meadowlark gardens

Last week I tried to soak in as much spring as possible. The Arboretum, two visits to the Tidal Basin blossoms, Brookside Gardens, and finally, Meadowlark Botanical Gardens. My friend Jessica invited us to join them and I'm so glad we did. We hadn't ever been there in the spring and the gardens were beautiful. Lots of blossoming trees and colorful flowers. Elsa and Oliver enjoyed the children's garden but were most excited about watching all of the huge fish, turtles, ducks, and geese. Surprisingly, I didn't take many photos. I think I wore myself (and my camera) out on the cherry blossom sunrise excursion earlier that morning.

brookside gardens.

When Amelia gets home from school every day, Elsa is quick to tell her about all of the fun things we did without her. Amelia responds with a nice foot stomp and her current favorite phrase "No fair!" Last Thursday I let her stay home from school so she could go with us to Brookside Gardens. Elsa did not want to miss preschool so Amelia and I had a nice morning together while Oliver napped and Elsa went to school.

We drove up to Maryland after lunch and the girls had so much fun talking and laughing together in the car and then running around together at the gardens, making silly jokes in the children's garden. It really made our day so much better for Elsa to have someone to play with (Amelia even managed to calm Elsa down from a tantrum) and Amelia can be rather helpful with Oliver. I sort of wanted to stomp my foot and say "no fair!" But I guess school is important.

If Elsa ever gets a treat during the day, she always makes sure to save some for Amelia. When she gets stickers at Trader Joes she always says "can I get one for my sister too?" It's awfully sweet. They have their fighting moments too so the separation at school is probably good for them.

Brookside Gardens was beautiful. We had only been during the winter to see the Christmas lights so it was fun to see everything blooming. There were so many beautiful colors and a nice greenhouse with a variety of plants and flowers. It was 80 degrees that day and we were all quite overheated by the end. Not looking forward to the heat of summer.

polka dots!

The girls were really excited about all of the turtles.

Relaxing on the grass.

Oliver doing what he does best...wandering off.

tidal basin: the instagram version

The last of the Tidal Basin posts. A few instagram shots from both visits...

the cherry blossom dance.

Amelia has been going to a new dance studio this year and we absolutely love it. Her teacher is fantastic. Amelia just started learning her ballet dance for the end-of-year recital. Her class is doing a dance based on the 100th anniversary of the gift of the cherry trees from Japan. (Um...waaaaay better than last year's "Some day I'll be Miss America" pink feather fest.)

Amelia really wanted to perform her dance (well, the first 30 seconds that she's learned) by all of the cherry trees when we were at the Tidal Basin. She tried to teach Elsa as well. (You will see in the first few seconds how that ended.)

tidal basin: the pink version

It's hard to believe that this is our 8th year seeing the cherry blossoms in D.C. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the gift of the trees from Japan so there are tons of events going on for the next month to celebrate. The blossoms peaked much sooner than they usually do.

The last few years I have gone down at sunrise to see the blossoms and loved it so I went down again this year. It was cloudy nearly every morning this past week but finally Friday morning had a forecast of sun. I think all the photographers waited until Friday because the Tidal Basin was completely filled with tripods and monster lenses. It's such an interesting scene and this year seemed particularly crazy. While walking around I saw a car accident, a serious altercation between two runners who ran into each other (D.C. folks are a little uptight), and a woman crashed on her bike right in front of me.

Despite the craziness, it was a really beautiful morning (even if it was a bit hazy) and I loved taking my time wandering the tidal basin (without a stroller) and enjoying the early morning lighting. It was so interesting how much the blossoms had changed from our visit at the beginning of the week, transforming from white to pink.

Cherry blossom paparazzi!

I decided to change things up a bit this year and brought my bike with me. The Tidal Basin is a crazy place to navigate on bike so after I walked around there I rode my bike around Hains Point. It was such a beautiful, peaceful ride along a road entirely lined with blossoming trees. There were hardly any people around and blossoms were raining down on the path as I rode along.