For just $2 at the wild animal park you can by a cup of nectar that will make the Lorakeets go crazy and land all over you. I had one on my head for a little while, and the one on my shoulder was pretty ticked off because the bigger birds boxed him out so he decided to sqwak right in my ear until they were done. We were some of the fortunate people that did not get pooped on. check out our new videos over in our links section.

It is amazing that one so small can already have such strong opinions on how life should be. For instance..."my cousin Bronson should NOT be eating my bucket!" The tongue sticking out adds more emphasis, and sometimes if we are napless and really frustrated it helps to throw ourselves on the floor, scream, and then start laughing. We are all developing wide ranges of emotions, which makes life that much more enjoyable.

Here's Brock swimming through the mud at the Camp Pendleton Mud run (more info in the posting below). Ashlyn and I were so proud. He only let one 70 year old woman lap him, but she had his number from the beginning.

Another cool thing that happened recently was our trip to the zoo resulted in a great polar bear encounter. Previously we had only seen the bears sleeping up on the rocks, but this time we went at 7:30pm and they were going crazy swimming and tackling eachother, and we watched them for almost an hour, it was awesome. Unfortunately we forgot our camera at home so the picture here is from the zoo website, but this is really how it was, so we are no longer thinking of suing the zoo for false advertising. I think there is an uncanny parallel between picture of the bear and the picture of Brock...what an animal.

Here's a Solano update...Brock and Branner ran the 10k camp pendleton mud run on Saturday June 17 and lived to tell the tale. I had to soak Brocks clothes for three days and wash them twice to get all the mud out. The sole of his shoe came completely off and it was very entertaining to watch Brock and Branner swim through mud. They are looking to get a team together to run it again next October if anyone is interested. Ashlyn learned to jump on the trampoline while we were house sitting this last week and a half. Her Plumb cousins came over and played a rousing game of crack the egg with Uncle Brock as the Crackin. Will and Kari moved out here from Buffalo after finishing dental school, so we are up to 7 local cousins, and we had one more born abroad. Jesse and Cami's little boy Ezra was born on July 4th and they are still up in Henderson. The last picture above is with Aldy, and as you can see, as Ashlyn's older cousins lose more teeth she gains more. If you want to know anything else concerning Ashlyn give us a call because she now likes to talk into the phone and likes to have her say in conversations. She answers all the questions in Sunday school and now makes elephant and bear sounds.

Wow Ashlyn, you seemed to eat those delicious green beans extraordinarily fast...

Lots of things have happened since we last posted. The least exciting among them being that Ashlyn discovered one morning how to take her diaper off. It was May 17th, 2006 at 8am. I was pretty excited that Ashlyn was sleeping in allowing me to get a few chores done in preparation for our week-end trip up to Utah. The house was quiet...too quiet. I peeked my head into Ashlyn's room to discover that I had made a monumental mistake in not buttoning up her onsie the night before...let us end this sad tale by saying that no, the diaper was not clean. Our little poopsmith was having a great time.
Brock finished out his second semester of his program on the same disasterous day mentioned above (and did quite well I might add without his permission). We left for Utah the next day breaking up the drive by spending the night with Jesse and Cami (Cami's "little" boy is due on July5th, but we hope he comes sooner for Cami's sake) in Henderson, and stayed until Wednesday... poor planning as we barely missed seeing Katie and Eve Davis during their trip nor did we get to participate in Warren's slumber party. However, we had a great time visiting with friends and family up in Utah and drove home with Becca in time to attend the celebration of Jennifer Sabin's wedding (Becca's best friend and our sister-in-law's little sister). It was awesome. My brother Will and I had a joint Bday party that weekend and later that week Will's wife Kari came down with their 10month old boy Bronson who Ashlyn was excited to meet for the first time (notice thay are the same size, but he's heavier).
We then had the opportunity on June 5th to go to Cabo San Lucas with Brock's parents. Grandma and Grandpa Solano wanted to spend some time with Ashlyn, and Brock and I reaped the benefits. Good food, great company, gorgeous beaches, warm water, more than comfortable resort and speedy golf cart drivers...need I say more. It was a great vacation. Ashlyn added some more animal sounds (duck and tarzan) and latin dance moves to her repitoire of cute things to do to make people pay attention to me and we all came back a little tanner. Now it is back to reality and back to blogging. I'll start teaching my summer school art class on the 26th. 40 high school kids for 4 hours a day for 3 weeks. woohoo. Should be an adventure. I'll post some more pictures in another post because it won't let me do it here so they'll show up above.

Being at the cusp of entrepreneurial genius, Ashlyn has decided that when she grows up she will we raise Alpacas in order to support her family while attending elementary school. Brock says he is going to hold her to that commitment.

May is here. We said farewell to aunt Becca (as you can see in the photo, Ashlyn was distraught by this) who went back up to BYU for the spring/summer and said hello to some warmer weather and the beach. Ashlyn doesn't eat sand, but she loves putting the smooth round black stones (no matter how big) in her mouth. mmmm salty.

As finals week approaches, Ashlyn loves it when dad takes a study break to come into her room and play.

Every once in a while she checks for a heart beat and then will get back to the toys.

Coming into graduate school I was worried about never seeing Brock, but he is an incredible husband and father who works like crazy and has kept a mind numbing schedule so that he can still spend time with Ashlyn and me. The first year is almost over; last final is May 17th, and then summer will be a breeze with only 6 credits and the psych GRE looming in the future.

The results came back from JC Penny picture studio that indeed Ashlyn is pretty cute (even if mom forgot to glue a bow on her head). She was in fine form when we took her in to get her birthday portraits done, and put on all her great faces. She is now walking about 80% of the time and surprising us with her speed.

Twelve months of fun!

Ashlyn wasn't too sure about the egg shaped cupcake at first glance, but she soon decided it was alright. Grandpa P. was a little sad that we strayed from our organic diet and polluted Ashlyn, but you only turn one once right and she has yet to break out in hives. In the second shot you get a little glimpse of her two top teeth coming in. She is walking more and more; I would say she crawls about 80% of the time stil. Today I took her to a park that had wood chips instead of sand around the jungle gyms and that forced her to practice walking. She also thought that the wood felt great in her mouth so I had to follow her pretty closely. At least wood is organic; a little roughage never hurt anyone.

Ashlyn is slowly realizing the cruel fact that what goes around comes around.

Happy Easter!

We are pleased to announce that Ashlyn's friend Eve Davis got her first haircut and donated a little bit of her beautiful hair to us. It was a lengthy expensive transplant proceedure, but we are definately pleased with the results as is Ashlyn as you can see from her facial expression. It makes Ashlyn look so grown up, and it does look a little red.

Who loves avacados and frozen peas?!!!!

Sunday, Ashlyn Tracy Solano got to meet her name sake, Tracy Bentley. Originally, Tracy's fee in being the match maker for Brock Rockwood and myself was 15% of our wedding gifts. We did not pull through on our end of the bargain, Tracy became a lawyer, we felt a lawsuit was imminent and Ashlyn Tracy was born just in time. We were excited that Tracy came all the way out from New York to see us, and she claims that the world baseball classic had nothing to do with it

News on walking...we're almost there. Ashlyn went from kneeling to standing unsupported on Monday night twice and was so excited about it she squealed and laughed. She now crawls up the toddler play set at the park and loves going down the slide on her belly.

MARCH MADNESS
This month has been filled with excitement! Mid-term group projects and 1:30am discussions about Harry Potter book 7!

In other news, last week I had my first consulting project for a charter school district. I and three colleagues have been asked to implement an inclusion initiative. This project is part of my organizational cultural diversity course. I have been learning a lot about group process and dynamics as well as group facilitation. I have seen how these skills are also useful in the youth Sunday School class that I now teach at church. It is tricky to discuss the Old testament with a bunch 14 to 18 year olds without our discussions being interrupted with lines from Napoleon Dynamite and irrelevant music lyrics. What can I say, I love saying "just listen to your heart, that's what I always do" and singing "I know Ja will never let us down"(-Bob Marley). But the students are patient with me and they are very polite when I go off on my tangents.

RED HAIR? A lot of people have asked this question. In certain lights Ashlyn's hair sometimes looks strawberry blonde, but then other times it looks just blonde. Above we have the bathtime spiked look that Ashlyn likes; maybe I need to buy her some hair product. So we have a little bit of hair that changes color (and I am still hoping it will be curly), blue eyes, and two teeth. Ashlyn wants to know if her best friend Eve will donate some of her hair to her.

Ashlyn has recently learned how to throw her blue racquet ball. Unfortunately she has learned how to throw the rest of her toys as well. She cleverly throws toys thinking that I will go get them. HA! I don't! But Emily does. Ashlyn and I have her well trained ... operant conditioning at its finest.