Ninja Birthday Party

It's only fitting that the year of the Ninja ended with a Ninja birthday party for Tavish and his friends. And the geek in me loves that the date of his party was 12/13/14.

Let the ninja training commence!

Even the little guy wanted to be a ninja! Which is not surprising, he watches most of Tavish's Tae Kwon Do classes and at home will hold on to a piece of furniture to balance himself and kick out his little leg and yell "hi-ya!"

Master Rhee taught these ninjas how to punch, kick and block.

They got to break boards.

Even the little guy!

Pizza and cupcakes when ninja training was done. And goody bags which were ever-so-distracting. The ninja-shaped lollipops were much more popular than the cupcakes I slaved over!

Six

I'm not really sure how this boy turned six already but he went and did it anyway. Whoever said the days are long but the years are short sure was right. Here's how Tavish's day started...

Fizbee the elf brought reindeer donuts for breakfast...Tavish doesn't look excited but it's more like he was soooo excited he got up too early and now he's really tired :) He did muster the energy to eat almost the entire plate of donuts himself.

Mom brought a Happy Meal and had lunch with Tavish at school. Tavish was very distracted by his crown which he wore all day and his classmates were distracted by the cupcakes I brought for their snack later.

The four of us went to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner and games...Tavish loves to play the games and I can only stand to go there on a weeknight when hardly anyone else is there. Then we had frozen yogurt with what looks like a pickle but is really a gummy worm.

Here Tavish is contemplating heavily the gift from Grandpa Wally and Grandma Marsha. As he put it "this is how a present is supposed to look!"  Apparently my present wrapping was lacking in his opinion this year.

Unwrapping is serious business, thank goodness little brother was here to help.

I think he liked it??!! 

Opening the gift from mom and dad, I dare not show the shoddy wrap job. But at least what was inside was totally acceptable...the much-coveted Gup-X!

Decking the halls...

More like decking the boy...Tavish was excited because the boys got to decorate their own tree in the dining room with colorful lights and decorations instead of the white lights and boring (silver and white) decorations that mom likes to have on the tree in the living room. And where was Paxton??? Napping...because he's more of an expert at undecorating.

Oh Tavish!

Tavish is running through the kitchen with a soup ladle behind his back, the ladle part of it over his bum..."look Mom! I have a fart-catcher!"

That will probably be very handy in this house.

Thanksgiving 2014

This year we were lucky enough to have two Thanksgiving dinners, and lucky enough for me, neither one included hospital turkey thanks to a little tweaking to my work schedule. 

Thanksgiving dinner #1 was a potluck dinner with Tavish's kindergarten class during lunch time. The kids were adorable, the parents were all shy at first...like it was our first day at school, and the food was actually pretty good. We brought the mashed potatoes :) And did you know the first Thanskgiving included juice pouches???

Our little Native American.

The official dinner at Auntie Lana's was awesome as usual...and I actually got to eat  with  everyone instead of warmed-up leftovers! All the boys had to take a turn with the turkey hat, starting with the biggest turkey...

And here's the littlest turkey.

Gratitude

We were having a little case of the grumpies around our house on Sunday and I thought this would be a great time to try making a gratitude tree. Luckily we had an empty box (thank you Amazon) to make the tree and lots of construction paper to make leaves (the yellow one looks a little suspicious). And just a sampling of what we are grateful for, see if you can guess who wrote what. And look at those cute turkeys Tavish made :)

Halloween 2014

The Halloween festivities started with a two hour early dismissal from school (yay!) which meant Tavish could go to the special Tae Kwon Do class they had to which the students could wear their costumes. The instructors were dressed up too...Master Rhee was a bottle of Sriracha sauce...and they had fun playing SuperMegaDodgeball and Dracula Says. They posed for a group photo at the end of class, and as you can see our little ninja is not happy...I accidentally bonked him on the head helping him adjust the hood on his costume. He soon perked up though because...hello, candy!!!

Next we headed over to Auntie Lana's for dinner, which was impatiently eaten, and trick-or-treating around her neighborhood. Little Frankenstein quickly got the hang of the whole thing after realizing if you say "treat" lots of nice people will put candy in your bucket. Black Ninja was a trick-or-treating pro and zoomed on ahead with dad while Little Frankenstein was making his rounds. Sometimes he would say "treat" back at the sidewalk and not at the door, he refused to let me carry his "punkin" and at one point all the candy was too much and he just sat down on the front stoop of one house and had to eat a "pop"...wrapper and all.

Ahhhh, punkin!

Everywhere we go Paxton notices the pumpkins that have been put out for Halloween and usually he says very excitedly "ahhh, punkin!" which is totally cute. The boys got to decorate some small pumpkins at a church around the corner from us and Paxton has lugged his poor punkin all over the house until the decorations fell off. After last year's rushed pumpkin carving affair (football was on) I really wanted to have another pumpkin carving party, we invited a few friends to come over and then the boys got sick, and then Rafal and I got sick and that nasty cold kicked our butts so we had to cancel our pumpkin party. Boo. It was the perfect sunny warm day for it too. Instead we stayed in our pajamas and carved in the sick zone.  

After checking out some pictures online, Tavish chose this silly face. Paxton's punkin is supposed to be a ghost, but every year there is one pumpkin that just doesn't turn out right and Paxton's was it this year.

Rafal chose to carve this crazy goblin which turned out great...so great Paxton couldn't leave the poor thing alone and he has suffered for it (the pumpkin not Paxton). Really he can't leave the tops on any of the pumpkins, except mine because I was tuckered out from carving both boys' pumpkins I never got around to carving mine. Everyday, after Tavish gets on the bus, Paxton has to stop and inspect then punkins on our way back in the house. Poor punkins!

Name Day

In Poland every day of the year has certain names, male and female, assigned to that day...hence every person has a Name Day that is usually more celebrated then your birthday. I asked Rafal why one time and he said everyone knows which day is your Name Day but no one remembers your birthday. So to celebrate Rafal's Name Day today I got him a special shirt :)
Partly because his favorite shirt "oh her...she's just a friend" is starting to look worn out and a little rough around the edges and partly because we still haven't gotten each other our birthday present. Happy Name Day Rafal!

Superstar

First month of school and Tavish earned the Student of the Month award...awesome job Tavish!

Apple Picking

Luckily for us, there are tons of farms not too far outside DC so this Saturday we headed out to do a little apple picking while the weather was so nice. Autumn truly is spectacular out here.

Tavish now has a fake smile for pictures which shows when he is posing. He is still cute though.

There are probably twenty pictures of Paxton eating apples while we are picking them...because that is how many apples he probably ate.

Tavish was excited to find this ladder left leaning against one of the trees...so up he went.

And because little brother wants to do whatever big brother does...up he went too.

It's so easy to fill up a big bag with apples! I kept saying we have enough but they kept picking!

I would love to say that this sweet picture shows how much these guys love to be together, which they do, but the reality is Paxton is actually trying to pull his hand away because he is mr. independent.

One more apple!

Raspberries were in season too so we headed over to another field to pick those too.

Paxton picking raspberries from the comfort of the wagon.

And the little orange and blue dot in front of the corn field is Tavish. We had a great time at the farm and went home and made salted caramel apple cake (superyummy!), apple hazelnut blondies (yum!) and crepes with Nutella and our raspberries. And we still had tons of apples left over!

Kindergarten

Here's my baby all grown up, ready for his first day of school. He picked out his own shirt...he liked it because it has lots of colors like a rainbow. And when asked what he wants to be when he grows up he answered "a soldier, a missionary, and a secret agent".

One of the most exciting things about school...riding the bus. Tavish has been asking about riding the bus to school for the past year. Lucky for us, because we live on such a busy street with no sidewalks, the bus has to pick him up right at our driveway. So here we are waiting....and then when the bus finally came, the bus driver said he only stopped because he saw us standing there and that he wasn't told to stop there. Argh! I had arranged for it last week with the bus company!

Since this was Tavish's first time going to school and riding the bus...as soon as he got on the bus, Auntie Lana and I hopped in the car and zoomed off behind it to make sure Tavish got to class okay. They have a system in place to specifically keep track of the kindergarteners getting on/off the bus and to/from class...but this is my baby and I had to know for myself (along with a million other moms)! Here he is sitting nicely at his desk. He seemed a little shy and overwhelmed so I suggested he introduce himself to the other kids at his desk and ask their names. He turned out to be sitting next to a boy named Brody...and they got separated within the week. The first day of school Brody was doing something a little naughty that made Tavish laugh "I tried not to laugh mom but I couldn't help it!" and they both got in trouble.

After we left Tavish at school, I made another phone call to the bus company...the morning driver hadn't gotten the memo about Tavish's stop before he left. Luckily, the afternoon driver did and here is our grown up boy returning home from his first day of school.