Maryland

My first two days I actually spent a lot of time with my cousin and her family. They are in Maryland while her husband finishes his PhD. We had so much fun. The first day we just hung out at their house, laughed, ate, laughed some more. Good times!


Day One: Greenbelt MD

The youngest Italian took her first steps the day before I got there. We tried to get her to repeat the feat, but we weren't so successful.

But here a bunch of cute pix of our attempts.



Of course big sister helped out



Isn't she so cute?

A search through my bag turned up my calculator, no I mean, my pod - oh yeah, my iPod. The two older kids liked listening to my iPod, though struggled to remember the name of the little device. I think they had it by the time I left at the end of day two.

Day Two: UofM & Annapolis

We first took Papa Italian to work at the University of Maryland and then we went on a tour of the campus, including a stop at the Dairy aka: the Creamery, for some super yummy and probably super fattening ice cream.

With the cow in the Dairy

With the school mascot

We then headed for Annapolis. We first visited the Pennsylvania Dutch Market. Thursday, Friday and Saturday a bunch of PA Amish come down to sell lots of stuff. There's definitely a lot of stuff that they don't make - tootsie rolls and jawbreakers for example. But there's a lot of very expensive furnishings, a bakery, a produce section, jams and sauces - and a restaurant. We watched them make pretzels and then helped ourselves to some hot dog stuffed, mozzarella cheese stuffed, and just regular pretzels. So good.

We did a lot of running too. As in, racing. The two older kids and I raced a lot. Little Mr Italian was hilarious. Every time we'd race, we'd start off and he'd always right across my path.

It made me laugh every time.
Here he goes again.

After the market, we went out to the coast and hung out on a pier for a while.

Here's a slide show of our racing around the pier.

We tried to take a group shot too - and of course had a lot of unsuccessful attempts...

But here's one that turned out just fine

A very fun time!