Cherry Blossoms

It’s cherry blossom time again. The season when Washington DC turns into a gorgeous spring wonderland with white and soft pink blossoms envelop every inch of the trees. Walking the Tidal Basin just off of the Mall is a particular treat. The Japanese gave the trees to the US as a gift and they are stunning to behold. Seems to me that we always choose particularly cold days to go down and see them. One year it was miserable beyond description. We knew it would be cold and dressed for it. Maddie was about six months old, so she sat in the back of the double stroller in her carseat, snug as a bug in a rug. She napped the whole time. Ben was bundled up in two pairs of pants, a sweatshirt and a coat with gloves and a winter hat. Still, it was cold and the wind was nasty. We walked the entire circle that year and he was in a terrible mood. Not only was he really cold, he was incredibly tired and irritable. He cried as he was strapped down in the buckle of the stroller. At one point, I took my freezing cold fingers out of my gloves to snap a few pictures and fell behind Brian and the stroller a few paces. When I started walking again, I overheard a couple walking past me say, “Those parents are terrible. I can’t believe they would take their kid out in this weather and freeze him like that.” Of course, they had no idea I heard or that I was that poor abused kid’s mother.

This year, the weather was windy, as it always is on the Tidal Basin, but pleasant temperatures. That made the day so much more enjoyable. We picked Brian up from work and drove to the Metro station to take the train in to town. Even if the kids were stinkers about getting good pictures, we really enjoyed the time playing there. We made the wise choice to only walk half way around that way, we all stayed happy. The kids were cute playing on the walk and despite their best efforts to look rotten in every picture, we still got a few cute ones. One of Ben’s favorite things was to see on the Tidal Basin was about 50 of those green port-a-johns in a row for all the cherry blossom festival goers. What can you say? You take a kid to enjoy the blossoms and all of God’s beautiful creations and he only cares about the toilets. Oh yeah, as always, they both LOVED riding the metro train in.