Josh took Ashton to the Fathers and Sons Camp Out last weekend, MINUS the camping this time. They went up, hung out for dinner, S’mores and, I’m sure, some good stories and farting around the campfire, then came home.
This looks so yummy to me….Josh and Mark Jarman made Peach Cobbler in a dutch oven. Josh just confirmed that it was delicious.
Roasting marshmallows….
I dressed Ashton in the same BRIGHT ORANGE hoodie last year for the camp out, to make sure he was easily seen by his dad. Next year I will have to find a glow-in-the-dark hoodie. Ashton was playing with his friends all night, climbing on rocks, throwing rocks in the river, playing on the playground, having a blast. At 10PM he went up to Josh and told him he wanted to go home. So Josh started packing everything up and when he was ready to go to the car, Ashton was gone. He thought he must have gone back to play with his friends so he took the stuff to the car. After loading the car, he went to the kids and asked if they had seen Ashton. They hadn’t. Josh checked EVERYWHERE. He went to the playground, to the river (oh yes, I was freaking out when Josh told me this story), and checked in EVERY tent. It had been about 15 minutes since Josh started searching and he says that he was 2 seconds away from full-on panicking and organizing a search party. He decided to check the car one more time. Welp, our perfect little boy was sitting in his car seat, all buckled up, just waiting and waiting. He was even in there before Josh got to the car the first time. PHEW!!!!
Have you noticed how everything new is lame and everything old is SUPER DUPER?!?! Remember how awesome cartoons were when we were kids? They were soooo amazing you would actually wake up early on Saturdays. Todays cartoons (other than “Phineas and Ferb” which may be one of the best cartoons ever) are soooo lame. Just to give you perspective on how stupid todays cartoons are, today Ashton said “Change it Dad, we don’t speak Spanish!”
What kind of dweebs have been put in charge of television programming? Every single kids show is the most annoying “educational” crap. We can’t even tell our kids that “TV will rot your brain” because it is turning them into Spanish speaking, animal loving, sensitive, dorks.
LUCKILY, God invented YouTube and then filled it with AMAZING reruns any time you choose to rerun them. Now every day at lunch we rot the brains of our children with old cartoons.
Ashton loves: Bugs Bunny, Casper the Friendly Ghost, old Disney cartoons, Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, and Smurfs.
Emmy always wants to watch: My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, old Disney and anything with pirates or princesses.
So blog readers please make some suggestions for classics we can use to further rot the brains of our children.
There are a few mobility milestones your kids hit and when they blow through these barriers your life changes forever (usually gets worse). Crawling allows them to make huge messes and break things you forgot to move higher. Walking allows them to break things even faster. ” We just can’t have nice things!” Growing tall enough to open doors is absolutely a game changer. Then you get lulled into comfort because there is a huge gap between opening doors and the next huge jump in mobility when they learn to ride a bike. This milestone changes everything: they can now break things anywhere in the neighborhood before you even know they left the house.
Ashton’s Clown Bike
For a time we had been able to cripple this mobility in Ashton by keeping him on his tiny, little, minature, clown bike. It took him four turns of the peddle to match one turn by his friends, so he couldn’t get far and he couldn’t go fast. Of course we always had to live with the persistent fear that he would run away and join the circus but it was worth the risk.
He is getting so huge we just couldn’t make Ashton wait until August for a birthday to get a new bike – it was too embarrassing for both of us. So the other day Josh and Ash went shopping and came home with Ashton’s new best friend. There hasn’t been such a union between a boy and his bike since maybe this guy…
Ashton’s life hasn’t been the same since. He is experiencing a whole new level of freedom, which, as his mom, freaks me right out. If it isn’t raining or snowing, he is outside riding his bike with about five other neighborhood pals. He and all the little neighborhood boys are like their own little biker gag! They just need a name and matching jackets. It’s completely cute, but as I mentioned, I’m a paranoid mom.
Look at that biker attitude
Emmy has inherited Ashton’s old bike and she is very happy about it.
It didn’t take long for Ashton to see the true potential and unleash the power of his new bike.
It took only a couple days for his first wipe-out…yes, with training wheels. He is trying not to let Josh take a picture but you can clearly see this war wound that made him completely unable to ride his bike for an entire afternoon.
Ashton LOVED watching the “Home Alone” movies this past Christmas. Thankfully, he didn’t pick up the attitude problem that Kevin had. He did love the bathroom scene and has insisted on doing his own hair ever since….
Ashton also loves this movie. He is STILL all about werewolves, bats, skeletons, ghosts…. anything having to do with Halloween. In this movie, Theodore turns into a tiny werewolf. If you notice, his hair is very similar to Kevin’s.
So Ashton used to tell me he wanted his hair like a werewolf. When I didn’t do it right (ON PURPOSE) he would take over. Here is Ashton’s hair, all ready for school. It looks the same for church unless I get really tricky and distract him which is usually impossible.
Ashton has preschool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. He LOVES it and it never stops being completely cute to me when he’s all ready to head out the door to catch his ride to school. This morning Emmy happened to have the camera and snapped this shot. I am so happy it turned out. I always pick Ashton up and hug and kiss him. The other day Josh said, “You know he’s not going to let you do that for very much longer.” SO SAD!!!! Until that day comes….
Then Emmy always has to run down the stairs to give him a hug, usually when he is already running down the sidewalk. This morning she hugged and kissed him and said,”You’re my best friend!” Oh wowie, heart melted!!!
So then I had a couple hours to spend with Emmy. We watched “Annie” (some of it, anyway) and played in her playhouse under the stairs. Here is my tiny girl watching her movie…
Wouldn’t it be great to have a Love Sac that giant all to yourself???!!!
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Next year I will have to find a glow-in-the-dark hoodie. Ashton was playing with his friends all night, climbing on rocks, throwing rocks in the river, playing on the playground, having a blast. At 10PM he went up to Josh and told him he wanted to go home. So Josh started packing everything up and when he was ready to go to the car, Ashton was gone. He thought he must have gone back to play with his friends so he took the stuff to the car. After loading the car, he went to the kids and asked if they had seen Ashton. They hadn’t. Josh checked EVERYWHERE. He went to the playground, to the river (oh yes, I was freaking out when Josh told me this story), and checked in EVERY tent. It had been about 15 minutes since Josh started searching and he says that he was 2 seconds away from full-on panicking and organizing a search party. He decided to check the car one more time. Welp, our perfect little boy was sitting in his car seat, all buckled up, just waiting and waiting. He was even in there before Josh got to the car the first time. PHEW!!!!
