It’s not technically a snow day, since we were already on vacation, but it was definitely a day full of snow. OK, maybe 45 minutes full of snow, 40 of which involved someone crying and/or whining. To be fair, it was really cold and the wind on the sledding hill was vicious – I didn’t want to be out there myself – but when you’re 3 it’s hard to understand that you can EITHER be warm OR play in the snow. But once we got home to our yard both the boy and the dog had a fantastic time pushing snow around.

p.s. I do not know why Caroline insisted on the Tinker Bell backpack, but she did indeed INSIST.

p.p.s. I got Evan’s coat and snow pants from Zulily and they were pretty much the deal of the century. He loves them and they kept him totally warm and dry despite being covered in snow. Not bad for $40.

p.p.p.s. Happy New Year!

We’re still on vacation, which means I’m light on the words and heavy on the lazily edited photos of my kids doing boring stuff. Luckily, my sister is here to do boring stuff with is.

At The Bleu Squid in Mystic – AMAZING grilled cheese and cupcakes

Do I have something on my face?

Tonight the plan is for E and I to do something AWESOME, since it might be our last chance for a loooong time to spend a New Years out alone…but it seems more likely we’ll go out for sushi, get tired, and come home to drink a bottle of champagne on the couch while we watch the last episode of Downton Abbey. Happy New Year’s Eve!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! We made it through the busiest weeks of the year unscathed (well, besides Caroline’s pneumonia and double ear infection, which she has recovered from quite nicely) and now we’re doing as little as possible. It’s easy today, since as I type this a snowstorm is blowing in, making a lazy movie day on the couch practically mandatory.

Sunday:

8 am, still in bed. I LOVE YOU DISNEY JUNIOR.

Lunch at Harp & Dragon with Grandpa and Grandma

They rarely allow anyone besides Mommy to read them books, but Grandpa is just so good at it!

Monday:

New million dollar idea: Keurig for toddlers!

Hot cocoa is complicated when you’re 3

Walking to Christmas Eve service

Tuesday (our “Christmas Eve”):

Hide & seek is their favorite game, even though this is their ONLY hiding spot

Cookie decorating

We took Daddy his cookies at work – exhausting!

Wednesday:

I don’t know what this game is, but Evan LOVES it

White(ish) Christmas(ish)!!!

My beautiful whirlpool tub is 100% toddlerfied.

Thursday:

Puzzles that make sounds! The perfect way to make a nice quiet activity LOUDER.

Christmas-recovery nap

Christmas-recovery couch sitting and sweats

Friday:

The last of the cookies for breakfast

Real life financial stuff is hard to get done with a toddler in your lap

Still recovering

Saturday:

Cheeeeeeeese.

The last time we went here for lunch, he stood by the door and screamed he HATED sandwiches. This time he ate all of his and part of Caroline’s happily.

Post-cupcake smiles

E actually gets a few more days off (it’s a MIRACLE) before he starts back up with his crazy schedule again, so we’re doing…not much. Lots of cross-it-off-the-list type stuff. Although we haven’t taken down a single Christmas decoration yet and I’m sort of dreading it. Without all the twinkle lights and glitter to hide the dust and holes in the walls I’ll have a lot of spring-cleaning to do – and spring isn’t for a long, long, loooong time.

Did you take iPhone photos of your week? Link up with one or several below! Please consider joining, even if you haven’t done it before – it’s really fun!

Christmas Eve:

Christmas Morning:

Christmas Day:

We had an amazing holiday, full of food and family and fun. The kids were – and are – insanely spoiled, both with STUFF and attention.

I made Bacon and Hash Brown Egg Bake and Blueberry French Toast Casserole on Christmas Eve to put in the oven in the morning and both were delicious. My plans for an actual Christmas meal were thwarted by total laziness (and maybe my “holiday style” hot cocoa starting at 11 am) and we just turned the ham into sandwiches instead. They were FANTASTIC.

My sister is here to visit for a few days and the kids are already madly in love with her. She brought champagne and chocolate and volunteered to babysit on New Year’s Eve so she can stay forever if she wants. I mean, I know her plan WAS to go to Hawaii for a couple weeks and then move to Paris, but I’m offering a very nice guest room, free food and the chance to hang out with two crazy ginger toddlers as much as she wants so we’ll see. It might be an offer she can’t refuse.

I hope you and your families had a wonderful and relaxing holiday. I’ll be on my couch finishing off this bag of candy Santa “forgot” to put in our stockings and Googling “miracle 48-hour juice fast lose 30 pounds today”.

E has to work on Christmas this year. I realize in the scheme of Ways The Military Can Screw Up Your Holidays having to work on Christmas Day is pretty minor, but it’s the first time this has happened since having kids. (Funny enough, neither of us can remember if it happened BEFORE kids – Maybe once? I know it happened the very first year we were dating but we weren’t spending the holidays together then.)

I’m really glad he’s not deployed. I’m glad it’s only a 24 hour watch. I’m glad we have some family visiting so our day can still be special. But I’m a little stumped on what to do about Santa, whether I need to hire a real beard Santa or not.

The way our day(s) would go if E didn’t have work is: Christmas Eve service at our church, open one present before bed, wake up at 7 am, open our stockings, open our gifts, make pancakes, eat way too much chocolate, have some sort of Christmasy dinner, get really bored and whiny, fight over new toys, put on fresh jammies (since we’re probably still wearing the ones we woke up in), go to bed.

This year we have three options.

1. Santa comes early. One of us sneaks all the gifts out and fill the stockings while the other loads the kids into the car for church and we open everything before bed on Christmas Eve. The major problem with this plan is getting the kids to GO to bed. They are sooooo tired in the evenings now that they don’t nap and I’d expect at least a couple meltdowns during the gift-opening, followed by major over-tired hyper energy boosts that keep them up until 11 pm. But in the morning they’ll have all the new presents to play with and we can still have pancakes.

2. Santa comes late. The kids can’t read a calendar, they don’t know what day it is. So we go to Christmas Eve service, put them to bed, and when they wake up it’s just a fun Play With Grandma and Grandpa day. I put out the gifts after they go to bed and we have normal Christmas on the 26th. I’ll let the kids open their stockings while we wait for E to get home and then he jumps right in to presents. We can all spend the whole day together, complete with pancakes and Christmas dinner. But on the 25th of December we won’t celebrate anything and I’m not entirely sure that won’t bum me out.

3. Early morning Christmas. E doesn’t actually have to be at work until 9 am (AT work, which means he has to leave here around 8 am) so we could potentially get all the major Christmas activities done before he goes in. We can wake the kids up at 6 am for stockings and presents (if they aren’t already up from excitement). Then the kids can play with their bazillion new toys all day, we can have something casual for lunch, and they can go to bed at the regular time. ALSO maybe possibly after they go to bed I can sneak off to see Les Mis alone, so I can sob my eyes out without judgment. We can do a Christmas ham and all the side dishes on the 26th if I work up enough energy, but I wouldn’t mind terribly if we skipped it for some pizza. The down side is the rush to get everything over with before E goes in to work – do we want to make it a race to open everything as fast as possible?

I realize this is an insanely first world problem – “Oh noes! My kids are getting SO MUCH stuff for Christmas we need HOURS to open it all! We might not get pancakes together! So tragic!” – but I’m trying to figure out how keep Magical Christmas magical for the ginger bebehs.

What would you do for your family? Option 1, option 2 or options 3?