Livin' the Life!

MJ has certainly been livin' the good life lately!  Not sure if it's the summer time or the feeling of he won't be our only child for long so we are just really savoring him, or maybe a combination of both, but we've enjoyed some great quality time with him lately!! 

As much as I could do without the cold and snow ALL WINTER LONG, I really love this area in the summer time!  There is so much to do and always something going on (and much of it all for free)!  Two weekends ago, we heard of a car show that was taking place in Galena.  Galena is just about a 20 minute drive over to Illinois and one of our favorite spots.  As much as MJ is in love with cars lately, we figured he would love just riding around in his stroller and checking out all the cars...which he did! 

Of course he loved all blue cars best!  I thought he might want to run around and touch all the cars, which is of course off limits, but he was quite the happy camper just riding around in his stroller checking out all the neat cars. 

The following weekend was Dubuque's RiverFest.  It's an annual festival down near the riverfront of Dubuque that has concerts, food, DockDogs competition, etc.  We hadn't been before, but I was looking forward to checking it out this year.  Chicago was one of the bands performing, and Mat and  I both LOVE them, but we never did purchase tickets or line up a sitter.  Part of that had to do with that it was same day of our doctor appointment. Pessimistic me was worried that we might not be able to make it to RiverFest had we received bad news earlier that day.  Luckily it wasn't the case though, and although we didn't stick around for the concert later in the evening, it was still quite a perfect evening.  We celebrated our good news as a family by attending RiverFest and MJ was quite excited to a big Lightning McQueen.  For those of you not privy to the car world, Lightning is the main character in the Disney movie Cars, which MJ happens to adore!  He plays with his cars, especially Lightning McQueen, all day long, so seeing the "real thing" was pretty impressive to a two year old!

Way too excited to actually look at the camera! 

Next up was Lightning McQueen's trailer which was chalked full of Cars goodies...clothes, stickers, table/chairs, posters, pennants, etc. etc.  MJ just stood there with his jaw hanging open just looking at all the goodies!  I tried to take a pic, but again he was way too excited to pause and smile for me!

In Cars heaven!

He even got to ride in a real race car for a simulated race! 

Later that evening, we watched the DockDogs competition.  I'd never heard of DockDogs before moving here, but apparently it's a national thing.  It's basically competitions for dogs that measures the length they can jump into a pool.  It all seemed to be in good fun and was pretty humorous!  MJ once again was in heaven.  He sat like such a big boy on the bleachers eating his nachos and sipping on his juice. 

We hardly heard a peep from him, but after each dog he would ask for more!  He loved watching each and every dog.  They come here for competitions at least a couple times a year, so I imagine it will be something he continues to enjoy!

Great family fun to kick off our summer!  Mat has been teaching summer school and I've been working a lot more hours during June as we have a literacy camp at Loras, but we've been making great use of our time on the weekends.  Looking forward to lots more summer memories to come!