Cherry Blossom Festival

The other weekend, we met up with Mon Amour's cousin to explore DC and take in the sights of the Cherry Blossom Festival.

It was Papillon's first metro ride.

As with most new experiences, she was generally unphased by the situation.

We watched the parade for a bit. It was about as exciting as you would expect - fun bands, cool floats, and other random things.

We were all enjoying the sights and sounds....

...when suddenly, this happened:

The car pulling one of floats burst into flames. Seriously. The engine kind of exploded with fire.
Luckily no one was hurt and as you can see from this picture, the firemen took care of the fire pretty quickly.
Once the crowd realized it wasn't a terrible crisis - they all seemed to enjoy the excitement. For added fun, when they tried to tow the car away, just as a big cheer arose from the crowd, the car, fell off the tow truck with a bang! This prompted a gasp followed by much laughter.
Eventually they did succeed in removing the car from the parade.

Possibly my favorite part of this whole story is that, just before the car fire, the float carrying the Festival Coordinator had just gone past. As an event planner, I understand the fear of having something go wrong onsite. Therefore, I can only imagine how the Coordinator's would have stopped if she had glanced behind her float to see that the 2nd half of the parade was no where to be seen! Haha. Poor woman. I do not envy her her job.

Anyway, nothing like a little car fire to make a parade that much more exciting!

Even though it was overcast, and beyond the peak bloom for the Cherry Trees, they were still quite lovely.

We attempted a family photo before the fun was over...but apparently Papillon was not interested.

Our second attempt was a smidgen better...