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.

Little Slugger

Tavish just finished a week of baseball camp. I figured with a dad who didn't grow up with baseball and a mom who hasn't played since elementary school he probably needed a little help learning. He had a great time and we got lucky with the weather...usually this is one of the hottest weeks of the year but on the second day it cooled off to the low 80's so it was tolerable to be out on the field. Of course when I showed up early to watch him play on his last day he was at second base building a dirt pile on the base and not paying attention to the game whatsoever. Money well spent :)