Older and Wiser

I finally have figured out how to upload pictures from the new camera, so now we can catch up a little....first of all Rafal turned 36! (I almost forgot and said 35!) I'm always excited for Rafal's birthday because for the almost six weeks between my birthday and his, he is six years younger than me instead of five and I hate it! So it's always a relief to get him back to only five years younger :)

This year we pried him away from working on the Broken House (to differentiate from the Apartment House...very confusing to have two houses) and headed out to Cox Farms for some pumpkin patch fun! It was a sunny, warm day which feels kind of wrong for a fall activity but at least it's not raining...

We hit up the hayride first...this is one of the few pics of the birthday boy on his birthday. His first requirement for the day was kettle corn.

Here is how Tavish interacts with animals...."Hewwo pig!" (said very loud)...pig turns head and snorts at him...Tavish jumps back...mom laughs. He is still a little gunshy with the larger animals ever since the "horse incident" earlier in the summer.

They had rope swings this year so Rafal and Tavish tried them out...Tavish just sort of slid off but Rafal caught some air on his turn.





This would make an excellent time out chair if we could get it to fit in the apartment...it would get a lot of use.






One of Tavish's favorite thing this year was the free apple cider.







Of course you can't go to a farm without riding a tractor...this year Tavish rode the red one because he will tell you his favorite color is red (although we all know it really is pink). We didn't have the freaking out episode this year when it was time to get off the tractor like last year...no, he saved that for the dinosaur slide when he got to the top where we couldn't reach him and he refused to either slide down or climb down the ladder and just stood there blocking everyone else and screamed so much it scared the other kids who wanted to go on the slide. Anyways...back to the tractor...this picture reminds me of the scene in Footloose where Wren is forced into playing a game of chicken on the tractors and his shoelace gets caught on the gear shift which ultimately makes him win...see the resemblance?!





And this is how I feel pretty much after every outing with the boy...the little one, not the big one.


Rafal's only request for his birthday was for Lana (aka Auntie Wana) to cook him dinner...so of course Lana and Joe grilled up an awesome shish kebab dinner and invited the East Coast grandparents over to hang out and celebrate.
Happy Birthday Rafal!