Kyleigh's Story - Cherry Blossom 2009

The weekend of April 4, 2009 was supposed to be the peak of the Cherry Blossom in Washington DC. So we planned a trip to enjoy the flowers.

We intentionally avoided the parade and the Japanese Street Festival in the morning. We left the house around 11:30 AM. When we got to the Vienna Metro Station, there were two long lines all the way out of the station and almost into the parking lot.  My husband, my mom, and Kyleigh got to the end of the line, and I went to the front to find out what the line was for.  It turned out those were lines to purchase the metro fare cards (i.e., "train tickets"). Since I already had the fare cards, we were able to bypass the long lines.

The train was very crowded. But thanks to Kyleigh, a woman gave up her seat so my mom could sit down with Kyleigh.  It was about a 45-minute ride, and Kyleigh fell asleep shortly after they sat down.

Once we got off the metro rail, we headed to the Tidal Basin. We followed the crowds and went on the Mall. It was a very windy day, and several people were playing kites. We almost had an accident when a kite came straight down from the sky and its pointy end shot in the ground only a couple of feet away from Kyleigh's head.  Kyleigh was startled and I almost had a heart attack too. 

The wind was also blowing too much dust all over us.  So we decided to get away from the Mall and took a short sandwich break on a bench outside of one of the Smithsonian museums.

After a few bites, Kyleigh decided she didn't want to sit around any more.  It was probably because she saw all the people walking past us to get to the Cherry Blossom site. So she headed out to join where all the actions were.  We packed up and followed.  Kyleigh was initially pushing her stroller down the street with us, and then jumped on the stroller after a while.

Kyleigh had her Elmo hat on. It got blown away a few times and Daddy had to run to rescue it.  We tucked the hat under her jacket hat, but it was still getting loose.  Kyleigh, on her own, came up with the idea of holding it down to prevent another "lost hat" incident. 

We didn't really have a strict agenda. We came to the lawn in front of the Washington Monument, and took some pictures.

Kyleigh was having fun pushing her stroller.  I was definitely glad that we brought the "light" one and not the full stroller (otherwise it would have been too heavy and too bulky for the trip).

We took another break in front of the Washington Monument. Unfortunately there's no cherry blossom to make up a good background here. 

Kyleigh was munching on the egg and ham sandwich Grandma made.

We kept moving and got to a big open grass field.  Kyleigh really liked walking on the grass, so she ran back and forth for quite a while there. For her, she's just happy to "go out", and the cherry blossom probably didn't make a whole lot of difference.

We continued moving forward and came to a small pond where there were many cherry trees around. We sat down and took another break. There were seagulls, ducks, and many dogs. At one point, Kyleigh had 2 pieces of cookies in her hands.  A leashed dog came along and sniffed Kyleigh in a friendly manner.  The dog owner said jokingly, "Oh too bad, no cookies for you!" to the dog.  My mom heard it and asked Kyleigh (in Chinese) if she would share her cookies with the dog.  Kyleigh immediately pulled back both her arms close to her chest to protect her cookies. (LOL)  I told my mom Americans wouldn't feed the dogs human food anyway. (It is normal for Taiwanese dogs to eat human food.)

After a while, we moved on to the Tidal Basin. It was very crowded, but I was able to get a few snap shots (and Kyleigh was even smiling in some of them).

"Mommy you are still taking pictures!?"

Another snapshot with a smile in there.

It was about 3 PM and we decided to head back. We took a shortcut through the food vendors. Kyleigh had a big smile on her face, although there wasn't cherry blossom around.

We took one last batch of photos on the way back to the Mall. Kyleigh was getting a little bit hot.

"Alright, Mommy.  If you are not taking off my jacket for me, I'll do it myself."

The rest of the trip was unexpectedly unpleasant.  We headed back to the Metro station, but there was so much crowd that it took us about 30 minutes just to get down (the train station is underground). The fare machine was malfunctioning, and we couldn't get our fare cards stamped correctly. When we got to the destination, I had to get the station manager to fix the fare cards before we could exit. Everyone was exhausted and frustrated.

I think we all calmed down after we got home and relaxed for a few hours.  Overall I think it was still a good trip.

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For more stories about my baby Kyleigh, please visit Kyleigh's Stories Group.