I’m not going to lie, I am not a huge fan of Thanksgiving. I feel very meh about all the traditional food (except for pie #teampie) and if we aren’t going anywhere I end up doing A LOT of work for people who also feel very meh about the food. It ends up being much more about the tradition of making the food – being in the kitchen, letting the kids help, timing everything perfectly – than the actual food.

This was the first year I enjoyed having the kids participate in the cooking. I really WANT them to have good holiday memories of togetherness in the kitchen but sometimes I just want to pour a cup of flour without anyone dumping half of it on the floor. I am TRYING. I am allowing the floor to be flour-covered and the pie to be over-cinnamoned and my patience to be stretched thin in the hopes that they will one day face the same thing with their children and realize “Wow, my mother really loved me.”

In the spirit of accepting that the holidays don’t have to be perfect to be special, here are some photos from our Thanksgiving weekend. We went full Christmas on Black Friday – tree shopping trumps gift shopping – although I’m not happy with my current decorations. Caroline’s mermaid birthday is clashing with my previous princess/woodland fairy themes. I need a LOT more silver and pink. But in the meantime, enjoy pictures of dirty dishes instead.

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I have none words because I have a newborn but I do have these pictures from the olden days when I only had 2 children. You know, a whole almost-two-weeks ago. So really this should be called “Pictures I actually took the time to edit so look at them while I take a nap, OK?”

I decided a little while ago my goal for 2015 is to apply for Pro status over at ClickinMoms. That gives me all of 2014 to improve and build a portfolio of work I love and am proud of – and because I just said it here, now I have to follow through. I’m also currently taking a class with the very talented Sallykate Photography so my camera is coming with me EVERYWHERE for the next few weeks. I’m hopeful I’ll have a newborn to practice on soon (PLEASE GOD LET ME HAVE A NEWBORN SOON) so I hope you like baby pictures.

These are all from two Sundays ago at Rocky Neck State Park, taken with my Nikon D600 and 50mm 1.4 Sigma lens. Editing in Lightroom only.

The beach was actually SUPER crowded and the water is brown because it was full of seaweed. It was also freezing. Neither kid cared. Also, Caroline loves sand. LOVES it. Rubbed her face in it. Weirdo.

I made a bunch of flower crowns last week. It was surprisingly hard. And fake flowers are surprisingly expensive. And I spent a surprising amount of time worrying I was using too many apple blossoms vs. daffodils. Why didn’t I buy more fake peonies?!

Maybe I am missing the hipster gene necessary to craft (and wear) flower crowns. I will not be offering a tutorial for flower crowns, unless you are intentionally making ones that are badly proportioned and stick out funny and fit on no one’s head correctly.

Caroline cares zero percent that my crowns are weird looking and misshapen and the fake flowers keep falling off. She just thinks they make her a fairy princess, which is basically everything she wants in life. Besides a pony. She also wants a pony. If I can find a pony, I will totally get her one to ride around on while she wears a flower crown. Photo shoot perfection!

We went to find this nature sanctuary in Mystic where I am taking portraits (bridal portraits, eek!) next week. It was still a little brown but the light was swoon-worthy.

At like 5 pm last Friday I realized the weather report for the next WEEK looked crappy, so I dragged them out to the creek to play. It was a wise choice.

Fly, ginger fairy princess, fly!

p.s.  Something about adding captions screws up my photo alignment and it’s making me BONKERS. Apologies if it does the same to you.

Every morning Evan wakes up and says “What fun stuff are we going to have today?” Luckily, so far, “school” still counts as fun stuff in his book, so when we do school PLUS an adventure his mind is thoroughly blown. It was 95 degrees last Wednesday – not typical in Connecticut – so we all hopped in the car after school and booked it to the shore. I’m sort of ashamed that we’ve lived in Connecticut for eight years and until recently I felt like we lived way too far from the beach to ever go properly. It takes exactly 17 minutes to drive from my door to this park. I’m the worst beach-goer ever.

Although, really, until this summer it’s hardly been worth it with the kids. This was the first time they had ever played happily, independently, and safely while I actually got to RELAX a little bit. I read two pages of a magazine, they ran around in circles, we built and destroyed a bunch of sand castles, Evan and I both swam in the ocean (well, Long Island Sound)(it was still pretty cold), and we all got a little sun-kissed. It was really, really fun and it made me hopeful that vacations will just get more relaxing from here on out.

All hail queen of the beach!