Uncle Clayton's Adventures

Surely to goodness you will want to update yourself on this. Giant crickets, millipedes and spiders. Strangers named Andy and Jeff.
No wonder the Great Wall and Tian'anmen Square hold no power over our adventurer's interests. Those places are old hat. Further new and exciting pursuits are to come, no doubt.
And surprises. And challenges. And stories.

Oh the things he says...

"Elliot have chocolate? Okay, good. Come daddy." Is how Elliot asks for chocolate.

"Mommy read the books with Elliot? Okay, bye bye daddy." Elliot trying to convince us that it should be mommy putting him to bed and not the-much-less-fun daddy.

"Kitty, where are you?" Calling for Misty, our cat.

"Tate's Mommy, where are you?" Calling from our next door neighbour's driveway and towards the front of Tate's house.

"Bye daddy, see you lunch." How he says goodbye to me as I leave for work.

"Elliot sad." He often says as he is crying, usually when he's tired.

"Too loud." He will say with respect to he tv, radio, etc... "Just right." He will say after proper adjustments are made.

"See you later alligator... in a while crocodile." Followed by a line from the Doodlebops, "

Elliot's Uncle Clayton

While the other Ashton boys are keeping their wives pregnant, the dashing and daring C. Howard Ashton is off on another trip to the other side of the world. This time, he is going to China. Once again to teach English. He has set up a blog, which is guaranteed to be far more interesting than mine or anyone else's. He is, quite honestly, the reincarnation of Marco Polo. And so, fittingly, his blog has been titled Il Milione. Be patient, he hasn't left yet. Adventures await. Books will be written. Movies will be made. Noodles may be eaten... but not Ned's. Never Ned's.
Il Milione will be in my top three blogs to read daily, even if it's just to see his dashing face and imagine what pitfall, what danger, what peril he may be laughing at on that particular day.

Sad Zoo News

The baby gorilla that we saw only days ago recently passed away. It was really cool to see the baby and the mother last week. There was a large crowd gathered at the windows when we were there on that rainy day in Calgary.

He's hooked

He hadn't had much interaction with Thomas the Tank Engine before our trip, and not even much during our trip, however he did see one episode while we were in our hotel in Stony Plain. Then he wouldn't stop talking about "toy train, toy train". He was convinced we could conjur up Thomas on TV whenever he wanted. After a few days of his constant requests, we found Thomas on the internet and that kept him happy for a short while. Then we found some Thomas books at The Whitecat Book Company. Once we got home, we bought a Thomas Tank Engine with DVD. He watched it five times in a row this afternoon. I've got the theme song running through my head right now as I type these words. Doo dee dum dee dum dum. Dum. 

Elliot's best friend

Tate 

To get Elliot to eat this meal, we told him he had to feed Dad's Wayne Gretzky bobble-head doll. So he did, and Wayne made it look so good that Elliot had some for himself too.
 

First day back, we go to say hello to the ocean.

 

 

 

 

 

"Do I want to eat this?" 

Almost home, Elliot enjoys the tunnels outside of Revelstoke so much that he started asking for more tunnels, when we knew there weren't going to be many more and so we suggested that he close his eyes and pretend to be going through a tunnel. So he does!  

The Calgary Zoo

Elliot enjoyed the Calgary Zoo, especially the monkeys.

 

 

A long car ride home

Where Elliot dumps out his toy box all over himself.
 

Elliot and his poppup say goodbye.