Ashlyn's First Trick-O-Treat Experience

Just wait till she is old enough to realize we made her wear a Chicken Suit. Hee...Heee...!
The evening began with a wonderful phone call from Daddy Dennis letting me know he got off early and was headed home to wait for us. We had planned to take Ashlyn Trick-O-Treating but did not have solid plans for dinner or which houses we wanted to hit first. Once I got home I was cranky and exhausted from work while Daddy was on a sugar high ready to cruise the streets with his baby girl for Trick-O-Treating 101. We decided we would try a new place to eat, a place we've been curious about Shima Japanese Restaurant for an entertaining Teppan Grill experience. When it started to get dark outside at about 7pm we hopped in the car and headed toward the restaurant where we parked the car and then walked to a couple houses nearby to knock on their doors. Ashlyn acted like a pro, yelling "hey kids" to the others Trick-O Treating as she ran behind them towards the front door of each house. We hit about six houses and then went to Shima to have some yummy cookin'. When we arrived at the restaurant and sat down Ashlyn was solely interested in pulling out the candy from her pumpkin and opening up any one of the packages, but "Party Poopers" (mommy and daddy) decided she would be better off not having any candy for the night so we just let her play with the candy packages and then Daddy taught her how to use the candy boxes as building blocks which kept her busy until the chef started his dinner presentation. The food was yummy and best of all the usually crowded restaurant was empty since it was Halloween Night. After dinner we headed to Grandma Denise's House to show off the Chicken Suit and then headed home to conclude our night. It was a very fun night. Definitely memories to cherish!
-Nicole

da mad hatter

Feb 2007
Ashlyn in her GOOOFY hat

This post is a little late, but we had so much fun dressing Ashnic up in different hats we had to share. We went to Downtown Disney for an afternoon to shop around and expose Ashlyn to how marketing is done right (Disney). We had a blast at the Lego store and can't wait 'til she's old enough to play with them

Check out the slide show here...

Some Catching up to do....

OK..OK..OK...I've been harassed enough by (Daddy Dennis) long enough, I apologize to all for neglecting our family blog. I promise to work on my non-procrastination skills so that I can keep our loved ones up to date on our current events. We have done so much since the last time I blogged I don't know where to start.

Recent Movies we've seen:
Borat -Hilarious, Must See! (A+)
Knocked Up -Hilarious, Must See! (A+)
Ratatouille -Great for Kids and Culinary Students (B)
In the Valley of Elah -Very Real Story, Depressing Realities (A)

June Events:
*Red Bull Illume Exhibit- A very cool art exhibit on the sand. We enjoyed a night out on main street in HB with Mom, Jenna and Scott.

*My Love Dennis bought me Gwen Stefani concert tickets for my 30th Birthday. I went with my cousin Regina and it was an amazing show. We absolutely love that woman!

*We moved into a new townhouse in Costa Mesa, CA. Now Ashlyn has her own room, Daddy has a garage and mommy has her very own Washer & Dryer to do laundry. We are all very happy here! Please come visit us.

July Events:
*We took a Family Summer Vacation to the San Bernardino Mountains for the 4th of July weekend. We were very excited to get away from our daily stress and we were very fortunate to be able to stay at Aunt Darla's cozy cabin in Running Springs, CA (just above Lake Arrowhead). We spent lots of family time together mixed with lots of relaxation time. On one of our days there we drove up the road about fifteen minutes to Green River Lake where we enjoyed hanging out in the sun while Ashlyn played in the green lake water and Dennis caught some fish. At the end of our vacation we arrived back home and decided to spend a day of fun in the sun at the beach (HB/22nd street) with Scott, Jenna, Andrew, lil' Nicole, Carl, Regina, and Santino.

August Events:
*We took an End of the Summer Vacation Trip to Laughlin, NV with our cousins Carl and Regina and their family. We had a blast on Uncle Ruben's jet ski's and hung out in the ice cold refreshing river water as we enjoyed ice cold beer in the 114 degree heat. On the way there we stopped at the Barstow Outlets to do a little shopping at Quicksilver and The Coach Store. We also enjoyed lots of yummy buffets at the hotels. Ashlyn did surprisingly well in the hot hot heat and really loved the river water! It was a really great time. Oh yeah, and Carl scored some new Reef Flip Flops at the river!

September Events:
*Ashlyn and Mommy went to Knott's Soak City with the very fun loving Barajas family for Labor Day weekend. We had a great day floating along the lazy river and relaxing by the kiddie area watching Ashlyn and Santino play for hours. The weather was perfect, and the park was not too overcrowded and best of all Ashlyn got a shimmering tan. We ate juicy ten dollar hamburger meals from the snack stand that we waited an hour in line to buy, but boy were they worth the wait. They were yummy to our tummy's. I think we all had a very fun filled day.

*Cousin Caleb's 2nd B-day Party. Ashlyn beats on the pinata for the first time! Fun times for all the cousins.

*Mommy gets a new job, back to The Art Institute of California-Orange County , but this time in Student Accounting.

*Daddy Quits Smoking for good, thanks to a miracle prescription.

October Events:
*Mommy, Grandma Denise and Auntie Jenna took Ashlyn to see her favorite purple Dinosaur "BARNEY" live on stage today at the OC Fairgrounds KidsFaire Family Expo. She did not take a morning nap so she was pretty sleepy throughout the entire event, but luckily she made it through to see "the show" and lots of other cartoon characters she couldn't stop hugging. It was so adorable. It makes me so proud to see what a loving and compassionate little person she is. As we were leaving she finally crashed and fell asleep right in mommy's arms. Hopefully, we will get to go again next year.

Long time, no post...

ashnic
Originally uploaded by dwinn

Yes, it's been forever since we have posted anything. My apologies, but we will have to rely on my beautiful wife Nicole to keep our family blog updated as I have been banned from uploading photos from our digital camera.

We have plenty of pictures to upload and many a things we have done since our last entry. Hopefully Nic will get a chance to catch us up on all. In her defense she is working two jobs and spends every spare moment she has taking care of our baby Ashnic and me. And whatever energy may be left is devoured by our friends and family. I will try and show her an easy way to catch up on one post and upload all our images to our flickr account.

In the meantime I have started my own blog at http://www.denniswinn.com to keep friends and family up to date with what I'm doing: mostly about my work and current projects, what's happening around the net, peppered with some pro sports predictions.

So how did I hijack a picture for this post? I took it using my Apple iPhone, emailed it myself and uploaded through flickr. Yes, Ashlyn has grown a ton since our last upload! But this shot is especially special for me since I got to play the role of costume designer and hairdresser for this shoot while mommy was busy at work.