A Windy Day: Flying a Kite at the Beach

I’ve had in my mind for nearly a year now, the idea of flying kites at the sandy beach.  Last fall I spotted some really neat kites in a shop down in Canal Park, and I ruminated about them all through the long and cold winter.  At the beginning of June, when The Banana and I needed to take her violin into the violin shop for a minor repair, we passed the place where I had seen the kites.  Both shops are in the same building, and I decided that purchasing a kite right then and there was the thing to do, because I knew if I actually had the kite in my possession,  we would make it to the beach to fly it.

I picked a colorful diamond kite out for everyone to use.  I also noticed a cute little kite that was made to look like a blue jay.  I knew YaYa would love it, and the kite was rather inexpensive, so I got both with the intention of giving the bird kite to YaYa for her half birthday.

It turned out that the day before YaYa’s half birthday was breezy, so we headed to the beach.  It also turned out that that little bird kite was amazing!  It was the easiest thing to fly ever, and although she kind of rolled her eyes at the idea when I gave her the kite, YaYa absolutely fell in love with flying it.  I knew she would.  She told me multiple times that she had no idea flying a kite would be so much fun.
I don’t have any pictures of the colorful diamond kite yet, because I was too busy managing it.  It was a little harder to get started.  In fact, after multiple tries and failures, I had given up for the night, deciding that it must just have been to windy for that kite to work.  Right before we decided to pack up, though, after we had watched YaYa’s kite flutter to and fro (she wouldn’t share with anyone else and did not want to reel the kite in and leave the beach) I decided to try one more time.  Lo and behold, for no particular reason, the colorful diamond kite fluttered right up in the air and held steady.  It was perfect because The Banana and Mr. TOF both got a chance to run the string.  Mr. SP was still at camp, but we have plans to fly kites again in the future.