It's beginning to look a lot like...

Seattle, actually...

This isn't snow it's rain...
Grandma Pat is visiting and we wanted to take her to see the lights at the Temple, tonight was the only night we could go so of course it rained...mom felt right at home :) and it actually turned out great because rain=no crowds.

The view of the Temple is beautiful but if you turn around and look back, this one is pretty awesome too...

We checked out the outdoor Nativity...I'm sure the wise men wore galoshes...

Then we checked out the Nativity collection in the Visitor's Center...here's the one from Poland.



and South Africa wins the prize for coolest animals in their Nativity...I think that's a warthog in the front!

An Outing...

While Grandma Pat was here we took her to my favorite holiday display in DC...the Botanical Gardens, every year there is a different theme with little trains running through it, this year was animal and fairy houses...these are a few of my favorites...



















And for some reason, although Tavish can spot the actual Washington Monument miles away, he couldn't find this one right in front of his nose...

Gratitude

Coincidentally, Tavish ate his last piece of Halloween candy on Thanksgiving. Today, while we were driving in the car, he asked if we could go to church to get some more Halloween candy (where we had trick-or-treating)...

Me: it's not Halloween time anymore buddy, it's Thanksgiving time.
Tavish: Thanksgiving time?
Me: remember the big dinner you had at Auntie Wana's house yesterday? It's so you can remember what you are thankful for...what are you thankful for?
Tavish: ummm, water (he's holding his cup of water)
trucks
cars
buses
stop signs
popcorn (he's eating popcorn)
towers...they get knocked down and you fix them (we're driving past a tower)
signs (we're driving past a bunch of them)
cupholders (he's putting his popcorn in the cupholder of his carseat)
Christmas trees (we're driving past some)
Me: I'm thankful for the sunshine and the beautiful day
Tavish: (excited) I'm thankful for the beautiful day too! And you like carrots!

there you go...we are thankful!

oh Tavish...

I'm putting Tavish to bed last night, we read books, cuddle, say good night and I turn out the light...
Tavish: my eyeballs are turned on but I can't see!
Me: oh Tavish...

Thanksgiving 2011

The feast...looks good Auntie Wana and Uncle Joe!

Note the empty chair in the front...that's mine...I got to spend the day in the OR removing foreign objects from parts of people's bodies where they didn't belong.

Guess who the turkey is here?
Answer: not the actual turkey.
This is Tavish's "time out" face (per him)...we see it a lot.

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.