We realized this year that because of the way our summers play out, we’ll probably always do warm weather vacations with my parents and the holidays with E’s parents. That means that when we’re in Ohio it is probably always going to be cold, raining and/or snowing, and dark. We’ve made it our goal to find as much kid-friendly indoor stuff as possible. Luckily, Ohio KNOWS it is cold and dreary in the winter so they’ve made an effort to provide us with lots of options.

We visited the Richland Carrousel Park* on Monday I think. After a brief mix up with what time exactly they opened (11 am, not 10 am) we had a really fun time. A book of 50 ride tickets costs $35, so not only did all the kids (mine plus two cousins) get to ride as many times as they wanted, the grown ups got to ride too. By the end Caroline wasn’t even saying “JUST ONE MORE PLEEEEASE ONE MORE??” There were a few other people there at 11 am during school vacation but not a lot, so the kids got their pick of fun animals. It’s a really nice wooden carousel, not the ugly plastic kind we get at the local fair, which made ME like it a lot more even if the kids didn’t care.

I took way too many pictures, as usual. Between the huge windows and the lights on the carousel and the Christmas decorations still up I couldn’t stop myself.

*Their website and signs say “carrousel”. My spellcheck tells me that is not a work, and perhaps I mean “carousel”. I did, in fact, mean carousel, so I wrote carousel everywhere else in the post but I can’t do anything about their official name. According to the internet, that’s the French spelling. I guess Richland, Ohio was feeling pretty international.

We had a nice family Christmas at home, which is my favorite kind. Santa brought the kids a lot of great stuff plus E and I bought the kids a Disney Infinity so there was plenty to keep everyone busy all day (and hopefully for many many more days).

We walked to the 4:30 family service at our church. Caroline wore one of my Christmas dresses.

 Before bed we put out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer with a drawing Caroline made and put in an envelope she borrowed from church. Then we sprinkling the lawn with “reindeer food” that Caroline made at school (oats + glitter).

We open one present each on Christmas Eve.

And then we tried to get some photos in our matching jams.

And then after the kids went to bed SANTA CAME!

And then Christmas was chaos. With bacon and waffles.

It was a very Star Wars Christmas.

Caroline is SUPER excited about her first graphic novel.

Hey look! My blog is working again! It is no longer infected with vicious malware because my host company fixed it. Which is good, because I have literally no idea how that happened OR how to fix it. So here’s last week’s post, late but done.

Sunday:

Nutcracker

Very excited

Luke and Yoda

Monday:

Very scenic view of Groton Long Point

My UPS guy is very busy

Warrior baby

Tuesday:

Santa is delivering these to Linc and Caroline

Helping wrap presents, because babies should totally have scissors

Evan’s “can” sentence: “She can be a superhero”. THAT’S RIGHT SHE CAN.

Wednesday:

Seriously in love with my Rocksbox this time. I might keep the necklace.

This is their favorite game

Sleepy baby

Thursday:

That’s not my fairy!

Twinning

Fish girl

Friday:

Surprised face

Destroyer of worlds

Grown up cards night

Saturday:

Caroline really thought we should keep them

Polar Express train at bedtime = tired baby

But he woke up for the cookies and Santa

Three more days until Christmas and it’s currently 60 degrees outside. We might go to Boston on Christmas Eve because it will be warm enough not to bring coats for walking around. I’m still not complaining, because I am sure we’ll be burried in snow before spring.

The rest of my plans for this week include making fudge and cookies and letting the kids eat as many sweets as they want because Christmas. I love Christmas.

Welcome to Caroline’s Nutcracker Birthday Party! As always, this will be super long and picture heavy.

This is Caroline’s 5th birthday, which means it’s her last big everyone is invited party before we switch to family/special day/maybe a couple friends/sleepover parties. I can’t say she’s quite accepted that fact, since she told me today she wants an ice skating party next year, but I’m pretty happy I only have one kid to plan huge parties for (at least for the foreseeable future). I really do love throwing these huge birthday events but fall is my busy season for photography so doing a birthday on top of that is a tiny bit overwhelming.

With a December birthday and a daughter who has been in ballet for several years already, I’ve been dreaming of a Nutcracker Birthday party for a while. For those who haven’t been reading my blog for 5+ years, her previous themes were: Winter Sparkle Snowflake, Woodland Fairy, Princess and Mermaid. They were all really fun, but this year was the best.

I’m going to put in a page break after a couple of pictures because I just looked and I have 177 edited photos from the party and I’m going to have a hard time cutting that down to an acceptable number. I’ll round up sources at the end and link recipes in the food section, although a lot of the recipes are stuff I’ve linked for every party since her first (because I cannot have a party without thumbprint cookies).

Despite the fact that it is December in Connecticut, the weather was in the mid-60’s for her party. I would have done a lot more outside decorating if I had known the kids were going to spend ALL DAY in the yard or on the porch, but at least I got lights on the house and a couple of Nutcrackers for the planter boxes. I found those at Lowe’s. The sled and wreath are just my standard Christmas decor. It’s really nice that the first act of The Nutcracker is just a Christmas party, so all my decorations were already on theme.

Decor:

I made the wreath using Jill’s tulle wreath tutorial. Super easy and super cute, although glitter tulle is the fabric of the devil.

PINK five balloon from Party City.

Candy cane garland from Oriental Trading, who was kind enough to give me a party budget and send me some of my decor for free because they’re awesome and I am a very, very loyal customer.

Little house from Ikea, circa 2012

Christmas card holder made by my very talented husband. You can see a bunch of Caroline’s invites I used to fill it in until it gets full of holiday cards from friends. Those invites were done by the AMAZING Becca of Jumping Jax Designs. I cannot recommend her more highly – she is creative, talented and so fun. She turned my very vague ideas (“I’m doing sort of all the colors, but girly? And a little vintage? But not too cartoony, still classy. But good for a 5 year old?”) into the CUTEST invitations. The ballerina in the middle has red hair and glasses. I mean.

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It was 60 degrees the day after Thanksgiving this year, which made getting our tree much more pleasant than last year when it was 15 degrees. They also opened up the lower field of trees this year, the ones that had been growing for a looooong time now, so a) it only took 5 minutes to find a great tree and b) we accidentally bought a really really huge one.

We also managed to get a family Christmas card picture I was willing to have printed on 50+ cards to send to everyone I know. You would think that would be an easy task for an actual photographer, but the shoemaker’s children etc etc. I needed one for the family room gallery wall too, since poor Linc is sadly underrepresented. But I’m not posting the card picture until my cards go out. Luckily that will be REALLY SOON, because I took Minted up on their free addressing service and all but a handful of my cards will come addressed (I paid with my own real money but that’s an affiliate link, fyi). I can just slap a stamp on them and be done. Of course, the reason they do that is because now my address book is all typed into Minted and I’ll prooooobably use them again next year, even if they aren’t offering 20% off (which they are, right now, but not for long).

Linc REALLY loved the Christmas tree farm. I might take him back to walk around and take some pictures. If I’m feeling REALLY ambitious, I’ll take his Cozy Coupe and take a photo with a tiny tree tied on top. That would be so adorable it might be worth the effort.

Linc ran FULL SPEED towards the gator truck that collected our tree to take it back to the sales building

Best I could do. It was really sunny.

You know what, I don’t even care if Caroline isn’t looking, this is perfect.

And this is MUCH more accurate.

Almost ordered this one for the wall instead of the one where you can see all the faces.