God gave me a gift on Monday!!!  I went into the grocery store on the way home from picking mom up at the airport – I was getting her flowers for her welcome home. … They had cherry blossoms – let me clarify, they had branches cut off from cherry blossom trees!  I saw cherry blossoms in real life – for the very first time in my life!  I couldn’t believe it…I didn’t even have to think twice – I bought them for myself.  You see, I have always wanted to see cherry blossoms in real life.  In my recollection these were the first real cherry blossoms I have ever seen.

I’m still holding out for my dream … Someday, Lord willing, I will get to see Washington DC in April {& again in fall, whenever that is, and in winter too}.  April is my birthday month, maybe someday I will see real cherry trees and cherry tree blossoms for my birthday :-D.

Keep reading for a more explanatory version :-D!

For a very long time I have loved cherry blossoms.  I don’t recall ever having seen cherry blossoms in real life. When, as a young adult, I lived out of Alaska for a couple years – I thought the flowering trees I was seeing then were cherry blossoms.  About five years ago, when looking at a friend’s photo of cherry blossoms, I realized they weren’t the same.  I learned then, the ones I thought in Oct ’95-Feb ’98 were actually dogwood trees.  I was pretty disappointed, don’t get me wrong – I think flowering trees are beautiful {no matter what they are} and I really wish we had flowering trees in Alaska!  I wished growing up we had such things in either northern Wisconsin or Alaska…the two states I have spent the bulk of my life in.  The disappointing knowledge I hadn’t in fact actually seen a real cherry tree blossom caused me to even more GREATLY desire to see real cherry blossoms.  Someday.

I have always equated spring, Washington DC, and cherry blossoms … someday.  As excited as I was to have the opportunity to travel to Washington DC last year, it was in October.  I have always wanted to see the East Coast in the fall.  What I discovered was October is the end of fall in Alaska, but fall hadn’t even started in Washington DC. So, while I got to see Washington DC, I got to see the Capitol and the Washington Monument for real, with my own eyeballs, not just a picture – I didn’t get to see cherry blossoms and I didn’t get to see it in the fall.  For that matter, the Reflection Pool was under construction and was actually a hole – the bottom was dug up, with no water in it, not even a mud puddle.  No reflecting.  I know I promised pictures of our trip in October, but my camera was tired and it really didn’t focus that great or take the pictures I expected/anticipated.  I will work on finding some of the best, but it was pretty disappointing {to say the least} to have my first trip to DC not be well documented with photos.