fourth of July

Over fourth of July we had our first family vacation in Monterey! We stayed there for two nights and visited the aquarium and the wharf among other things.












Tobias had a blast at the aquarium, it was so fun!


























































One of Tobias' favorite things was seeing all the boats at the wharf. He thought it was so awesome, we had a really hard time getting him to leave!














Upon arrival T was a little intimidated by the dark "Outer Bay" exhibit. I think the fish swimming around the ceiling may have freaked him out a little...














But once I picked him up, he was fine.

Tobias Turned 2!

Tobias had a fun birthday! Family came over, including his Nana, Aunt, and cousins from Reno! His Uncle Eric even let Tobias sit on his new motorcycle!











Here's Kiernan, the party animal.















Here's T, Justin, and our Friend Amy, enjoying some chocolate cake.














Here's cousin Emily ejoying cake and nearly poking her eye out with a fork. She liked the cake so much she decided she should have "five pieces", but of course, she did not.









Here is our dear friend, Matty, serenading our other dear friend, Chris, on Tobias' new violin.















I wanted to get a picture of all the cousins together and this was the best I could do. So from left to right it's Niki(justin's sister) holding Sawyer who is ten months old, Judy (Nana) holding Rowdy who is also ten months old, Emily who is Two and a half, Tobias who is now 2, and me holding Kiernan who is four months. We had a crazy house full of babies, but it was fun!






Here is Sawyer. He has such a sweet face!














Here is tobias opening gifts













































Here is My brother holding Tobias' cousin, Rowdy.



























Here is Emily playing with balloons.




























Tobias favorite movie is Shrek so we had shrek plate and cups and napkins, we watched Shrek, and he even got a Shrek shirt!

June Pics

Here's some pics of Kiernan from June. He's 4 and half months old now. He can hold his head up pretty well when he has a back support and can reach out and grab objects. He can almost roll over and he can scoot around a little on his back, usually when I'm not looking :)






































Here's Tobias playing outside with the hose














This is Tobias with his new backpack he got for his birthday. I decided he was old enough to carry his own stuff now. he really liked the idea. He walked around talking about how "strong" he is!








Playing in the mud...good times.















One of Tobias' all time favorite things to do is play drums. He only had one real drum, but he made more out of a block bucket and a halloween bucket. We got him a new drum set for his birthday to replace the home made version, but he just added it to the ensemble! We may have a future rock star on our hands :)

Foodie Club

Something that Justin and I do almost every month is get together with some other couples that make up our "Foodie Club". We all love to cook gourmet food, eat gourmet food, and try new things. So we formed this group! We always pick a regional or ingredient theme and each couple makes a couple things to bring to dinner at the host's house. In June, our theme was Stone Fruits. In case you don't know what that is (I didn't), it's anything with a pit in the middle, or in some cases, the part that you eat is the pit in the middle (coconut, almonds). So we an awesome pistachio and goat cheese spread on toased bread for an appetizer, a fruit soup with tarragon ice (so amazing!), pork loin with mango salsa, mango shrimp, soy glazed almond grean beans, coconut rice, and grilled fruit. Then we topped it all off with coconut cheesecake with mango sauce. All the food was so awesome as usual!

















This is Peter and Nancy's beautiful back yard. They hosted our June meeting.