Where’ve I been?

Why, at the Cherry Blossom Festival, of course! Took the whole family down to Washington for the weekend. First trip to Our Nation’s Capital for the girls, so we did just about everything touristy you could do — walked the length of the mall (it’s so long) and around the Tidal Basin, went to the zoo and saw pandas, saw the Declaration of Independence, walked past the back of the White House, and whipped through the Dada show at the National Gallery in about 15 minutes (they were tired). Had a delightful dinner with a very old friend and her family, forced the kids to eat food they wouldn’t normally eat, taught them the finer points of dealing with deranged homeless people, and generally had a great trip.

Elder daughter is down there for the rest of the week at a student leadership program that snatches 13-year-olds from their homes and hopefully instills a fear of public service in them, though I expect that’s not their actual goal. She’ll probably come home wanting to help people and all that. Oh, well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. It’s very odd to have her gone for an entire week, and even odder to not really be all that sure where she is at any given moment. Hard thing to let go. Also, my first experience away from home and in Washington (both the same trip) was a singular example of what loosely chaperoned high school students will do when given the opportunity — so I’m glad she’s both younger and much better supervised, but still, when you bring together kids from all over the country, someone’s going to do some learning that’s not on the curriculum. Ah, well. Whaddayagonna do.