Cherry Blossom Bomb

 We went out to pick up Brian from work and headed into the city on Monday afternoon to get pictures of the kids and the Japanese cherry blossoms.  However, the funny thing about these trees is they bloom for such a short time and the wind and rain can make that time even shorter.  I guess we missed them by a small margin.  There were some blooms left, but nothing compared to what we saw two years ago.  They were kind of dull looking.

There were a couple of decent looking trees, but not even worth getting Drew out of the stroller for, in my opinion.  It was very windy on Monday and that must have done them in. 

This was the only picture we got next to a cherry blossom tree.

 We had planned to go to dinner in the city as well.  We got to see a lot of police since this was right in the midst of the Boston bombings.  So we took our time on the way back to the car and took some pictures by some monuments.  The kids had so much fun running along and playing with each other.  We have the traveling, sight-seeing kind of kids.  

Korean War Memorial

In front of the Lincoln Memorial

Reflecting Pool and Washington Monument- There were ducks and ducklings in the pool that the kids got a kick out of watching.

Someone stopped and asked if they could take a picture of the whole family for us.  I look exceptionally "large and in charge" here (I know, Mom, the stripes don't help!), but we don't get many family photo opts so I'll take it.

We went to the Elephant and the Castle for dinner which was dubbed number four on the kids' list of favorite restaurants.  This is probably because they had a Share menu where we got 4 plates of different kinds of food to share.  I shared with the kids, and Brian got a hamburger plate.  It ended up not being a ton of food, and I kept having to give my portion away to my hungry little chicks (AKA the bottomless pits.)  So I got a brownie ice cream dessert since I wasn't very full yet to share with the little chicks.  Brian thought the brownie tasted too much like cake (we prefer brownies to cake any day) and Isaac says, "Yeah, I don't really like chocolate, but I am toughin' it out."  I told him not to tough it out on my account.  I'd rather have more brownie/cake. 

I guess our afternoon wore out the boys a bit.  We got home at 8:30pm and they were sacked out.

We haven't done anything like that in a while.  It was just like old times.  Brian enjoys those little trips so much.  Once these board exams are over, I am sure we'll be doing a lot more of this again.  We'll catch those blossoms next year when we have Tad with us.