monster post

 i apologize for those of you that could care less about pictures of our easter adventures. this is pretty much a photo dump for grandmas. feel free to skip. it's not going to be much commentary, it's late and i'm feeling unmotivated. but once these are up then i will be back to normal blogging. for better or for worse. :)  anyway, above is Granty's first subway ride. complete with a bag of snacks that the subway rules expressly forbade. we're rebels like that.

 these are all sorts of our of order. sorry. mads had the BEST time with her cousins. there is one other little boy cousin in the family besides Grant, so you can imagine the noise/shriek level in that house. crazy.

 they had a blast playing with grandma's pool table

 um, told you out of order. this was at the natural history smithsonian. maddy LOVED it. that might even be an understatment (capitalization and all!)

 waiting to find easter eggs

 he caught on pretty fast to the fact that candy was inside those eggs and therefore were very desirable

 some cheeky person put the egg in the tree....

 hey look, my feet made it into a picture!

 the booty

 a random adorable photo of G

 on the drive up (this was actually taken only ten minutes from where we live)

 he was a champ and drove most of the way

 my mama's house makes me happy

 the shenadoah river right next to harper's ferry

 one of my cutie pie nieces

 Maddy's first subway ride too

 on grandma's swing

 i finally got to see my beloved amish. me+amish pretezels=happiness

 my sister-in-law checking the metro map

 my favorite part of the metro ride was baby Matthew. He seriously was acting like he was on a VERY fun roller coaster for babies. it was hilariously adorable

 picnic on the Mall for the kite festival

 i just love taking pictures of people stuffing their faces. people love it when i do that

 can't you tell?

 we brought our own kites to try out

 john got kite duty with the kids. i love that man

 maddy's favorite place, the natural history smithsonian. when she saw the dino bones she thought she had died and gone to heaven. she is sort of a strange little cookie and i love her for it.

 falling asleep mid-graham cracker

 she was not amused

 there were super long lines for all of the smithsonians which was crazy to me. i've never stood in a line for a smithsonian in all of my years of living there.

 he was not amused either.

 peeking into the air and space museum

unfortunately for him, what happens at grandma's house does not STAY at grandma's house.

 sad part of this was that i really thought my hair was looking amazing that day. #crushed

 photo shamelessly stolen from my sis-in-law's blog. that was a chocolate chicken that met an untimely demise.

 rub a dub dub all the cousins (minus matthew and meg and of course far away sydney) in the tub

 uncle bryan showing them how it's done

me looking mystified by the pirate kite. it was a great short trip and i was so happy to finally meet two babies that I hadn't met yet (youngest kids of my brother and sister). i call it a success. and now? bed time for me.