flash back

My littlest brother, Garrett, has been bugging me to post pictures on facebook from our family trip to England and Ireland this summer "so kids'll know how cool I am," but my internet has been sketchy slash there's so much pressure to come up with good captions on the faces book that I chickened out and I've been emailing them to him in increments of 4 so he can post them himself.

However, all this photo viewing has made me a tad nostalgic for those 10 days in the UK. I figured the least I could do is post a few photos here since I know I did a terrible job of picture posting while we were actually on the trip. So, here are some random highlights, aka mostly things that make me laugh:

On the plane ride over Garrett and I watched the movie Diary of a Wimpy Kid. There was this one part where the nerdy redheaded kid gets so excited that he's having a sleepover with Greg Heffley, the main character, that he is bouncing around his room. In the midst of his bouncing, he jumps over to this large, taxidermied rodent by his dresser, cups its chin in his hands, and says, "Greg Heffley's in my room, Rebecca!" There are so many strange things about that one moment and Garrett and I loved them all. It was a phrase that was oft repeated throughout the trip, although, I must admit, we couldn't remember Greg's last name so we called him Greg Hurley instead. Oh well. This photo was taken in Stratford-Upon-Avon (where Shakespeare is from). These lovely taxidermied specimens live on the second floor of what looked to be an antique shop, and yes, it does look as if they are about to spring to freedom.

Garrett took this picture as a joke when we were at Anne Hathaway's house (no, not the famous actress, the wife of Shakespeare). I was standing in the doorway of a willow hut, where people used to go when they were heartbroken (or something) and I asked Garrett to take a picture. Instead he took a series of strange mostly ground pictures. Nerd. However, I think this one turned out kinda cool, even better because it wasn't supposed to be cool. You know?

My mom getting on to Platform 9 3/4. She was by far the best at posing out of everyone. Just look at that face!

All of us kids trying to look scared on the Ghost Night Bus in Dublin. I love that Garrett the Carrot is there, of course, and also that person Garrett looks like he's about to cry. Carter and Brinden just look terrifying all on their own. Also, fun fact: when we boarded the bus my parents sat down first, and all of us intentionally sat behind, not in front of them: we all knew that sitting in front of the dad would just be asking for pretend spiders to crawl up our backs or for our shoulders to be grabbed in an alarming manner in an effort to make us scream. No thank you.

We were at a castle or something eating lunch in Shannon and playing the game where you say an emotion and the person has to quick make the face that illustrates that emotion and you take a picture. This was the face my dad made when I said, "Pretend like you're on vacation with your family but really be secretly working the whole time!" Clearly he didn't think it was as funny as I did, but he was just asking for it by being on his phone either conference calling or emailing most of the time. Oh the dad. How I love him. Plus, check out that fancy shirt. Amazing!

A jumping picture where Brinden jumps right in the middle and ruins everything. Classic. But also hilarious. Plus, it was clearly a pretty epic jump. Look at how high he is!

Wow. That was a lot more than I was planning on posting. Also they don't really tell you much about our trip, but that's ok. If you wanna learn more about that you can check out Garrett's facebook album which will be growing by the day, I'm sure. Cuz without it, how will kids know how cool he is?