Noah is 2 years old!

Our little man turned two on March 6th! The weekend before his birthday we celebrated with family, his grandparents, aunt and uncle and cousins, at Red Robin. His cousin Jonathan's birthday is one week after his so we celebrated both. We didn't get a pic of it but Noah really enjoyed it when they sang to him at the restaurant.

Here he is contemplating a long nap after an adventurous afternoon.

The next week, on his actual birthday, his grandma Barbara had us over for a birthday dinner. Noah's favorite part was the cupcake.

Can life possibly get better than this??

And here is the yearly comparison pic we take with his bear. The pic on the left was taken a week after Noah was born and the one on the right on his birthday. Same bear in both pics!

Though Noah turning two was the highlight of March, he did experience a big first in February; his first snow! He loved it and I had to literally bribe him with hot cocoa to get him to come inside to warm up and dry out.

At first, Noah didn't know what to think of the white stuff coming down.

But it didn't take him long to start enjoying himself.

Noah also had fun for 10 weeks in a swim class. Here's some pics of him and daddy in the pool.

And finally, a pic of Noah and daddy in their Beaver gear!

That's it for now. We will update again soon, hopefully before the end of 2011....

Love, The Merrell's

Halloween, Thanksgiving & Christmas, 2011 Here We Come!

We have lots to catch up on so here we go! We will start with October and work our way up to the new year.
This was Noah's first Halloween where he could participate so we tried to do some fun things with him this year.

We went to a friend's pumpkin patch so Noah could pick out his very own pumpkin.

After choosing his pumpkin he decided to gaze thoughtfully at the blue sky and wonder why in the world his parents were making him crawl through the dirt to pick out a squash.

Noah as Winnie the Pooh for Halloween. We borrowed an outfit from Noah's buddy Hunter who was too big for this costume last year. Noah is 20 months old wearing a 9 month size Halloween costume! When is this kiddo going to spurt???

He's not too sure about this whole costume thing.

Once we told Noah we were taking him to a Harvest Festival where he could play games and win candy he was all right with the whole costume thing.
Noah also started walking right around Halloween, which was great. We have actually enjoyed having him finally walking rather than crawling everywhere. Here's a video of him at Halloween practicing.

We got the opportunity to get some fun family pictures taken in October so here are some of those.

It was a lot of fun getting our photos taken! The photographer drove us around Downtown Portland for about 4 hours just stopping at random places and took great shots.

Noah is our little dancing fiend and has been known to dance to the smallest amount of music, even a clock chiming. Well, we discovered that he really likes the theme song to "King of The Hill", a show on TV. He doesn't care about watching the show, he just likes the opening song. So, we thought we would share a video of how he reacts when the theme song comes on.

Over Thanksgiving our good friend Julia Miller stopped by for a visit with her adorable daughter Gretchen. Noah was smitten with Gretchen and immediately ready for hugs but she remained cautious. Her parents should be proud! They won't have to worry about her in high school. Now our son on the other hand, well, we need to talk to him about not being so forward. We didn't manage pics of the hug but here's a couple of them eating lunch together.

 

We picked up our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving (mommy just could not wait) so we took Noah to our friends who have a Christmas tree farm. Noah seemed a bit confused as to why we were cutting down a tree but he went along with it.

December was a whirlwind! It seemed we had something every weekend but we still managed to take Noah out to see Christmas lights and visit with friends. He loved this place we took him to near Colton that has thousands of lights but also an entire Christmas village with trains. He stood staring at the trains for about 30 minutes saying "choo, choo" over and over until we were so cold we had to carry him away.

You can see in this last picture that Noah was not happy with us for dragging him away from the choo choo!

Christmas morning was fun this year. Noah still wasn't all that interested in opening presents. Once the first one was opened he was fine to play with that and forget the rest so we put some away for his birthday and opened others over the next few days.

And finally, January. Noah has been into hats so it seems that a lot of pictures we get of him, he's wearing a hat. Here's some pictures from the month of January so we are caught up!

 Noah put on a hat and started dancing down the hallway, so I snapped some pictures.

                                    

Out at dinner with friends. Noah wanted to wear his driving cap, his favorite hat ever.

Noah and his mommy visited a friend's farm. He didn't seem all that interested in the horses, rabbits and cats, he just loved throwing hay everywhere and climbing hay bales.

                                              

Wow, I found a couple pictures of Noah without a hat!

                                              
And now it's time to wrap it up until next time. Noah turns 2 on March 6th so hopefully we will have an update around then. God bless!

17 months old already?

Okay, we admit that we are TERRIBLE at updating our blog! There, we said it. Now we can get to the fun part. Noah turned 17 months old on August 6th during his 2nd camping trip ever. He really enjoyed himself!! He got to play in the dirt, eat dirt, and wear dirt for 3 days!

Noah is practically running now (while holding onto furniture) but still refuses to walk on his own so his crawling skills are amazing. He is lightning fast and gets into everything.
He is still pretty small, about the average size of a 12 month old, but we are not worried. Actually, if they ever do a re-make of The Wizard of Oz when he's an adult he may be a shoo-in for a munchkin! So we are holding out for that.

Here's a bunch of pics from the last few months. We have been busy!

Bathtime!

In May, we met a group of college friends in Corvallis for a day of disc golf. Actually, the boys played disc golf while the girls pushed strollers and visited.

We managed to get all the kids posed for a picture and none of them were crying! Top (left to right): Elijah Miller, Joseph Johnson. Bottom: Lucia Johnson, Noah.

A couple weeks later we were back in Corvallis for a family trip to see a Oregon State Beavers baseball game. Here we are in the Omaha room in front of the trophies the Beavers won for being National Champions 2 years in a row.


Noah and daddy watching the game. The Beavers won!!


Yet again another baseball game, this time at the Portland Beavers. The Beavers won this game too. Daddy is going to make sure this kid likes baseball!

Noah enjoys hamming it up for the camera.

In June we met with family at Cannon Beach for a few days of sun and relaxation. This was Noah's first experience in sand and he loved it.

Noah with his cousins, Jonathan and Lauren.

Here's the whole family posing for a picture in the house we stayed in.


We met up with some friends at a restaurant for lunch and Noah just loved our friend Georgene so we had to post the picture. He got a kick out of her when she played "drums" with spoons.

We went camping a week ago, which was Noah's 2nd camping trip. Here he is crawling everywhere.

Playing with the wishy-washy game. We had to give him his own set so the adults could get through a game!

A nice clean bath next to the campfire.

That's it for now. Hopefully we will get a post done for Halloween or maybe Christmas!