Joe’s mom (the boys call her Amah) sent this story to us after they babysat the boys this week. I love it.
“While in Vancouver, I saw this cute pastry shaped like a banana, and it has big lettering: BANANA on it. I bought a box of two for Noah and Ollie.
To let Noah practice his alphabet, I said, "Noah, what does it say?"
Noah ran his pointer through the letters, and read without hesitation, "not a hot dog".
(Joe took this picture by the way. Pretty great, huh?)
Well…our baby is 2. We did not have a party this year (if you can believe that….yes, I have restraint). But I did make a cake and we had a very small celebration with Ollie’s friends, Rusty & Max.
Ollie loves frogs and turtles, so he got a frog cake and I splurged on the huge mylar turtle balloon. He loved it, but not as much as the goldfish, which was his ‘big’ gift.
We asked the boys what they wanted to name mr. fish. First, Noah suggested “Bakkak†(i have no explanation for that), next was “Trainsianâ€â€¦interesting, then Noah adamantly suggested Nemo. Well…he actually ‘told’ us his name was Nemo. We argued and said he doesn’t even look like Nemo…well, Noah won. So, our fish has the incredibly ‘unique’ name of Nemo. Lovely. 🙂
Here are some random pictures from a trip to Portland in January.
Casey (Amy’s cousin) and Anne (Amy’s grandmother) 
Uncle Casey’s bar 
Taken on September 15, 2007. Look at him go!
(In case you were wondering, the clanging sound is Noah playing the cymbals in the background.)
Ollie had a blast at his birthday party! His favorite parts were playing with balloons, eating Cocoa Puffs off of his cupcake, and hearing everyone sing happy birthday to him.
(By the way, there were lots of other kids there. We’re generally careful not to post pictures of other people’s children, out of respect for their privacy.)
Grandma Mary Ann came up for a nice long visit, and brought cousins Nick and Alyssa along. It was pretty crazy having four kids around, but they all got along great.
We finally took our first trip into British Columbia, and luckily it was for a wonderful occasion–my cousin Aisha’s wedding. A lot of Cheng family members were able to make it, so it was basically a mini family reunion for us as well.
Aisha and Scott.
Apparently Noah found his train more interesting than the lifelong commitment Aisha and Scott were making to each other.
This was the closest we could get to a family photo.
Brothers. From left: Wei-Chih (9), Carl (5), Wei-Tih (4, my dad), Smiley (3, father of the bride).
The cousins and their ladies. From left: Dagmar (1.1+), Mike (1.1), Joe (4.2), Amy (4.2+), Jon (4.1), Aarti, Adam (3.1), Natalie.
Me and Jon. (The downside of the beautiful sunny weather was massively overexposed backgrounds all day.)
Ollie and Mike.
Jon and Ollie.
Amy took this one. They line up for a picture… so she goes behind them. I love that.
My mom and Ollie.
Noah was a ridiculous dancing machine during the reception. We had to forcibly remove him, kicking and screaming, from the dance floor at 11PM.
