Archive for the ‘Connecticut’ Category

Christmas Parades 2015

Friday, December 4th, 2015

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.

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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.

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Christmas Tree 2015

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2015

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.

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

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Best I could do. It was really sunny.

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

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And this is MUCH more accurate.

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

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Wordless Wednesday: Apple Picking 2015

Wednesday, November 11th, 2015

Remember when Wordless Wednesday was a thing and I could just post photos and people still came and looked at them?

But don’t look at these too much, for some reason the colors look terrible. Ugh.

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Oktoberfest Fun at Foxwoods (Date Night!!)

Thursday, October 22nd, 2015

Sometimes, just because I have this blog thing, really cool stuff happens. Last week, that cool stuff was a special press event at Foxwoods to help celebrate Oktoberfest.

Even better than being invited was getting to tell my husband that we were going to drink free beer all afternoon. Plus bowling! Because who doesn’t love bowling?!

There was a beer expert to tell us about what we were tasting. He said they went out of their way to find cool, rare and probably unheard of beers for us to taste. I have to say, they did a great job with “unusual”. There was one beer that they described as “sour”, which was the biggest understatement ever. It was like drinking pickle juice. Luckily, I’ve considered drinking pickle juice in the past so I mostly liked it? Mostly. The beer expert also told us it was made in a brewery that is literally never cleaned. Never. They don’t sweep or dust or shoo away the spiders, so you get all that great dirt and spider parts in your tasty sour beer.

Like I said, “unusual” = accomplished.

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This one was extremely normal and fine and I liked it.

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Gueuze was the sour pickle one

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Social media-ers gotta soical media, even while eating pretzels

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This one was FANTASTIC. It was beer mixed with cherry liquor and tasted exactly like a cherry coke.

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I would like to state for the record I had nothing to do with that. Especially because 10 seconds later it fell over. Bloggers + 6 glasses of beer = poor choices.

After the drinking they encouraged us to “explore”, which to us obviously meant “play some blackjack”. We…did not win, but one of the other bloggers got $1,000 off a slot machine! Then we wandered around and checked out the updates. I hadn’t actually been to parts of Foxwoods in a couple years (Even though we saw the show a few weeks ago and I took the kids to the outlets earlier this month). It’s a HUGE place. They’ve updated the main shopping drag completely – it used to be very Vegasy with fake storefronts and cobblestones. Now it is all modern glass and wood and angles and soooooo fancy.

E and I walked over to Fox Tower to check out the new tattoo parlor, but before we made it he got a work call and stopped walking and talked about work stuff instead of paying attention to me. So I took his picture. This is his work call face.

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And this is one of the views out the window. The leaves are about 2 weeks away from peak color right now, it’s going to be STUNNING.

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Then we headed over to High Rollers, the bowling lanes. I knew in theory that they were there. I’ve definitely thought about going in the past. But for some reason we’ve never actually made it down there.

It is FANCY. I really really really wish there had been a place like this open pre-kids because I would have been a regular. It’s basically the opposite of every other bowling alley I’ve ever been in. It did not smell like smoke, it wasn’t dirty or old, the service was incredible. What kind of bowling alley has chandeliers, big screen tvs, and kale pancetta salads on their menu? High Rollers.

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That is a TERRIBLE picture of me, but I felt I needed to include my squinty bowling face for accuracy. I am willing the pins to all fall over. AND IT WORKS – I won a prize for being the first person to roll a strike. BOOYAH.

After bowling, we went back to Cedar’s Steakhouse for our Oktoberfest-inspired dinner and deli meats. German food is meats, meats and more meats, so obviously our meal featured some classics. And more beer. Of course. (For the record, even though I was the invited media person – SO FANCY – and E was my +1, he did 90% of the drinking. Because I am a nice wife who knows he likes beer more than I do.)

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I never get tired of being called “press”, not matter now untrue it is.

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This was my favorite part. That mustard was on our pretzels during the beer tasting too, and it was SO good.

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I love being reminded that Foxwoods is RIGHT THERE, 10 minutes from the house, and a great spot for date night. I love date night. I do not go on enough date nights and I think we should fix that. It helps that we found a great babysitter my kids love and who swears Lincoln wasn’t a disaster at all while we were gone. I think she’s lying but lying is almost as good as him not being a disaster, so…. See you again soon, Foxwoods!

Disclaimer: I was invited to this special press event at Foxwoods that included beer, bowling, food and a $50 gift card to do some shopping (I spent it at the toy store buying Legos for Evan and coloring books for Caroline, because even at a fancy press event I am still a mom). No other compensation was provided and no one told me I had to write this post. In fact, you can’t even go to Foxwoods and order that beer because it was just for our fancy thing, so I’m…not really sure why they invited me?! Hey, I’m not going to question it too much. It was super fun and I hope they invite me to more things. 

Columbus Day Weekend Fun

Friday, October 16th, 2015

We had absolutely STUNNING weather last weekend here in Connecticut. It was perfect for my photography business mini sessions and perfect for doing all the fall things and perfect for making me feel like Connecticut is a kick-ass place to live. IT’S A JOY JUST TO BE ALIIIIIIIVE.

On our lovely free Monday (you’re still a jerk Columbus, but I do enjoy a day off) we spent the morning at Creamery Brook Bison Farm taking part in a Walktober event with friends. They’re open on weekends in the fall for tours and I highly recommend it. They had a feeding and petting zoo as well as a chance to meet the bison up close.

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In the afternoon we went to Buttonwoods for their corn maze and fall fun. It’s a tradition! We did both sides of the corn maze, the hay ride, the cow train, the hay tower and the kids went nuts in the corn pit. We all came home with pants full of corn and a zillion pictures. Don’t worry, Linc really liked the corn pit, even when we were pouring it on his head. He ate more than his share. Mmmm…roughage.

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