This post is late and I got less than 3 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours and I barely remember how I got home from the airport last night and Caroline is sitting on my lap with her slightly terrifying My Little Pony Equestria Girl introducing her to all the princess dolls and I have 5 photo sessions to edit so what I’m saying is if this post makes none sense don’t be surprised.

Sunday:

Princess Pirate Butterfly Caroline’s new best friend, the Dragon Ice Cream dragon

Evan defends his family against a zombie puppet

Sleepy, smudgy butterfly

Who knew a Kohl’s parking lot could be so inspiring?

Monday:

I don’t even know.

Sand castles on our deserted beach

About 20 seconds later Caroline and her friends smashed them all.

Tuesday:

They’re having a mini-conference on how best to beg me for that candy on the counter

Cleaning and trying out my headphones for an upcoming post

Shooties. Verdict after wearing them all weekend: Wise choice! Very comfortable for high heels, lots of compliments, only felt slightly like I have hooves.

Wednesday:

Who is this huge person going to preschool and where is my baby?

Another stunning fall day in Connecticut (Town Hall)

Watching Monsters University (again! We saw it in the theater!) with the kids

Thursday:

I took a picture of my parking garage level/number to I didn’t have to remember when I can back at 1 am Monday. BRILLIANT. Worked perfectly.

Boston!

Random MARTA station in Georgia where my friend Miranda picked me up!

Friday:

Average attention span in 2012: 8 SECONDS. Now you know why we needed a session on writing engaging content.

All cleaned up for dinner with my other Minute Clinic bloggers at Type A

The crazy cab ride was worth it to get to this place. AMAAAAAAZING.

Saturday:

In case you were wondering, THAT is an Equestria Girl. I managed to snag one when they were breaking down the booth on Sunday.

My next DIY, obvs.

Atlanta was really pretty

Step 1 in getting back to my real life: write down all the stuff on the calendar I’ve been ignoring because it was “in October” and “October is a really long time from now”.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh <–  the sound I just made looking at the stack of papers from the kids’ schools talking about open house nights and PTO meetings and pizza parties. Back to work!

We went to the Connecticut Renaissance Faire (the extra e is absolutely necessary) last weekend. It was ANOTHER Sunday that E was able to join us (Two in a row! I’m getting spoiled!) and it was probably the most fun day we’ve had in a really, really long time. We are just dorky enough to think people in costume talking to us in fake Olde English accents is fantastic, and the kids were basically in heaven with tons of people talking to them and calling them Princess Caroline and Brave Sir Evan. We’d only been there 20 minutes and Caroline was already a Butterfly Princess Warrior, Evan had a sword and shield, and E had a giant turkey leg. I blew through every dollar in my wallet during our 3 hours there and I regret nothing.

Caroline is a face paint champ already.

What does the fox say?

This girl’s costume was amazing (and she must have been MELTING inside those fur pants).

The dragon gave her beads and said “Never do anything for beads!”

This acrobat was unreal. How is that even possible????

Both kids loved that turkey leg.

Evan could barely fight he was laughing so hard.

Victory!!

This guy put one of the fancy hats on Evan and I said “Sorry honey, I don’t have enough money.” Evan grabbed the kid-sized hat and said “This one isn’t too ‘spensive!” He was right.

That’s Caroline’s angry pirate face.

Of course Caroline got a tiny sword too.

King Henry VIII. Not sure which wife that is. Katherine? The first one?

I have no idea why there was a guy selling these super cool puppets, but he let the kids play with them and they LOVED it.

Watching the Trash to Treasure show

Authentic Olde Tymee Root Beer Floats

My kids are such participators. They both RAN up on stage to be bears in the Betty White and the Three Bears and the Beanstalk (or whatever this crazy show was called).

I’m hoping we can go back again before they leave in mid-October. We didn’t even get to see the rat circus or the jousting!

Someone mentioned recently that they don’t have apple orchards where she lives (apparently it doesn’t get cold enough??) and I felt really really bad for her. What do you do when you want 40 pounds of apples? Where do you take your children to wear them out so they fall asleep on the floor and you can eat fresh baked apple pie and drink mulled cider while you watch Breaking Bad?

When we first moved here to Connecticut, I lived in an apple orchard (the one I still use for a lot of my photo shoots) and they’re still one of my happy places. Orchards are full of delicious food that literally grows on trees. You can turn them into alcoholic beverages. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?

We’ve been going to Holmberg’s for a bunch of years now (looooook tiny ginger!) and I’d say it’s officially a tradition.

p.s. I once won the town fair prize for best apple pie. I never pass up a chance to mention that.

p.p.s. The orchard was PACKED that day. I’ve never seen it so busy (of course I usually take the kids alone on like a Tuesday, so it shouldn’t have shocked me a beautiful Sunday was a popular time for apple picking). I’m pretty proud of myself for photos where it looks like we’re the only people there.

Are you ready to move to Connecticut yet?

It’s feast or famine this week: some days a took a ton of pictures, some days I took almost none. I think my real problem is I need yoga pants with pockets, so I can keep my phone with me all the time.

Sunday:

I guess this weather is OK.

Super excited to hang out with Daddy

Sunday = Football

Monday:

Sharing

Park to ourselves

Nicely done, kind-of-sketchy-park, you look extremely respectable.

We made it down this aisle without buying ANY candy. It’s a Stop and Shop Miracle!

Tuesday:

Cat as still life

I live with a bunch of weirdos.

Wednesday:

Picture day at school mean cool kid clothes instead of the uniform

I WANNA TAKE THE PICTURE! – tiny selfie addict

Newborn session set up

Thursday:

This is the only picture I have from Thursday. I can’t remember a single thing we did.

Friday:

Rapunzels.

Newborn set up on Friday (in my own room, where it was ONE BILLION DEGREES…but the baby loved it)

Saturday:

I feel bad for the person whose job it is to keep these tables clean.

Birthday cupcakes for the Cabbage Patch Kids!

Watching trains from the train

Passed out on the Metro North. It was a busy day!

This week is going to be bananas (B A N A N A S) so apologies if you’re staring at this post forever and/or for the extremely photo heavy posts I might put up instead. We’ve done a lot of fun stuff over the last few weeks but I’m having a hard time finding actual WORDS to talk about them instead of just letting pictures do it. But a picture is worth a thousand words, so really I’m writing like, 20,00 words a day. YOU’RE WELCOME.

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!