Kite Festival

Saturday was the annual Smithsonian Kite Festival at the Washington Monument. It turned out to be a gorgeous day with the most splendid blue sky. We took the metro downtown with the Mangums and the Hamills and enjoyed a fun day flying kites and getting a sneak peak at the blossoms. We walked past my favorite spot, the Haupt Garden, and found the magnolias to be in full bloom. We could not have dreamed up a better spring day.
























(It should be noted that I was flying that green kite while taking photos.)






(Elsa and Bria)


Our group flying kites. It's hard to tell in the photos, but the sky was filled with kites. It was fantastic. There was a bit of tangling going on too though.


Bria and Elsa discuss the finer points of kite flying.

Icelandic Rock

A while back I was rambling in this post about my internal debate with feeling too old (and lazy) to attend concerts anymore. (I'm talking about small rock shows in clubs, not so much large overpriced arena concerts...those are filled with old people.) Feeling the need to recover from missing the Kings of Convenience show last month, Ben and I had been looking for another concert. Beach House was playing this week which would have been fun, but it was already sold out. We ended up going to Black Cat on Tuesday night to see Seabear, an indie-folk band from Iceland. We weren't too familiar with them but really enjoyed the show, despite the fact that their set didn't start until after 11 p.m. We also saw Via Tania perform before them.

We wanted to kill a little bit of time before the concert in hopes of missing at least the first opening band, knowing that we would be standing around for a long time. We made a stop at Seventh Hill Pizza on Capitol Hill to devour a NUTELLA CALZONE. So delicious.





Enjoy some Seabear:

Friends

We drove down to Richmond on Monday to spend the day with our good friends the Dyckmans. The kids had fun playing together, despite Amelia and Ethan's love/hate relationship. They really love being together, but like to argue about things like who is going to marry who.





These pictures made me laugh because Jonah and Elsa are always looking in the same direction:

Congressional Dog Park

Our Sunday afternoon excursion was to the Congressional Cemetery in D.C. near the Anacostia River. Thousands of individuals who helped form the nation and the city of Washington in the early 19th century are buried here. Old cemeteries are so neat. But this one involves a little twist. Dogs. And lots of them. In fact, we were the only people at the cemetery without a dog.

Apparently the cemetery had fallen into great disrepair so dog owners in the community got together and in exchange for volunteering their time to fix up the grounds and paying an annual fee to help support the cemetery, they get to use it as a dog park.

I'm sure all the dead Senators and Congressmen are delighted to have dogs pooping on their graves. But I'm sure it looks nicer now than it did. And Amelia and Elsa were absolutely thrilled with all the dogs. And I mean there were a LOT of dogs. I think they might equate cemeteries with dogs now.








(John Philip Sousa's grave...commence marching)

BLOSSOMS!!








Since I was busy with my new camera, Amelia insisted on carrying the Diana Mini around and taking photos. She was very happy to be ordering me around for photos.

Yes Virginia, there is a Spring.

The first day of spring had us acting like it was the middle of summer. Minus the humidity and the bug spray. It was enjoyable from start to finish.

We spent the morning walking across the Wilson Bridge to Maryland. When we got back to the Virginia side, we walked to the Jones Point Light House. It was nearly lunch time so we headed into Old Town and got my favorite veggie hummus pita at The Perfect Pita near my old office. I used to spend many lunches enjoying pitas and a lovely river view from the back steps of my building. The girls were in heaven with all of the steps to climb on and the strange statue of disassembled body parts.










(Jones Point Light House)




(Enjoying our pitas...my old office is in the background.)















We spent the afternoon doing yard work. I have decided that I love spring-time yard work. Amelia worked a little too hard and needed to soak her feet in the pool. After yard work, we treated ourselves to some Dairy Godmother goodness and then hit the park for a little more play time before dark.








We thought we would just share bites of our custard with Elsa. Turns out she was VERY mad that she did not have her own.