Look, I realize this is the THIRD post this week that’s basically just photos of my family doing holiday stuff. But guys, I got my Christmas cards mailed today. I also made candy cane fudge, lemon tea cookies, three kinds of hot chocolate stir spoons, sparkle cookies and a batch of sadly misshapen mouse cookies. PLUS I hosted a playdate and got the kids their flu shots. So between now and January 1 the blog is going to be 90% photos (as opposed to the rest of the year when it’s 75% photos) so I can get real life stuff done and have a magical holiday.

The Norwich Winter Parade goes almost down my street – if you look up the hill in some of these photos you can see my green house in the background – so we go every year, even in the cold and/or rain. Luckily this year it wasn’t cold, even though it was wet, so we had a pretty good time. It is a very small-town type parade with lots of super random stuff – Elsa! A giant bicycle! LOTS of fire trucks!) – but they throw candy and my kids and their friends will sit in the rain for candy all day.

On Sunday we went to Trees in the Rigging, which is a community parade and carol sing in Essex, followed by a boat light parade. It is also very small town and adorable, but in a extremely well-off, old-money, New Englandy way. Essex is beyond charming and we love to spend time there, so it was really fun. Plus the weather was great and we met some more friends and my kids absolutely loved both the singing and the waving.

My pictures are not the best – it was really dark and we were walking and no one wanted to stop to let me hold reeeeeeallly still for photo – but they’re very accurate to the experience. Plus Linc was dressed as a fox and Caroline was dressed as a reindeer, so.

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.

My photos this week are terrible because I used my actual camera so much I kept forgetting my phone. I promise to post a whole bunch (probably way too many) of those photos as soon as I finish my client editing.

Sunday:

Lincoln really loves Caroline

Pimp my Cozy Coupe

I caught craft herpes from glitter tulle

Monday:

Outlet shopping in style

Very important iPad work

I wore this baby so much this week

Tuesday:

My face is horrible, but Linc is waving goodbye to Target, because Target is our BFF

The pre-Christmas toy purge

Ballet waiting room selfie

Wednesday:

15 Month check-up

Poor Brutus misses his kids when they’re at school

Pie maker

Thursday:

Fascinated by the parade, AS THEY SHOULD BE

I escaped my family to photograph a brand new baby

My 8 lb turkey looks so sad on that huge plate

Friday:

Christmas Tree farm selfie

Dinner selfie

Walking home in the dark selfie

Saturday:

Early Christmas present

The dudes really like the new Star Wars game

You can’t see the mess in the dark

Despite both grown ups in our house being sick at least part of the holiday weekend, we managed to get our tree, decorate, and do a large number of Christmasy-things. I have a bunch of cleaning to catch up on, since that’s always the first thing that goes when you’re not feeling great, but I’m feeling super motivated knowing I have less than 2 weeks until Caroline’s party. Fingers crossed I can get the early prep done so I have time to actually make food. It would help if I started a menu…

Disclaimer: Some of these links are affiliate links, because I figured it couldn’t hurt to try to earn a few dollars to put towards actually ordering more pajamas.

IT’S TIME TO THINK ABOUT THE HOLIDAYS. START THINKING ABOUT THEM. DO IT. START NOW. CHRISTMAS IS COMING AND YOU CANNOT STOP IT.

Last year for our Christmas cards I did the kids in front of the twinkle light background while wearing matching pajamas. I am a huge fan of matching pajamas, both for Christmas and for photos. I have done a lot of matching pajama research, so I’m going to share some of my findings with you in case you are also in the market for Two-piece Pajama Sets. Let’s say MATCHING PAJAMAS one more time. It can be tricky to find them in all the kid sizes when kids span different sections of the store (*shakes fist at Target for making my 6 year old buy ugly stuff from the BOYS department*) so I’ve included that info too.

Hanna Andersson (Price: $35-$46, not on sale. Last year they got down to under $30 on Black Friday) – Oh Hanna. What can I say, these are my favorite pajamas in the world. I ordered two different sets for all 3 kids last year and they still wear them at least once a week. They truly have all the sizes, from baby to adult, although their Swedish sizing can be confusing at first. Buy big, they last forever.

Our Christmas card photo

STILL wearing last year’s Christmas pajamas in August of this year

This year, they have Star Wars Christmas pajamas. They look like traditional Swedish prints but are in fact Darth Vader heads. Unfortunately, buying ALL THE JAMS for my whole family would cost as much as our entire Christmas budget, so I’ll probably settle on the (still wicked cute) Dear Deer red reindeer ones.

The Children’s Place (Price: $13ish to $20ish? They always always have sales) – One of the challenges of MATCHING jams is that Evan is in boy’s sizes, and boy’s clothes are way less cute than toddler clothes. So the good news is The Children’s Place has red stripes in sizes from 4-14. Evan and Caroline could both match in those. The bad news is they (currently) don’t have the same stripes for Linc. Their toddler sizes run up to 5T though, so last year holiday stripes like these would have been perfect. I ordered Linc a couple pairs of TCP jams a couple weeks ago and they’re pretty nice. I love the not-feet style (like Hannas!) because then they fit for a super long time.

The Children’s Place jams I ordered Linc – I love this pattern!

Land’s End – The first year we did matching jams I ordered plaid fleece from Land’s End for Evan and Caroline, as seen in this post where I announced I was pregnant with Linc OMG and also here, for our Polar Express train trip:

BABIES, LOOK AT THEM

The have nightgowns that match the old-man style pajamas, which are both adorable on children. I love this green and blue plaid nightgown that matches the green and blue plaid jams for boys which match the toddler-sized jams (no baby sizes, but they go down to 2T).

Burt’s Bees Baby ($19.95+, which is less than Hannas but still organic!) – Have you ever looked at Burt’s Bees Baby? All my fancy photographer friends buy gorgeous, neutral clothes from them for their gorgeous, neutral photo shoots. I’ve stalked a few times but it wasn’t until I was looking for matching jams that I checked them out seriously. They have a whole family pajamas section! Toddler goes from size 2 to size 7, baby one-pieces start at newborn and baby 2 pieces go from 12 months to 24 months. They also have adult sizes, which is really tempting. Epic family photo, anyone?? All cream/white henley-style jams would be catalog-style perfect on Christmas morning. I don’t have action shots yet, but I’ll update when I do (because I just ordered the matching Candy Cane jams for all the kids).

If you have a secret source of adorable matching kid pajamas, please leave me a comment so I can also order those. There’s no such thing as too many pairs, since you wear them 365 days a year (even the Christmas ones). Happy holiday shopping!!

Happy (late) Fourth of July! We went to Cape Cod, like we try to do every year. I missed 2014 because I was so pregnant I couldn’t imagine being more than 10 minutes away from the hospital. And then I didn’t have a baby for another 3 weeks. Good times.

Our Massachusetts relatives really know how to throw a party, especially if you are a kid. They rent a big inflatable water slide so I barely saw Evan or Caroline the whole day. I eventually bribed Caroline with salt water taffy to come down to the beach and take some pictures with me, but no one else fell for it.

We stayed super late this year to see the fireworks, which was a mistake. They’re fireworks. Boom, flash, oooooo, aaaaaah. And then an extra 90 minutes of traffic to get off the Cape with three incredibly exhausted children and two very tired adults. We made it home but it took me two days to recover from my completely non-drinking related hangover. I think that makes me a real grown up, which is way less fun than being not a grown up.

Please enjoy a ton of photos of our day:

The parade every year includes a ton of the floats/marchers throwing candy. Like, tons of candy. So much candy. The lady sitting next to us was really worried about her grandkid (kid? great grandkid?) getting enough candy – and by “enough” I mean she felt like he deserved ALL the candy. She kept shoving him in front of my kids (and their cousins) and saying “You have to be faster! Don’t be afraid to get in front of kids! Grab it!”. For the record, her kid was significantly bigger than both of mine and just ONE KID who definitely did not need a zillion Tootsie rolls, Dum Dums and pieces of Double Bubble.

Since my kids aren’t allowed gum (I’m not a meanie, they just don’t understand how to now swallow it) I had them walk over to her kid and give him every piece of gum they picked up.

And then she STILL shouted at her kid to be sure to grab as much candy as possible. Some people are just not good people. I’m really glad I only had to sit next to her at a parade and not live or raise my children next to her in real life.

This is Caroline pretending to swim. She asked me to take a picture.

Fun with glowsticks!

Tired, tired Caroline. Honestly I think the kids have been tired ever since. I put them to bed before dark tonight, so hopefully they sleep in and maybe we’ll have a less melt-down filled day tomorrow.