It is May in Washington, which means the beginning of the festival season along with numerous other outdoor activities. Anna made the most of the beautiful May weather over the past few weekends enjoying local events and celebrations.
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| Anna & Dad enjoying the last apple strudel in Austria |
Anna celebrated Mother's Day weekend with a couple of trips into Washington. The first trip was on Saturday for the European Union embassy open house. This is an annual spring tradition in which all of the countries that are part of the European Union open their embassies to showcase their countries. There is lots of food and music, along with tourist information. Anna got a "passport" for the event in which she got stickers at each embassy she visited. Anna and her parents made it down for the afternoon portion of the event and started out at the Austrian embassy, where they secured the last apple strudel in Austria (timing is everything). They then walked over to the Slovakian embassy, and got to see Slovak dancers (who seemed to have American accents). From there, it was on to the Dutch embassy which was definitely rocking. There was lots of music, cheese, drinks, art.....and people. Unfortunately this is also when the downpour of rain started, which cut short the outdoor festivities. It was a good time and we look forwarded to visiting other embassies next year.
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| Mother's Day bike ride in DC |
Mother's Day brought spectacular weather. Theresa decided to leverage her day for two things she loves to do: go out for breakfast and a bike ride. The bikes were loaded up and Anna and family headed into DC for a bike ride along the Georgetown waterfront and the C&O towpath. Anna recently got a bigger bike and this was her first big bike ride to try it out. It was a great day out and Theresa is always hopeful that she can get Anna to join her on more bike rides in the future.
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| Anna selling cookies |
The weekend of May 17 marked the community yard sale. This year, in a moment of temporary insanity, Theresa agreed to serve as yard sale coordinator after no one else would step up to the plate. The lady that has been doing it for years told Theresa all I needed to do was put up signs and place some ads on line (how hard can it be?). All of the signs the neighbor gave Theresa were old and beat-up, so of course new signs were needed, which involved multiple trips to Michael's for supplies. The former coordinator told Theresa she just stapled them on sign posts around the neighborhood with a heavy duty stapler. Fortunately Theresa was smart enough to realize this might require Joe's assistance (he was thrilled with Theresa's latest volunteer project) and went along only to discover that the sign posts were so covered in staples and nails that you could no longer really hang anything. We had to go back to the house, where he punched holes in the sign (messing up the water proof plastic wrap) and engineered some zip ties to go around the metal sign posts.
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| A hike along the raging river in Great Falls, MD |
Two days before the sale, Theresa was going through the shed grabbing old tomato stakes in preparation for the Saturday morning sale after realizing she could not staple anything to posts. Theresa then decided to look up some yard sale tips on line only to discover that she needed bigger signs, which meant yet another trip to Michael's. On the plus side, Anna's enjoying working on the signs. As for the yard sale itself, Anna had a successful day after selling the rest of her girl scout cookies (one retiree bought all 9 boxes) along with homemade cookies. The entire event yielded a profit of $40, although Theresa is operating at a net loss thanks to all of the trips to Michael's. Theresa is already planning improvements to next year's yard sale organization - starting with pre-made signs.
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| 1st Communion |
The day following the yard sale was beautiful, so Anna and family packed a lunch and hopped in the car for a trip across the river to Great Falls, Maryland. Anna had never been on the Maryland side of the national park and it was the perfect day to hike the billy goat trail into the Potomac River gorge. One small detail that no one realized was that the torrential rains from earlier in the week resulted in a thundering river five feet above flood stage and all of the trails closed. Anna did manage to find some rocks to climb out, albeit not the dramatic ones she was promised. We did get to see some daring kayakers launch their boats and fly down the river in dramatic fashion. Clearly we will need to go back to do the billy goat trail another day.
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| Anna on the bungee jump at Viva Vienna |
Memorial Day weekend brought spectacular weather and lots of celebrations. Anna began Friday with a special 1st communion celebration at school with her class. Saturday brought a morning soccer game in which Anna learned a very valuable lesson: you need soccer shoes to play. After arriving at the field, Anna realized that she had her casual shoes on and left her cleats at home. This required Theresa to make the 20+ minute trip home to get the shoes, while Anna sat out the first half of the game. On the plus side, Theresa remembered the team snacks, which are way more important than shoes.
Sunday, Anna enjoyed the
Viva Vienna festival with her friend Aidyn. The festival was packed with people and is the place to see and be seen in Vienna, Virginia. Anna got to try the long awaited bungee jump along with various rides and games. She even managed to talk Theresa into going on the ferris wheel. Sunday also included two neighborhood barbecues, one of which was a goodbye party for her first piano teacher, Ms. Rosa, who is moving. The second barbecue included roughly 25 kids from the street, all close to Anna's age and she had a blast. The weekend concluded on Memorial Day with an afternoon at the neighborhood pool, although swimming was short due to the cold water.
It was a great month full of fun. Anna is looking forward to the final weeks of school and summer vacation!
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| Anna, Aidan, & Zoe enjoy a frozen treat at Viva Vienna |
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