Family Photos 2017

There is almost nothing that is as big of a pain-in-the-you-know-what as an impending family photo shoot. Inevitably, your kid will fall and have a scab on his face, or you'll be in desperate need of haircut, or you'll spend so much time worrying about what everyone else is going to wear that you are literally standing in front of your closet two minutes after you planned to leave, staring blankly while your husband honks from the car (you can't wear the top you wanted to because it's navy blue, and then three of the four of you would be wearing the same color and that would create a total imbalance! Doesn't he know that?!).

And so it's pretty bad. You get in the front seat, flushed and feeling a little bloated and the sweater you have on, well, you hate it. Obviously you hate it because it's one of those "adds ten pounds" sweaters but you were in a hurry and out of time to try things on. This portrait that you are about to have etched in time, professionally and not at all uncheaply I might add, is going to be a bust. The kids are already whining from the backseat, which is making your husband snap at them, and then you look down and realize your jeans could use a wash. Fab. We are sooo going to look like a happy, smiling family unit! 

But, if you're lucky, your photographer is amazing. She assures you that even though it feels like each shot is coming out terribly, like all the boys are doing is grimacing, the pictures will be beautiful. And in the end, they are. 

We used this photographer two years ago and our favorite one from that shoot we had mounted on a canvas and put it above our fireplace.

We asked her to get another "tree shot" this year:

And had this one was framed for our bedroom:

I love the trees in these because they are art in and of themselves, but adding our tiny family figures into the photos makes them so personal. They are a couple of my favorite things in the house.

Anyway, cut to all the usual feelings afterwards like "Oh I'm so glad we did that" blah blah. You can't go back in time and retake pictures like this, nor do I have the skill set to capture the boys so perfectly myself, so in the end, it was worth it. After all, I have Christmas cards to think about ;)

Thanksgiving and a whole lot of catching up

Guys, it is January and I am feeling very behind and overwhelmed with this blog! There is not a whole lot of new material now that we go through the same routines and go on the same vacations with the same cast year over year. I am at a dangerous precipice where, if I don't catch up now, there will be no going back. Now that the crazy holiday season is behind us, we are kicking off some *new!* projects and I've decided to dive back in to sharing our daily nitty gritty. You're like, sooo lucky.

Some housekeeping items. I am going to backdate these posts to when I should have written them so as not to muck up my blog history. They will also be more frequent because they are probably going to be short, like this first one for Thanksgiving. Frankly I can't remember much about it now that it was nearly two months ago, so I'm going to throw my pictures up here and call it a day. We hosted my friend Jessica as well as Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Lizzie, Uncle Chris, Cousin Owen, Uncle Berg, Aunt Karen and Jayden!

Twas the night before Thanksgiving 

and all through the house

The to-do list was set 

(typical of my spouse).

The food and the recipes

their times to be cooked

The pots and the pans

with post-its were booked. 

Hahaha. No seriously everything was labeled. If Jason had a schedule to hand out, we all would have had a copy. No messing around. Grandpa was put to work:

And we had some parade watchin':

Some turkey preppin':

Some toastin':

And some table settin':

We didn't reinvent the wheel with our recipes - we had made them all before and everything was delicious. If your menu ain't broke...although my sweet potatoes came out terribly. They were forced to cook in our convection oven and it just didn't work :( Luckily we had a stupid amount of food and there was no shortage of other things to gorge ourselves on. 

So that was Thanksgiving! Initial pounds put towards overall holiday weight gain: 2. Onward!

All the Boo-tastic Details! (Halloween 2017!)

There's a lot to cover here folks. Let's begin.

Part 1: Pumpkins
We got them for free when we went apple picking (and by "free" I mean they came with our $156 farm admission for 4 adults and 2 kids!). But that is beside the point. What I'd like to call attention to is Ashton's completely hilarious pumpkin that I thought could not possibly come out right. He did it all by himself and the result was amazing.

From concept:

to execution:

I think it's the tiny eyes but I was dying laughing. It is perfectly imperfect :)

The others came out as you would expect (ooo, pointy teeth, how original) and you can probably guess which one I did.

In fact I was intending to copy the eyeroll emoji - ah well. Still fits.

Part 2: Adornment
Let's get to the epic saga that was costumes. The fundamental component of any Halloween. The boys started the decision-making process last July and for a brief month, they would be superheroes. Of course, because their outfits from last year were in shreds and yes I would love to buy them identical $40 costumes to the ones we already had. But I didn't jump and good thing because Alex moved on and for a time was proposing random household items. He thought maybe he could be a lightbulb, or a ladder? How about a banana? He said "shark" right around the time that Target was having a half off sale at the beginning of October and I hit "purchase". (I like to think I'd let my kids be anything they want, but really it has to align with something somewhat identifiable and at least partially store-bought. I don't do homemade. Yet.)

The shark sat in the closet along with Ashton's Lego guy costume. He had picked that in September and stuck with it. We were done and ready.

Except then the boys watched Moana mid-October and found themselves possessed. I'm not sure if you saw my YouTube video but the music in this movie has both boys singing and dancing - it's quite a sight. Ashton then wanted to be Maui (shapeshifter, demigod of the wind and sea, hero to all):

And for Alex it was Tamatoa or die. Tamatoa is a giant crab with a blinged-out shiny shell who looks like this.

You can see the issues here. 

We talked and talked, for days, about all the other super-cool costumes out there (including the ones we ALREADY HAD) and finally Alex said "Ok, maybe a 'pweece'?" (police). Since his shark costume was a little too tight anyway, and he was increasingly into it, on the ripe old date of October 29, we went shopping.  

The handcuffs! The walkie talkie! The WHISTLE! He was in heaven while Ashton was in the corner sobbing because now he wanted to be a "pweece" too. I made Jason deal with it the next day while I went to Target and tried to get my money back for the shark and the Lego guy. Remember those? The employee was like "MMMM hmmm, I don't think so sister. Halloween is tomorrow", but I showed her my receipt and the tags and she had to push it through. Who returns costumes at 6:30 pm on October 30? ME. Boom.

Part 3: Other lead-up
We skipped a lot of Halloween events this year in the name of having no costumes (and also, I was not prepared mentally - once any sort of costume goes on, all bets are off, so I sure as heck didn't want to start with that five days in advance of the actual holiday). But if we had made everything happen, we would have gone to the Lilja dance, Zoo Howl at the Stone Zoo, the Spooktacular in Natick, the Brae Burn kids Halloween and one of Ashton's classmates' "boo-day" party. As it was, we managed just fine with Alex's parade on Monday:

And Ashton's K parade on Tuesday:

Which was not without a class party afterwards and I had signed up for "healthy snack" so, voila.

The green stem is a fork and inside is cantaloupe and clementine wedges. Shrug. They were cute but in all seriousness what kid is going to pick fruit on Halloween. But Jason was super happy that I spent at least $40 on all this anyway.

Something else that cost me about the same amount - my themed coat hook/shelf thing in the kitchen!

This doesn't merit its own category but I wanted to love on it somewhere.

Part 4. The main event.
Ready for it? My two little members of law enforcement - "watch out bad guys!"

After all that practice, we had our first run-in!!!

Apprehended. Thank god!

Once the coast was clear, our friends were able to come over. A plain Alex, chicken Crosby, police officer Ashton and minecraft Elijah had some pizza:

Lined up:

And off we went! Honestly I didn't bother with any of the night time shots. You guys know what trick or treating looks like. The interesting part is that Ashton is the only kid who lasted! The other three were all "Eh. Can we go home now?" while Ashton raced around the neighborhood and Jason struggled to keep up. He filled his pumpkin three times!! But I did manage to get these last two gems:

Happy Halloween to my two little mall cops. Thanks for keeping me safe! (Someday I'll tell you the truth about the whistles that came with your costumes. For now, they are still "lost" ;) )