my mother and brother are in town for the week. they've been roaming the town (mostly on foot, much to my brother's chagrin) and taking lots of pictures (my mother has a picture of us loading up costco groceries, waiting for the subway, and we barely escaped one of us walking to the restaurant) and having a pretty good time (as far as i can tell - i've had to work).

and since my parentheses quota has run out for that paragraph, i will start a new one.

some highlights of the trip so far:

- central park. my mother has been itching to walk in central park since she got here. i've been itching for her to walk there too, since she's always asking me about some celebrity that was in central park and did i see them and i've been waiting for her to fully grasp how large the park actually is. she finally walked there and took lots of pictures of the flowers.

- speaking of itching, so far no allergy disasters. considering the following equation:

(baxter + mitchell + charlotte) x spring shedding season to the power of my mother's severe allergies

allergy disasters should be everywhere. let's all say a quick thank you to claritin.

- madame tussauds. i've been wanting to go there since we got to the city, but mike was never interested. lucky for me, i talked it up to my mother and we went on tuesday. it's amazing what they can do with wax, let me tell you. here are some shots of us with various celebrities we "met" at the museum.

- after the museum we went on a costco run. mother, of course, was taking pictures. they were very interested in all the various forms of transportation that are necessary to take a trip back and forth and the backpack and cart that we had to use to carry everything back. here's a particularly flattering shot of my brother and me carrying the cart up the subway stairs (three freaking flights!)

stay tuned for updates on the rest of their trip. hopefully i will manage to update before next week...