The day we can all act like children on the Mall

The National Kite Festival
When you send it flying up there, all at once you're lighter than air...until someone gets over-ambitious with letting the string out as far as it can go without winding it back up in the handy-dandy string-holding handle when the kite drops and needs its slack tightened. I won't mention any names, but did I ever tell you that Jon can create a killer knot when he's left alone with a load of string? To Jon's credit, he kicked our kite into top notch, and Elmo flew record levels above most neighboring kites.

We went to the kite festival with our friends Odie and Tracy (who are loads of fun), equipped with some high-quality Target kites, and we of course ran into tons of Mormons on the Mall. Good clean fun always attracted our type. :) We had a blast and we were surprised how many people came. It was packed! We saw pirate ship kites, huge flying 3-D squares, and our favorite...a set of 3-D legs in running shorts. No body, just legs. Hot. We also stayed around long enough for the "chinese fighter kite wars," which were fascinating in that they took 3-6 people to control each kite, but kind of anti-climatic when it came to the fighting. We were expecting some killer speedy kite swooping, but we only saw gentle gliding and slight swaying into other participants' massive kites. Nonetheless, we cheered for the winners from Sweden (or somewhere like that).

Below are photos illustrating the kite scene, our kite flying joy, and the death of Elmo upon extreme string entanglement. You should have heard the way the kids screamed every time they saw Elmo flying--they all wanted one JUST like him.