Ashton's 1/2

As most know, I LOVE 1/2 birthdays.  And yesterday Ashton turned 4 1/2!  Ashton also loves any kind of birthday- 1/2 of whole. 

 To "celebrate" his 1/2 bday, we took a field trip with his pre-school. We went to Welcome Ranch to ride horses and see farm animals. Though we did the trip, the weather was awful. What was supposed to be 80 degrees was a very cold and windy and WET 65 degrees. Noone was dressed appropriately, the horses were spooked, and it was just cold. Thankfully, the boys were troopers and I think they had fun.

Riding Freddie together

Shep on Tator

Ash riding Freddie solo

Patiently waiting in line

Ashton with the fire hose.

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I made Ashton a cake last night. I will admit that I think of myself of a decent cook/ baker. However, somehow this poor boxed cake mix just did not turn out. The middle was not done and then I totally flopped it trying to hide that the middle was not cooked by covering it with icing.

I will show the good side first. I am begging for my cake baking friends/ family to not laugh too hard.  (Just a side note, if you want to see some a-d-o-r-a-b-l-e cakes, check out Angela's website- she is good- too bad she doesnt live nearby  --- Olivia, you are good too but since you went all private blog on me then I cant show off your work :)

Most know that I have this great phobia of failure and let's face it... This is Failure with a capital F! 

 hahaha, I cant believe I just actually showed this.   And before you ask... both of these pictures are before we ate any of it!  To make matters even worse, this cake was not one of those "it may be ugly but it is delicious" type cakes... no this cake was ugly and average in taste.  Oh, that word... average, it is almost as awful as failure.  Ok, back to what this post if really about- ASHTON and 4 1/2!!!

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To make up for the bad weather and the even worse cake, I took Ash and Shep to Chuck E Cheese for an hour of play today.  Ashton LOVES the rat and would stay all day if you just kept handing him tokens. 

Then to the mall for a quick lunch and then to his new favorite store... The Apple store to play with ipads and ipods. (He asks every single day when he turns 5 so that he can get his ipod touch.)

How is that a 2 year old can manipulate this thing better than me

 

Ashton is sooo excited to get his ipod touch in October- is it ridiculous to get 5 year old a $200 ipod?

He then picked a Mexican place for dinner where he got his ritualistic cheese dip and chips.   We finished up the evening by redboxing a Captain America movie (rated PG-13--- just a side note, is it inappropriate to let small kids watch a PG-13 movie?!?!  I struggled with it for a bit but finally gave in.  Thankfully, in this movie, the language was not bad at all.  I guess it was PG-13 for the fighting scenes which, in my opinion, were not all the bad either--- anyway, just curious where other parents fall on this one?)

So, as we normally do--- the birthday celebrations went over 1 day.  But Ashton and I would not have it any other way.

And this is Ashton in true form!  I do want to pinch him

Ashton, kiddo, you are a mess!  You are mean and then so kind.  stengy and then selfless.  Emotional and then collected.  Wild and then subdued.  Hands off and then cover me with kisses.  And I wouldn't change one thing about you.
You are my helper and my talker.  You will talk my ears off when we are in the car, or in the house, or outside.
You weigh right at 35 lbs, so still my skinny boy. 
You make me laugh with the things you say.  For example, you named your purple lizard, Jesus.  You adore Hunter and fight with Shepherd.
You used to be a huge daddy's boy, but I think daddy and me are about tied now... which makes me happy! :) 
I love you SmAsh!