Previously: 2016, 2015, 2015 (part 2), 2014,  2013

I can’t remember when I started calling this the best weekend of the year, but now that’s the official name in our family and we celebrate as if it’s a holiday. Four kids out of the house all weekend isn’t easy but we had a great time as usual and the food makes up for the stress.

Greek Food Festival:

Ledyard Fair (with friends!):

Taste of Italy:

Mystic Eats:

After we went to the food festival in Mystic, we hung out at the Seaport, then went straight to a birthday party, then straight to cheer practice. Operation Keep Them Busy is going along just swimmingly, although if Finnegan keeps waking up at 2 am I’m not going to be able to keep it up every weekend.

Hopefully he let’s me get enough sleep to make it to The Big E next Saturday, because that’s like the whole Best Weekend of the Year rolled into one day.

I’ve been doing these weekly posts since I was pregnant with Caroline. She’s now a fully functional human (well, unless you try to stop pushing her on the swings, then she is a hideous raging monster beast) and I’m only a few weeks away from another baby. If the entire internet self destructed tomorrow, these posts the things I’d be the saddest to lose.

Sunday:

This was pretty much the only awesome stroller we DIDN’T take home from New York. It’s really awesome.

Caroline made herself right at home.

It was so great to have E with us in NYC for the first time.

Monday:

Reading Spiderman books to Doggy. Obviously.

Bubble machines are priceless. PRICELESS.

Someone is still exhausted from New York.

Tuesday:

She thinks the a/c vent is tiny stairs for tiny people.

Another Tuesday, another non-stress test

They can find their way around the hospital without me now.

Wednesday:

OFFICIALLY SUMMER

Weirdoes

Swam all the way to the deep end by herself

Thursday:

How one child gets so many scrapes and bruises (and almost never mentions them) is beyond me

Cute kid. Trashed house.

Performing at the spring Science Fair. He knew all the words.

Friday:

Enjoying her tiny rain-proof house at Stroller Strides

God bless iPads. Seriously. SERIOUSLY.

Well earned cheeseburgers after our appointment.

Saturday:

I dunno, it’s a wall. I liked it.

The best food in the world.

Motherhood: when your nice relaxing bubble bath is ruined by this thing staring up at you.

I have too many things to do and not enough time to do them all, so I am mostly doing nothing. Besides editing pictures. That is both fun and able to be done while I sit on the couch and watch this Star Trek movie. Again. There’s a tribble! I love tribbles! Tomorrow I am making a pie, which should count as more than enough things for one pregnant lady to do in a weekend. Maybe I will make two pies, just to be sure someone besides me gets to eat some.

There was a ton of stuff going on in our area over the weekend: members weekend at the Aquarium, the International Food Festival in Mystic, the annual Butterfly Pavilion in Norwich AND it was Connecticut Open House weekend.

Unfortunately, it was also one of those weekends where none of us really felt like getting off the couch. I swear our day in Brooklyn last Sunday threw the kids off all week, and there were a ton of couch naps that led to super early wake-ups that meant even more couch naps and we were all a little sleep-deprived and short-tempered. E had duty Friday which meant he didn’t get home until lunch on Saturday, so that day was mostly a wash. I tried to fit ALL THE THINGS in on Sunday and ended up with two very unhappy kids in a butterfly pavilion, begging to go home. So we did. I like family activities, I don’t like torturing my children. Even to get more photos. Clearly I got enough photos.

They refused to consider any of the food besides The Bleu Squid for grilled cheese and cupcakes.

Black Forest cupcake

Lobster roll. Lobster & a little mayo with lemon on top. As it should be.

Caroline was really, really excited to get her face painted and tried hard to sit still. Of course, she’s 2. I’m 31 and I can hardly sit still to have my make-up done at the Clinique counter at the mall (I don’t like people touching my eyes) (NO ONE likes people touching their eyes!). The patient make-up artist managed to get it done though – including a layer of glitter over the whole thing – and Caroline became Kitty Caroline. She ran all over the Oldey Mistickey Villagey meowing and stopping people in their tracks to go “Awwwwwwwww! Look at her face! She’s a kitty! Bob, Bob come look at this kitty! Isn’t she adorable?!” At this point I feel like taking my child out in public is like hanging out with one of the minor Kardashians. Krispy? Krumbly? Whatever they’re called. I should start spelling it Karoline.

It’s like E is wearing THREE hats!

Caroline met Ariel & got her autograph. She was pretty impressed. And a little skeptical.

The Butterfly Pavilion was cool, but kind of crowded. They encouraged you to let the butterflies crawl/land on you and even had sugar water to dab on your fingers. Caroline liked it. Evan was D O N E, so we didn’t stay long.

Apologies for that title, I couldn’t help myself. Our friend Amelia turned four last week and her mom scheduled a party at Mystic Aquarium to celebrate. It turns out letting someone else do alllll the party work is kind of amazing. Especially when they also provide pizza and cake and live horseshoe crabs for the kids to play with. There was also a puppet show. Basically, I’m one thousand percent impressed and questioning everything about my current children’s-birthday-status-quo. You just set up the whole thing over the internet and someone else cleans up. 

A small fraction of the bazillion photos:

On Sunday we packed a picnic and headed over to Jonathan Edwards Winery for their annual Harvest Festival with some of our friends. We like it there, and not just because they never looked at you funny for wearing a baby during a wine tasting.

We’d only been there for an hour when it started drizzling. I kept saying hopeful things like “Maybe it’s just this one cloud! It could blow over any second!” but oddly that didn’t prevent the sky from opening and pouring on us a few minutes later. While all the sane people ran for the tents, we hauled our stuff up to the patio and rigged a little shelter out of sun umbrellas where we had our own party while the kids jumped in puddles.

We were all cold and wet and should have been totally miserable, but instead we stayed for almost 6 hours.

My kids love these kids. They love their parents and grandparents and friends too. We hung out with them in various configurations all weekend and Caroline STILL cried going to bed because she missed her friends.

There are not enough words to describe how nice it is to have friends, especially real life “let’s go get ice cream” friends. Real life is hard, especially when you’re talking about couples-with-kids friends since there are three or four people involved instead of just two. My husband might not like her husband and my kid might not get along with his kid, and when you add MORE friends there are more things to go wrong. It’s a complicated dynamic and I’ve seen some friendships fall apart in totally fantastic implosions worthy of an epic novel.

I really, really lucked out with these people.

They even tolerate – nah, ENCOURAGE – my crazy photo taking.

My shoes are still wet from Sunday but we’re already planning a wine night to reprise our fun. Take that, Mother Nature. You may dampen our socks but you can’t damped our friendship. Especially when they’re already soaked in wine and paint.