Happy Halloween!!!

Ashton's Grandma Hinton was sweet enough to buy him his first ever Halloween costume, so this year he was a jack-o-lantern! He was too cute, if I do say so myself. The sad thing is I tried and tried to get a good picture of him, but he was not cooperating. At first he was just annoyed.

So then, I thought if I put some pumpkins by him, he'd be happier and smile. But that backfired, because all he wanted to do was eat them!

Oh well! We had a very fun Halloween weekend. The night before, Tyler and I went to two spooky one-act plays, so Ashton got to go to Grandma Hinton's trunk-or-treat party at church. And the next night we went back to Grandma's house for soup in pumpkin bread bowls and spooky Halloween movies. It was great! And luckily Grandma got some better pictures than I did, so hopefully we'll get them from her. Hope everyone else had a great weekend too!

Family Vacation! (Part 1)

Last weekend we took a little mini vacation--Ashton's second roadtrip! My most amazing husband found out about something exciting happening down in Phoenix, AZ, so he got tickets as a surprise and we packed up and went. My wonderful mother also came down to travel with us. It was just a quick weekend trip, but it ended up being full of fun things.

Thursday after my mom arrived and after Tyler got off work, we set off. We drove down to Page, AZ (about 5 hours) and stayed in a hotel for the night. For hours before we got there, it was dark, so we had no idea that the scenery had changed so much, and that we were right next to Lake Powell. The next morning when we woke up, we were surprised to look out the window to find this view:

Where did all the trees go???

That whole day driving through Arizona was the most beautiful drive we've ever been on. They have a lot of pretty landscapes down there! After a couple of hours we took a little break and detoured to the Grand Canyon. It was SOOO BIG!!! I always knew that, but it was still bigger than I ever imagined.

The pictures don't even begin to do it justice. I was kind of scared. I kept feeling like I was going to get sucked in!

None of us had ever seen it before, so it was quite exciting. How lucky that Ashton got to see it so soon in his little life.

At one of the viewpoints there was this cool tower built almost 100 years ago (by a woman!) and you could go to the top of it to look over the canyon.

We tried to get Ashton to look at the canyon, but all he was interested in was the rock wall of the tower!

Finally, later on, we got him to look at the actual canyon. I'm not too sure he was all that impressed...

Once Ashton decided he'd had enough, our bellies were hungry. So we called it a day at the Grand Canyon, found some lunch, and drove on to Phoenix!

(To be continued...)

Four Month Check-up

Last week we went to the doctor for Ashton's 4-month check-up and immunizations. Turns out he's had a growth spurt! He has always been in the 20-something percentiles for everything--height, weight, and head circumference. He still is only the 25th percentile for weight (14 pounds exactly--woohoo!), but now he's the 57th percentile for height! That's a big jump! No wonder he suddenly grew out of all of his clothes...

Ashton did great with the doctor. He especially loved rolling around on the crunchy, colorful paper that was on the examination table. He even did SO well with his shots. (The poor guy had to get two...sad day!) Of course, he let out a loud cry when the nurse poked him, but as soon as I picked him back up, he stopped. From then on he was perfectly fine...no crankiness like last time, at all! What a brave little boy!

Naked!

I was changing Ashton's clothes in the morning and he was being so cute that I had to take some pictures. And of course he was a little, half-naked baby, so it was even more adorable. Gotta love a cute naked baby picture!

At first he kept trying to roll away.

His little chubby tummy is so cute!

I don't know why, but the changing table is the place where he loves to kick his legs the most.

Still got the frog legs!

What a little sweetheart!

Comments

Several people have mentioned that they tried to leave a comment and wouldn't work. I think I figured out the problem now, so if you feel the urge to comment, go for it! Hopefully it will work from now on...

A New Best Friend

Since Ashton likes toys a lot more than he used to, we've started introducing him to his "stuffies" (stuffed animals) one by one. His favorite one so far is a lion, whom Daddy dubbed "Lambert." Ashton will sit and play with Lambert for a long time. I think he likes his orange mane...

Apparently, he did not like me interrupting his Lambert time to take pictures, because after a while I got this death glare.

So, I stopped taking pictures and went about my business. Only a few minutes later, though, I noticed that Ashton had fallen asleep with his arms around Lambert. It was so precious I had to take even more pictures!

What a cutie! I'm glad he's learning to entertain himself.

Great-Grandparents

A couple of weeks ago, my grandparents were passing through Utah on their way to Arizona. They were the only set of great-grandparents that Ashton had not met yet, since the others all live in Utah, oddly enough. They were able to stop by to say hello and spend some time meeting their second great-grandchild.

Grandma's favorite color is yellow, so of course Ashton wore his yellow hoodie for the occasion. When they met, he was very happy to know her!

Unfortunately, Ashton has an irrational fear of thick-rimmed glasses...we discovered this one night when Tyler put on his glasses and it sent Ashton into fits of hysteria. (Silly baby, doesn't he know that thick rims are in style?) So, as soon as he looked up from Grandma's smile to her eyes, he was very afraid.

But it was okay. Eventually we remembered his fear, and Grandma took off her glasses and all was well. They were very good friends from then on. He also loved Grandpa, even though I didn't catch any pictures of them. It was a fun visit and we look forward to seeing them again!

The Big Boy Seat

Thanks to my friend Amy, we now have a very nice little saucer seat--the kind that a baby can stand in and play with the toys. It's colorful and fun, but I always thought Ashton was too small for it...until now! A little while ago I decided he can hold himself up well enough, and he would probably like to play standing up, so I stuck him in to see what happened. Turns out, he loves it! He kicked his feet with joy and smacked all the toys with his hands and just had a ball!

Thanks so much for the great toy, Amy! (Not to mention the millions of clothes too...) What would we do without you?

Monkey Boy

One lazy Saturday morning, I was getting ready and Tyler was watching the baby while talking on the phone. After a while I came back to find that Ashton had fallen asleep on Daddy's lap in a very interesting way:

He looks like a little tree monkey holding on for dear life, but he's totally sound asleep! How funny!

I guess there's a reason we always called him a little monkey...