Under the Sea

Hello all! Time for an update, eh? Well, Owen just finished his first year of college and is looking forward to summer! He deserves a break after choosing to double major in English Lit and Mechanical Engineering. So well rounded.

Okay, so it's been two months. My bad. Don't expect a big, long update right now, though, since my house looks like this:

I will tell you about last week, as it was quite an adventure for the Ashton Family.

Zach has written a delightful paper on hybrid brush seals and the improvement of gas turbine efficiency, and everyone is just clamoring to hear his discoveries. As a result, he was invited to present at the STLE conference in Orlando. Bless his heart, he decided to take the wifey and baby with him.

We made a vacay out of it and stopped at the Braun’s house in Tallahassee. The 12 hour drive took 17 hours. I guess that really isn’t terrible considering we had to go through ridiculous Houston and we had a four-month old with us, but I will say we sang Itsy Bitsy Spider over 50 times.

We had a wonderful time with the Brauns. Tyler and Ethan were great with Owen. Tyler was particularly intrigued:
“What are those?”
“Those are his gums, Tyler.”
“He has gum?”
“No, that’s where the teeth will grow from. They are called gums. He doesn’t have any teeth yet.”
“Oh. So he eats yogurt?
A perfectly logical conclusion.

Rather than recount all of the fun details, I’ll just upload some pictures, so that you can get an idea of what went down. Cue crazy montage:








Once we got to Disney World, we settled into Coronado Springs, a Mayan-themed resort. Owen, previously unexposed to anything Disney, remains unaware of the scores of ways to spend money in relation to the Disney brand. He didn’t even get to see the castle. Okay, so maybe I was the one who wanted to see it. It poured the whole time we were there. We were absolutely drenched just about every other time we went outside. Fortunately, Owen did not seem to mind just chilling in the hotel room. The one Disney related thing we did-walking through Downtown Disney (F-R-E-E)-ended in a downpour as well. Of course, we got as far from the car as possible first. Fortunately, after that debacle, we found a Giordano’s Pizza. Booyah! I had no idea they were anywhere other than Chicago.
Zach’s presentation went well, and on our last day in Orlando, we took a dip in the pool and a few runs down the “Jaguar Waterslide.” We got there right when it opened, and as I was waiting in line to go, all the little kids were asking me questions because they thought I worked there. Don't judge me kids. That slide was fun.


Then it started to rain. We stopped back in Tallahassee for the night, and then hit the road again after a leisure morning.

One of the better decisions we’ve made recently was to break up the trip home. We stayed in a new Holiday Inn, which apparently is no longer the shady accommodations of Snoop Dogg fame. The next day, we did need to stop in a field for a while, as Owen cried for an hour straight. With real tears and all. Don't be deceived by the following video, he now really, really hates his car seat.




I'm going to go tackle that laundry. Be prepared for another adorable video...