DC kite festival

woohoo, the best day of the year is upon us, the dc kite festival!

well, actually, it already happened. but you can go next year!

there were a ton more people there than i had originally anticipated. well, i knew there would be a lot of people, but not so many that my sister and her family wouldn't be able to find street parking near the mall :(

after zach and i were finally were able to meet up with them, the kite festival was actually winding down, but we were able to slip my youngest niece, kaden, into an activity booth where she made a "wind sock". i have no pictures of kaden with her wind sock because she was overwhelmed by the crowd and wouldn't fly it at that time, but later after walking for miles around the monuments she finally found her courage and ran around with it. all of us were dead at that point and just watched her with glazed eyes.

kaden is a silly little girl, she cracks me up. apparently her favorite color is pink now but she has a very dark side to her. she likes to tell stories about the spooky woods which have a "dark smell" to them, and claims that she has seen big foot and other various monsters. she talks a big talk though because one time at the playground zach decided to go under the bridge she was crossing and pretend to be a troll. kaden was so scared she wouldn't go near him the rest of the day. i would be afraid of zach too if i were her, troll or not ;)

here is kaden jumping around at the fdr memorial:

then she sat down and wanted a picture taken of herself in this pose:

as i said, kaden is my youngest niece. there's also my other 2 nieces, jessie and becca, who aren't so little anymore. when i came back from china, both of them had suddenly grown 1000 inches and were taller than me. jessie is 14 and becca is 12. i don't think they always get along but they are really good kids, better than i was when i was that age, i think i was bad :) they're both really good with kaden and seem open about their thoughts. becca plays trombone in the school band and is the best little baker i have ever seen. jessie very clearly likes the band "one direction", that's all i can discern ;)

below is my older sister, gail, the mother of these lovely ladies. gail is about 12 years old than me but she looks so good you wouldn't know. or maybe i look wise beyond my years. i wish we could all see each other more but she is very busy, not only with the girls and their activities but she is actually my half sister and my dad and her mom are divorced and remarried, as well as her husband's parents. so that's 4 different sets of families to work around. ahhh, too much! but i was so happy we could meet up in dc.

violating fdr's dog. poor fdr, everyone was just lined up to take a picture with his dog, not him.

when it was time to leave we walked back towards where the kite festival had been. there was still a lone kite up there. thank you pikachu for closing out the day!