottle of rootbeer, those scally-wag Ashtons have hit the high-waters again, sailing fearlessly into the depths of downtown Cloverdale where they will pillage and pillage some more until their treasure sacks are overflowing with sweets and chocolate bars!! Led by the not-quite-as-smart-as-a-bag-of-hammers Captain Yellowbeard and his pirate princess, the great and proud Ship Dodgecaravan met dry land at the Surrey Museum.

My other son...

Might I be able to introduce you to my other son? His name is Pocoyo. Energetic, mostly well-behaved and always entertaining. I'm not sure which side he takes after, though he reminds me a bit of Clayton when he was much much younger.

Open Letter to Zaxxon

Dear evil alien robot commander,

We haven't met in quite some time. I know you are still alive because you never die. No matter how many times I succesfully steered my space jet around, over and under brick walls, bombs and other obstructions, took down all of your faithful kamakazee pilots with my deadly accurate laser beams and found myself face to face with your dastardly self, you could never be completely defeated. Oh sure, I could dodge your weak blasts and dodge back and forth with my peerless agility, knock you down with my impressive arsenal every time but I would always find myself at the beginning of another maze of brick walls, bombs, obstructions, enemy starfighters and then you again. You never made any discernable noises, but I know you were mocking me in your own robot-made-of-boxes way. I've never forgotten.

We will meet again one day, my fine adversary. Perhaps we'll rendezvous somewhere that might give me home advantage. Or maybe I'll jump back into my space ship and dodge walls and bombs, take out enemy fighters and knock you down once and for all. Regardless of setting I look forward to looking into your steely blue robot eyes for the last time.

Sincerely,

David Ashton

Other pictures, random and more random

Elliot's birthday - at Surrey Rec Centre

Elliot's birthday - at home

Elliot's birthday - at grandma and grandpas

me catching up from a month of non-blogging

A very wet and muddy visit to Hazelmere Farm for Elliot's first school field trip

Creations by Elliot and Simon

Uncle Brian and Elliot make cornbread

a teaser...

There will be pictures and posts coming which will highlight several events centred around Elliot's fourth birthday. It will include athletics, extravagantly designed cakes and pirates. I can tell you nothing more, you will have to wait...

not to be forgotten...

Simon, the less flamboyant of the Ashton boys, is truly coming into his own these last few weeks. He is very polite (quick with his thankyou's and excuse-me's), loves everything to do with hockey (all he really needs is two figures and a penny to entertain himself for hours) and is greatly appreciative of naps and eating nearly all foods (which makes us wonder if he may be, in many ways, a bizarro world Elliot).
Just as his brother needed me to read "The Hockey Sweater" every night for a million years, Simon has chosen "Clancy with the Puck" which is a great book but no matter how many times I read the book, Clancy always hits the goal post and loses the game for the Maple Buds. Maybe I'll change the ending myself just once to mix it up a little.

where the wild things are...

As requested by Grandpa Ashton...

Elliot is doing very well in his pre-school skating lessons. Which is pretty cool because he did not do very well with skating a year ago. So here are some pictures his mom took last Saturday.

Elliot rides a bike

Elliot has been working at learning to ride a bike. We got him a green bike Christmas last year, I think. Or was it his birthday? Anywho, it is still too big for him. Tate has a smaller bike and has grown taller than Elliot. So they trade bikes and Elliot is doing really well with Tate's.

A message to Aunty Amanda

To Amanda, busy at school and toga parties, who wished Simon Arrrrrrie Ashton a happy international-talk-like-a-pirate-day, here are some pictures, which do not include Simon but do include Pirates.

Meanwhile...

Simon continues to grow up. He says please and thankyou. He loves playing bowling and hockey and his favourite books include The Chocolate Chippo Hippo.

While his brother is at school on Fridays, his mom has been taking him to the Reading Time and the Cloverdale Library and he is really beginning to enjoy that a lot.

He is also doing better in the nursery at church and now only cries part of the time.

Elliot Skating

He had his first new skating lesson today, and we were both quite worried that it would be a disaster. I was so worried, in fact, that I double booked myself and went to my hockey pool draft. Which left Andrea alone with the two kids. Yes, I can hear the boos over the internet now. Boooooo!
Well, it went very well. I now have Steven Stamkos on my team.
Pardon me?
Oh, you don't care about my hockey team? You want to hear how skating went?
Mmmm okay.

Skating went very very well. He stood on his skates and walked on his skates. Mom says he looked like a pro.

I know it was only his first lesson, but we are feeling much better about things right now.
If you remember, he didn't enjoy his earlier classes at all and spent most of his time sitting on his cold bum with tears streaming down his face.

Sorry, no pictures.

Elliot at school

Things are progressing nicely at Cloverdale Mini Rec Centre Preschool. Elliot is making friends (something his father was never particularly good at) and his teacher has congratulated Andrea on raising a very well behaved boy. He listens to the teacher, is quiet during class, plays politely with the other kids. Of course this left us wondering why he has so much trouble doing those same things at home. But mostly we are very proud of him. Here are some of his pieces of art which he has done at school and brought home.