Daddy Time

Ashton loves spending time with his Dad! In fact he watches and copies nearly everything he does. I'm sure if he could talk he would say, "I want to be just like my dad when I grow up!" I just love watching them play together and its very entertaining to see the things Kris comes up with to do with Ashton. . . very different to the things I would do! And Ashton loves that.

He will even follow and copy him walking around the room in circles!

(I know you're checking out our gorgeous curtains! Jealous much!)

The best play dough recipe EVER!

It was time for a new batch of play dough today so Ashton, Laela and I got to work mixing and stirring! We read our recipe out and found all of the ingredients. As I called out each item the two of them would repeat after me in a parrot like fashion and have a little giggle.

We had to take turns doing each step as they were both extremely eager to help out and get in on the action. Their ability to get the ingredients in the bowl on the first try is getting better each time we cook, its great to see their co-ordination and skills developing.

Our recipe goes a little something like this. . .

3 cups of flour

1 1/2 cups of salt

3 TBSP of oil

1 pot or bag of cream of tartar

(just don't spill it all over your child like I did! ) whops!

3 Cups of boiling water

Then mix it all together.

Once its all pretty much combined turn it out onto the table and knead it all together and add the food colouring you want.

To make our play dough a little more fancy we will often add some essential oils to the mix. If we can we relate the smell to the colour of the play dough. So, raspberry oil to pink, lemon to yellow etc. It adds a whole other dimension and greats points of discussion for playing with the play dough.

Not Just Blocks

I LOVE wooden toys. . . but I especially love wooden blocks! There is just something so awesome about them, and something so spectacular about a completed block construction. So when I found out we were having a boy when I was pregnant, I started hunting down the best set of wooden blocks I could find. Then when Ashton was 6 months old I made the purchase, even though he could barely crawl at that stage! ha ha.

So, needless to say I have been waiting a while to be able to play blocks with Ashton for quite some time. I bring them out on regular occasion to see if he is interested in them and he will play with them a bit, but loose interest pretty quickly. Each time though I will preserver in building at least one tower to show him the potential of the blocks, in the hope that one day it will just click and he will want to play with me.

Well, today was the day!!!!!!!!!! Oh my goodness, I was so excited! We played with his blocks for close to an hour and he didn't just build he added other objects and things to his build to make it even more interesting! His concentration and perseverance was great as he carefully tried to balance objects on top of the blocks, or drive his cars slowly amoungst them as though he had created a city for his cars to drive through.

At the moment Ashton is really into lining things up in rows or balancing objects, so you could see this throughout his construction. I just loved watching him in action, as he created a block city that just represented everything about him and where he is at with his development and interests right now. Seeing the animals scattered throughout it, the instruments balancing on the city scape. So cool! I am so excited to watch how his constructions continue to evolve.

Cuzzie Sleepover

Ever since we moved into our house all of the girls (Ashton's cousins) have talked about having a sleepover with us. So, finally Ashton and I set the date, made the invitations, delivered them personally, and soon the girls were arriving at the front door!

We decided to make home made pizzas for dinner and it was lots of fun watching Kris try to contain all of the ingredients to stay on the pizzas! Needless to say it didn't work. . . there was cheese EVERYWHERE by the time we were done. But the children all had a blast creating their own gourmet pizza's.

Spread the tomato paste on the pita bread.

Sprinkle with cheese and scatter your favourite toppings.

And wahlah! its ready to go in the oven!

While we waited for our pizzas to cook, it was story time!

OH YUM! PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA! I LOVE PIZZA!

Look! Just like a bought one!

Dinner Time!!!

After dinner was consumed it was back to play time, and seeing it was getting close to bed time, it was time for all of the babies to go to sleep. I had to wrap and rewrap all of the babies for each of them. . . Then it was American Idol time!

It was a ton of fun having the girls over and Ashton thought it was so exciting to wake up to all of his cousins in his lounge. . . the only problem with that is that he woke up at 4am and couldn't contain himself much and started shouting "Oooohh, Kiki (Anika). Oooooh Delta, Ooooh Cookie (Brookie) Ooooh Ellie!" He just wanted to play straight away!

Cooking Craziness!

Ashton has really been enjoying playing with play dough lately, so we thought it would be nice to do some baking and put the skills he has been learning through the play dough play into practice. We have now had two different play dates (one with Darcy, Isaac and Jane and one with Laela, Gracie and Jess) where we have given the baking of sugar cookies a go. . . and much to our delight they have turned out really well! The mixes we have picked make enough to feed an army. . . but they are very tast none the less!

Ashton's confidence in handling the ingredients... and taste testing the ingredients is getting better and better each time we cook, and his attention span is getting there too! ;o) Its lots of fun doing with friends around cause it makes 10x more mess and its such a good laugh watching the children all get into it in their own little way.

Playdate #1

(Isaac, Darcy and Ashton)

The part I love the most! THE MESS!!!

(to me mess shows that you really got into something! "got your hands dirty")

I know there is a time and a place for mess... this is one that I was happy to have a mess!

And look... we cleaned up soo well after ourselves! Another fun part of making a mess!

Playdate #2

Gracie, Laela and Ashton!

Sorry for the abundance of photos... they were all just tooo cute to chose from!

Thinking outside the square

While I was getting ready for a show this morning I could hear Ashton clunking away in the kitchen, going through the plastics draw. Next thing he comes into my room with this little Apple Eating Invention! Apparently using your hands to eat an apple is very last week. . . well at least Ashton thinks so, he decided that eating his apple out of a funnel would be more efficient!

So, thats just what he did... he sat down in my room and ate pretty much his whole apple from the top of a funnel. . . and I could tell he thought it was a pretty good idea as he sat back and looked at me as if to say, "You're pretty bummed you didn't think of this idea before aren't you mum!" bahahahah!

My clever little man!

Ashton's Ark

Much to our surprise church was cancelled today due to a plumbing leak. This was to be my first official Sunday as ward Nursery Leader and I was very excited to do all of the activities I had planned. . . so when we were sent home without bring able to do everything I told Ashton we would have nursery at home instead.

The lesson was all about loving the scriptures and learning from all of the stories that are in them. I had set pictures up all around the room of different scripture stories. By the pictures of Noahs Ark, The Garden of Eden and Daniel in the Lions Den I had put all of the plastic animals out. Next to the blocks I put pictures like Samuel the Lamanite up on the wall preaching to the Nephites, King Benjamin preaching from his tower and Jesus learning how to be a carpenter. We had a magic carpet in the middle of the room that we sat on and as we travelled from one scripture story to the next we sang "Book of Mormon Stories".

When we got to the picture of Noah's ark I decided it would be fun to actually walk the animals into an ark, so I ran and got a box, cut off some of the side flaps, used one to make the roof and one to make the ramp and wahlah! We had Noahs ark. . . Which Ashton thought fit him perfectly and soon it became Ashton's Ark where he very carefully walked each animal up the ramp and into his ark, making all of their sounds as he went! Very cool!

Let Loose on Chipmunks

Ashton and I have been very lucky lately to be able to have regular play dates with Laela and Gracie! So today for our play date we decided to hit the slides, cars and bouncy castle of CHIPMUNKS! Thank goodness I brought Allie with me to help, because taking 3 toddlers to an adventure playground is pretty intense! They all wanted to play on something different at ALL times! But it was A LOT of fun. . . especially going on the new zoom slide and playing in their new ball bit.

This was our second time down the slide and at the top Ashton pushed me away and said "No, I do it. My turn." Little Dare Devil! And as you can see I'm having just as much fun as the children here!

The new ball pit goes up 3 levels where the children can find these air guns to load the balls into and fire them across the pit. It was great to see how quickly Ashton mastered the whole technique of using them. He loved it!

LOVE THESE KIDS!

Its a hard life being a 1 year old!

I love going to Chipmunks with Ashton... well any playground at that! Its such great for his gross motor development as he has to crawl around everywhere, climb up and down ladders, balance, develop confidence to do things on his own! And he gets to watch other children do things that he may not know how to do yet! Plus we get out of the house!!!