Progress

Uncle Tom is back so the reno train is going at full speed...


Where you once had to walk through the house balancing on floor joists over bare dirt, surrounded by half walls, there is now this...




Where there once was a drafty nine-paned window from the 1950's, there is now this...




Where there once was a hole in the middle of the guest room floor where Rafal fell through the rotted wood, there is now this (complete with a new Polish roommate)...




Where there once was a cement slab and the exterior of the house, there is now this (with granite countertops to boost!)...




But my favorite new feature of the house is this...can you guess what it is???
Look close...
Heated floors in the main bathroom! I hate cold feet!

Trick-or-Treat

Halloween was a lot more fun this year because Tavish is starting to get it...this was the first year he had a definite opinion about his costume. I had wanted him to be a dinosaur or a dragon, but he caught me looking at costumes online one day and saw this robot costume and that was it...he wanted to be this robot. Every time I asked him for the next six weeks what he wanted to be for Halloween he would say a robot, specifically the one he saw on Auntie Sarah's TV (we don't have a desktop computer so he thought hers was a TV). Of course the last week or so before Halloween when I asked him what he wanted to be he would say random things like applesauce.




Here we are trunk-or-treating at church...it snowed that day so it turned into chair-or-treating in the gym. They set up chairs in a big circle in the gym and each family set up their trick-or-treating station and all the kids went around the circle collecting their goods. Tavish got really excited seeing all the different costumes and when I tried to take him around trick-or-treating he would get distracted by the candy and want to stop at each place and eat the candy right then and there. The only picture I could get of him was with his BFF Brett.




After the trunk-or-treating we headed over to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum for their "Air and Scare" celebration which would have been fun if it wasn't 7pm by then and Tavish was hopped up on candy and always ends up running around screaming because it's such a big place. Here he is discovering, much to his mother's disappointment, that the OFF button on his costume doesn't actually work...




The big day...every robot needs a "swinky" in one hand...we trick-or-treated around our apartment complex then headed over to Auntie Wana's...she and Sadie trick-or-treated with us, then we hit up Brett and Shelby's and Grandpa Santa...back home to bed, and mom and dad are enjoying the fruits of his labor.

Sick

Or, the First Cold of the Season

I was hoping it wouldn't hit this early but the babysitter's son got sick, so she got sick, so Tavish got sick. It started on Saturday with the cute little raspy voice that became a not so cute little cold...

Monday morning he woke up and said "my mouf hurts, I need a bandaid"... I had to convince him I couldn't put the bandaid inside his mouth but after it came off he said "it feels better now". Then after his nap he woke up and his voice was almost gone (with didn't last quite long enough!) and he said surprised "hey, where'd my voice go?"

Now we are just in the whiny, grumpy phase.
I hope it ends soon...

Pumpkins!!!

The countdown to Halloween is on! Almost every day there is some sort of drama related to the lack of treats in Tavish's Halloween pumpkin. I guess we should have waited a little longer to prep him for Halloween because a few weeks is eternity when you are two. But this weekend was pumpkin carving! First we had to go pick some out...

Bart really should have said "boy are these pumpkins expensive!" Next year will be the $6 pumpkins at Trader Joe's.


Tavish was very engaged as you can see...both boys were being a little ADD, it ended up with me almost yelling "pick a damn pumpkin!"...almost.


We carved them Sunday night, Rafal got really into it, Tavish just wanted to play with the little carving tools...he spent approximately two minutes "helping" me carve his pumpkin. But look how proud he is...


Can you guess who carved which pumpkin?
For some reason, the candle in Rafal's "masked bandit" isn't very bright.
This was the first time I had ever used a template and I like how the haunted house turned out. I'll probably use one again because I definitely have not inherited my dad's mad pumpkin carving skills.

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!

The Apartment House

We're still getting settled in to our apartment...almost every day I find something new that we don't have anymore that we need. But we are enjoying the lack of responsibility that comes with apartment living...

Our townhouse is the second to the last on the right...the arched doorway. It faces a courtyard that has a little playground near the parking lot...perfect. Except when you have to carry a sleeping 40lb kid from the parking lot all the way to the apartment.

This is what might greet you at our door. The mail slot is one of the exciting features of the apartment... Tavish loves to check out what's going on outside.

Here's one of Tavish's favorite indoor activities...pantless dishwashing.

There are lots of fun things to do outside...chasing the resident black squirrel, jumping in puddles when it rains, and balancing on the curb.

Playing with the fire hydrant in the parking lot.

Hunting for treasures in the yard...today we found lots of pretty colored berries,we threw them in the bushes for the birds.

And at the back of the complex, right around the corner from our courtyard, is the most exciting thing...koparkas!

Today was exciting because one of the drivers came over and offered to give Tavish a ride sometime on the weekend.

Gutted

Pretty much sums it up...