July 4th

And of course, what is 4th of July without the Hot Dog Eating contest?!  For those who missed it, Joey Chestnut won his 4th competition in a row, although he ate a measly 54 hot dogs and buns.

I love the weather forecast.

A caloric estimate based on Chestnut's results last year.  We met Joey Chestnut once.  We saw him eat in person at the Asparagus Festival in Stockton.  He ate about 8.5 pounds of deep fried asparagus in 10 minutes.  That man is a legend.

Visit with cousins

Noah's cousins Savannah and Kendra came to visit from Oregon so we went for a walk to the park.

Anyone remember the FlowBee?

Odd? Yes.

Noah's Artistic Side

Noah has been OBSESSED with the guitar lately. He just loves playing it. If he hears music on the radio, he'll call it a guitar.




He talks about it constantly and has even started pretending other things are guitars. Things that have been a guitar for Noah: this box from a flag, a flashlight, a wooden duck, the air, a picnic table, the conveyor belt divider at the grocery store checkout line, a small flag...




He also loves to dance. He has quite the variety of spinning/high stepping moves.

Howdy Sheriff!

Noah found this costume in a bag of things from his cousins. He had fun playing with it!

A trip to Trader Joe's

Helping Daddy push the cart.

Hiding in the "2 Buck Chuck" and making the checkers laugh.

Swing fun

Noah's eyes

Ok, I hope this isn't too creepy, but I was just thinking about how much Noah's eyes have changed and so I did an "eyes only" timeline to share.


4 months


5 months


9 months


11 months


16 months

They're no longer blue, but definitely not brown either. We're going with hazel for now.

Looking Spiffy

We went to a wedding.



Noah looked pretty cute.


He wasn't too sure, but didn't even try to take his tie off. And...who makes a clip on tie that is dry clean only?

Is there something in my hair?

Yogurt and Cheerio hair is all the rage in the Under 2 crowd.

Swimming!

He did pretty good. He was sort of in a funky mood leading up to swimming, so we weren't too sure, but he did smile quite a bit and loved to splash. Hopefully we'll make it out to swim more this summer. A bonus is we realized that by 5pm, most of the shallow end of the pool is shaded, so it's not like we have to swim in the beating sun!

Look what we found!

Not only does Noah share his cute inquisitive spirit here, he also shows off his new ability to make little two word sentences with "Bye-Bye Bee-bug". He just continues to amaze us.

World Cup Time!

Civic pride

Noah's new flag shirt.  He loves this thing.  He saw it in the store and Mommy was a softy and bought it for him (didn't hurt that it was only $4).  It's the first thing he's picked out for himself at the store.  He carried it around the store and proudly announced to everyone he saw "Flaaaaaaag!"  If you see him in it and ask what's on his shirt, he'll point to it and tell you the same.

Did you know Olivia ran a polling station for the election last week?  As inspector, she had to pick up the supplies a little early so we had a ballot box and 600 ballots in our house for awhile.  Also did you know that Contra Costa County had 16 different ballots in this election?  There were 8 in English and 8 in Spanish.  Crazy.

Friends

Noah and Alexander had a great time hanging out at their mommies' work.  Alex is about 10 months older than Noah.

 Catherine is another of Noah's friends and Noah had a fun time playing at her house.  This lovely two year old was saying bye to Noah as he got into his car seat.