Cherry Blossom Festival - Take Two

Wouldn't you know that the peak foliage, the festival parade, and the best weather of the season would all occur during the weekend that I was on my girls getaway in Texas (post coming soon). So you know I was disappointed when our second attempt at seeing the cherry blossoms was only slightly warmer and just as cloudy as the first.

After a much needed vacation in the hot Texas sun, I arrived home and crawled into bed at 12:30 Sunday night. Six thirty a.m. came extremely early (especially after getting used to sleeping in till 9:00 for the past 3 days without my boys as my alarm clock). I awoke excited to start our busy day, see another dear friend of mine, and get some good pictures with pink cherry blossoms. My plans for the day were completely turned upside down when I looked out the window to see the rain falling steadily outside. Nonetheless, I packed a picnic lunch and headed out the door at 9:30 to take the boys to gymnastics class. After gymnastics, Rebecca and Leah (former neighbors who have since moved 1 1/2 hours away) accompanied us to our next event: the egg hunt which had to be relocated indoors due to the rain (see previous post: egg-citing). Plan A was to eat a picnic lunch in a park and let the kids play before heading to DC. Plan B ended up being lunch at Chick-fil-a and the kids playing in the playland. While the children were busy climbing and sliding, Rebecca and I mulled over Plan C: take the kids bowling or Plan D: Go back to my house or Plan E: Drive south to Richmond and go to the children's museum or Plan F: Go to a museum in DC or Plan G: Take the umbrellas and stick with the original agenda of seeing the Cherry Blossoms. If you read the title of this post then you already know that we opted for Plan G! Which was entirely based on Mikie's begging to take Leah on the metro!

The metro: my boys' idea of a great day in DC

Part of Plan A was to have Michael meet us at the Cherry Blossom Festival since he was leaving that evening on a NAVY trip for 2 days. However, with the rain delay we didn't arrive in DC until 3:30 which happened to be the time that he needed to be at the airport. So alas, after living here for almost 2 years I was finally forced into navigating the metro and the streets of DC on my own. I'm happy to report that there were no incidents to document and we returned that evening with the correct number of children in tow. Of course, it helped immensely that I had just been on this same route the week before at our first festival attempt (previous post).

Before reaching the cherry blossoms, we took the same detour through the dogwood garden behind the Smithsonian. Most of the pink blossoms had already fallen on the ground, but that just made it all the more fun for Leah and Mikie. In the video below, I felt as though I was watching their courtship as they would hide from each other behind the tree:

Leah & Rebecca Does that weeping cherry tree look familiar? Yes it's the same one we posed in front of from my last post.

The kids made us pay a pretend toll before we could go through. Apparently Rebecca and I got off cheap with our pretend fee, but the gentleman behind us shelled out 26 cents to the little entrepreneurs.

When we got close to the Washington Monument Leah exclaimed "That's the biggest pencil I've ever seen."

The only picture I have where the sun was actually shinning for a brief 5 minutes. Can you tell it was blustery that day?

After much walking, stopping, carrying, rearranging, picture posing, port-a-potty visiting, and playing musical stroller seats, we finally arrived at the water's edge around 5:00. This made it too late to walk around the entire perimeter so we settled for a short walk across the bridge where the kids could throw petals into the water and watch the ducks swim by.

Despite the short amount of time we had to enjoy the blossoms and all the changes in plans (many, many, many times) I'm so glad we went. I always enjoy my time with Rebecca (albeit too few and far between) and the kids obviously had fun as evident by the video above. Oh, and the PB&J sandwiches from my picnic lunch did get eaten by the kids on the way back to the metro. When the boys and I finally arrived home at 8:30 that night, my jetlag had finally caught up to me and my "Boagie Genes" could hold out no longer. Perhaps next year the weather and timing will work out so we can stick with Plan A.