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!