Festival Fun

The clouds that have been hanging around the last week finally parted today so Tavish and I took advantage of the sun and headed over to the McLean Festival to see how our rich neighbors have fun...

Tavish was in little boy heaven because he got to "drive" a fire truck.

He did such a good job he got his own fireman hat which he wore to Trader Joe's later...

We waited in the slowest line ever to get a balloon turtle bracelet which he also wore to Trader Joe's later...

Then he got swallowed up by a giant octopus (which he says "oddopos")...

...but because we play pirates at home he knew how to escape swashbuckle-style.

We finished off our day with Tavish's first pony ride (pardon the pic-I had to take it one-handed while holding the boy on a moving pony)

Girls Night

Last night Uncle Thad took some time off from the craziness at the White House to have boys night with Tavish so Erika and I could have a girls night out. She introduced me to Shirlington, a cute little neighborhood where we had dinner and talked and talked and talked...about boys.

Mormon Mecca

Having not grown up in Utah (thank you mom and dad), Rafal and I had never heard of Cafe Rio. But our friends Brett and Shelby did and kept telling us how great Cafe Rio was. And how one was going to be opening up soon in Maryland. Well it's finally here, and they invited us along tonight for our first taste of Cafe Rio. As soon as went got inside it was like we were transported to Utah...Mormons everywhere. Order the salad with pork Brett and Shelby told us...so we did. And man is it good. I really should have been paying attention when they ordered two extra dinners to take home as leftovers. I'm usually pretty averse to Mormon trends, but this is one I think I'm going to have to jump on board with...I'm already trying to figure out when we can go back.

Uncle Tom

Uncle Tom is gone.
Not in the dearly departed way but in the back to Poland way.
We took him to the airport on Wednesday...Tavish said he wanted to go to Poland too. He often says he wants to ride on an airplane (or a "cool"bus *schoolbus*, a motorcycle, a metrobus, a metrotrain, etc....) but this time he specifically stated he wanted to go to Poland.

Here he is helping Uncle Tom with his luggage.

This picture may look like all he did was lounge around on the patio he built on his last visit...but actually, even though he was here for a month, we really didn't get to see much of him. He was busy working the whole time and when he was at home he was busy building a sandbox for Tavish and whipping our yard into place...he probably mowed the grass 38 times in 4 weeks :)


But not to worry...at the airport Tom told me he took the house key with him this time and I might just come home one day to find him here!

Mother's Day

So the couple of nights leading up to Mother's Day were pretty rough...which left me feeling like motherhood in general is pretty over-rated. Then I got some sleep and a break on Sunday (Tavish only wanted Rafal most of the day) and I decided it's not so bad and maybe worth celebrating...

Auntie Wana and Uncle Joe came over and cooked us dinner...they even brought a new grill because they couldn't stand to cook on our who-knows-how-old-with-a-giant-rusthole charcoal grill that came with the house...

Hawks joined us for dinner on the patio.

Tavish ate 3 bites of dinner but had 4 red velvet cupcakes that Grandpa Santa made...and he would had more but we had to cut him off (you have to set limits, right?)

They say time goes so fast when you have kids...it sure does, look Rico Suave is asking for the keys to the car already!

Thank you everyone for a relaxing evening together!

Pillow Talk

Rafal was off being a soldier again this past weekend and I haven't seen him for four days...he gets home in the middle of the night last night and crawls into bed with me...I roll over to give him a squeeze and he says "we killed bin Laden" and rolls over..."that was really romantic" I say..."we need to remember it" he replies, rolls back over and falls asleep...so I'm remembering it...

Potty Training

Potty training so far has not been really focused and mostly just when Tavish expresses interest, which has resulted in some of this:


Sometimes it's a lot of goofing around and sometimes there are successes....
Today at church, out of the blue, Tavish says to me "I want to go potty", I kind of blew him off at first because I thought he was just trying to go out in the hall to play, but then he repeated it. So off to the bathroom we go...he sat right on the toilet and BAM! he peed. Man I hope the rest of potty training is this easy...