We have a family tradition of getting our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. It was something my family did, it was something E’s family did, and it’s something we’ve done throughout our marriage. This year Thanksgiving was late, and also fell in the middle of shift work for E, so he didn’t get the day off. Or the day after. I was a little bummed, but we planned to just get the tree in a few days when E could get a few hours off of work.

That never happened. He literally hasn’t had any time off – besides a few hours to sleep most (not even all) nights – since mid-November. If it was at any other job besides the military, his hours would probably be illegal. I know I’ve complained about how much he works before (probably a lot) but I’ve reached a point where I’m not sure how I’M going to get through it.

Right now the only thing I’m getting by on is making sure the kids are still enjoying Christmas. They are so excited about every single part of the holidays that it’s pretty easy for me to let myself get wrapped up in it too, although the fact that we’re missing 1/4th of our family is always in the back of my mind. My mom sent the kids an advent calendar and GOD FORBID I don’t remember to get it down so they can open the day’s door first thing in the morning. And amazingly, they’re keeping track of whose turn it is and remember better than I do. It’s teaching them sharing! And fairness! And that if you touch something covered in glitter it will stick on your body basically forever! Those are all very important lessons.

My biggest accomplishment so far is that I took both kids to the tree farm on a weekend (SO CROWDED) and we chopped down a tree. I CUT IT DOWN MY OWN SELF. WITH A SAW. I did a hack job and a nice guy with his own family came over and steadied it while I was sawing so it didn’t fall over and crush me, but besides that I did it alone. Luckily the farm picks up the cut trees and carts them down to the station where they shake them and wrap them up for you, but then I hauled it to the car, into the car (God bless minivans) and home into the house. I totally failed at getting it into the stand but E got it set up the next morning and now we have a fully decorated tree. We had to rearrange because my little desk/office corner went in the former Christmas tree spot, but now we can sit on our new little couch, enjoy the fire and look at the tree at the same time. Tomorrow the kids get to start opening their Christmas books (I was going to do one for each day of December but books are really expensive, yo) and we can sit on that new couch by the tree and I can read to them about the Christmas story while I sob quietly because magic and family and loneliness and children and Jesus and FEELINGS. It’s raising my level of holiday spirit from Grinch to Slightly Christmasy, which is a definite improvement.

I haven’t had much time for my own photos lately, which makes me kind of sad. Partly because once something is part of your job it loses a LITTLE bit of the fun and partly because it’s hard to juggle the kids in public and take photos. It’s pretty easy to lose one kid while you’re taking pictures of the other one, and I’m generally only seconds away from losing a kid even WITHOUT a camera in my face. It’s amazing I’ve kept them alive this long, honestly. But this might be the first Christmas they remember when they look back as adults and I want to make sure I have at least some pictures to show them, so here are a few.

Evan’s first choice, but I told him it was too short.

Caroline’s first choice, also on the small side.

Final selection

After we killed it.

Watching them wrap it with the cool wrapping machine

The farm had all our favorite food trucks, including the delicious kettle corn people from the farmer’s market.

Decorating

The princess places the angel

Yes, I know it’s out of focus

Fun with bokeh cut-outs

LIFE UPDATE: My husband is still on shift work. That is 14 hour days, 7 days a week, which means I am also working 7 days a week, close to 18 hours a day. I fell behind on the housework and laundry a week before Thanksgiving and have never caught up, even when I ignore my children, neglect my blog, put off editing photos, stick in my headphones and tackle a room for 2 hours straight. And no matter how many times I clean up the main living space the children destroy it again within minutes. If I didn’t believe in my heart that I would trip over a RescueBot, fall into the TV and bleed to death on the floor I might just stop even TRYING to clean up.

KID UPDATE: Evan still thinks school is awesome. He hasn’t had any more bus drama and I haven’t forgotten a single half day in months. He is helpful and kind at home and still wants to snuggle on a fairly regular basis despite being so tall I sometimes don’t recognize him. Caroline refuses to wear anything besides princess dresses. She also has the most horrible whining voice in the world. It’s worse than nails on a chalkboard and she does it ALL the time, even when she’s just making up imaginary games between her dolls. She is also unbelievably adorable. Her birthday party is next weekend and her birthday itself is right after that and then my baby will be THREE.

COUCH UPDATE: STILL HAVE AN EXTRA COUCH I CANNOT EVEN GIVE AWAY. And no Christmas tree because of shift work and also because there is no where to put it because of the couch.

ICE CREAM UPDATE: Despite the fact that it is usually around 40 degrees, we’ve been hitting Mystic Drawbridge Ice Cream pretty regularly. Downtown Mystic is my favorite place for photo shoots right now, and bribing my kids with ice cream is a win-win, since it means I get some ice cream too. The peanut butter sundae is still my favorite.

PHOTO UPDATE: Here are some photos.

CONNECTICUT UPDATE: Still unbelievably scenic.

Did lots of things. Am tired. Kids are tired. Zzzzzzzzzz.

Monday:

LOOK MY POPCORN CAUGHT FIRE. GET IT?

Trip #1 to the grocery store. We did buy cookies. We forgot a turkey.

Visiting their lobster friends. That’s what they call them. I don’t have the heart to explain those aren’t the same lobsters as last week.

Monday:

It was freezing on the pier but the sun (and all the happiness) warmed my cold heart.

My TV babysitter earned her paycheck this week.

Go buy this book. HILARIOUS.

Tuesday:

Real street fashion: scuffed boots and yoga pants.

Evan loves his Duplos and Caroline loves creepy naked dolls

I don’t know how she doesn’t have nightmares.

Wednesday:

RUN AND GET A TURKEY BEFORE THEY ARE GONE, SLACKER

They put extra ginger in the pumpkin pie <3

Making pies is exhausting.

Thursday:

It’s sparkling cider.

NO REALLY IT’S JUST CIDER I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE HE LEARNED THAT.

Thankful

Friday:

Instead of shopping, we visited our favorite places.

She met Santa.

Hot cocoa and a lollipop = best day ever

Watching the town tree lighting

Saturday:

They FINALLY built a playground at the zoo!

Those are yesterday’s lollipops they brought to the parade

Our local parade is adorable, if not very fancy.

Considering it was only 30 degrees all week, we spent a TON of time outside. My kids don’t care. They were born in New England*. Today Caroline took off her jacket and her hoodie and ran around in just a shirt.  But despite the temps we had a really great week.

Now I am throwing myself FULL FORCE into Caroline’s birthday party. Luckily “princess” isn’t the most original theme, so just grabbing pink or sparkly or sparkly pink stuff is pretty easy. I just need to get my house in order so I can start putting things up before I buy yet another princess tent and realize I don’t have anywhere to put FOUR of them. Tomorrow I’m going to let her pick out the ugliest, most ridiculous princess cake we can find to order from ShopRite. I’m so excited.

*This logic fails since I was born in Massachusetts and I’m freezing.

A short list of things of all sizes that I am thankful for right now:

1. Pie and yoga pants. Those count as one thing.

2. Podcasts. I would never clean anything in my house if it weren’t for podcasts. They are extremely distracting. A short list of my favorites: This American Life, How To Do Everything, Pop Culture Happy Hour, RadioLab, Stuff You Should Know, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and Planet Money. They make me feel smart.

3. A dishwasher. Doing all those Thanksgiving dishes by hand would have taken forever.

4. My children, who told me today they were most thankful for Mommy.

5. The moment when Evan told me he really believed in Santa…and then when he hugged me because I started crying. CHILDHOOD IS MAGIC.

6. Everyone who has supported me in any way as I started my photography business. It’s been (is) terrifying but I cannot wait to see how much it will grow in 2014.

7. Facebook. I am never lonely or bored or without validation when I have an internet connection.

8. Amazon Prime. Absolutely, totally, without question worth the subscription. The amount I save on shipping is crazy, although I’d probably buy a lot less stuff if I couldn’t get it in 2 days without having to go get my credit card from my wallet.

9. My husband, and the fact that he still goes to work every day to support us instead of running off the Mexico where the military will never find him. I almost wouldn’t blame him at this point.

10. Now it’s Christmas! SANTA. I KNOW HIM.

There are approximately 2 bazillionteen more things I am thankful for, but right now I’m thankful for warm coats and Starbucks since I promised the kids the aquarium, Santa, and the town tree lighting tonight.

Here are some not very good pictures of our boring, non-Pinterest, at-home Thanksgiving that I didn’t really edit and you probably don’t care about unless you are a relative very concerned we might not have had a proper meal on real plates at the table. Happy Thanksgiving!

I bought a turkey breast instead of a whole turkey and just sort of…winged it. Considering I was taking stuff in and out of the oven above and below the bird I’m shocked it came out delicious, with enough leftovers for sandwiches.

Potatoes with cheese, sour cream, cream cheese, bacon and chives > boring mashed potatoes

Wish bone! They failed.

CHEERS!

Don’t worry, it’s cranberry-apple sparkling cider, not “Mommy juice”.

MORE CHEERS!

Leftover begging face. It worked, obvs.

Time for pie!

The correct pie-eating method.

 Here are two things I like: jewelry and candles. Here are two things I like in one thing: Diamond Candles.

The idea is super simple: you buy a candle just because it’s smells great and you like candles. This time of year I usually buy 2 (OK, more like a dozen) candles because it’s fall-y and now that the windows are closed my house is a little doggy. And catty. And those-dishes-have-been-in-the-sink-a-loooong-time-y. We’re not the greatest smelling house, is what I’m saying.  Although it’s much better now that I’ve been burning my Diamond Candle.

But in addition to the nice candle, you get jewelry! In your candle!!

As my husband said, this idea is super brilliant. You hide something in a candle that makes your customer WANT to burn it as quickly as possible, and then boom, you sell them another one.

Fortunately, the people at Diamond Candles aren’t total jerks, so you only have to burn the candle like 1/3rd of the way down to get to your ring. Because that’s the prize! In the candle! A ring!

It’s all wrapped up in foil, and you can see from the outside where it is in the candle:

 I tried to make a fun video of myself opening my ring, but I failed at unwrapping it with one hand and ended up making like 4 different videos and when I went to edit them together my video program told me my computer sucks and it can’t do it. So you’ll have to settle for some pictures.

The rings inside the candles can be worth anywhere from $10 to $5,000, and of course a little tiny part of me was convinced I was going to get the $5,000 one. I did…not. But it is pretty sparkly.

 These would make awesome holiday or birthday gifts, since it’s like giving a lottery tickets that’s also inherently useful. Did I mention they’re all-natural, eco-friendly and made out of soy? That makes then even better.

Do you want a chance to win one of these really fun candles? Of course you do! Use the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You can find Diamond Candles on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or Twitter, where lots of fans share their ring reveals. I was sent a free candle to aid in my review but it was NOT worth $5,000 and no other compensation was received.