Brooklyn Botanic Garden

 Too early for Cherry blossoms, but right on time for Magnolias. All shades of pink, white and yellow, they're especially magical when the light shines through them and light up like stained glass. 

 Our co-pilot.

Everett didn't seem to notice any of the Magnolia trees or really any of the flowers at all.

He was obsessed with jumping off stumps and big rocks (oh! Big rock!") and especially interested in hiding inside dwarf weeping trees ("ooh, house!"), tunneling through the long braids of evergreen that reached the ground and laughing hysterically while we asked "where's Everett? Where did he go?" But the best part about that whole scenario was that when Mommy and Daddy decided it was time to move on, we couldn't do anything except wait patiently (and wait and wait and wait – at times not so patiently) until Everett decided he was done mocking us.

Only then would he crawl out with a huge grin, laughing hysterically, make us tickle-chase him around the tree

about a dozen times, crawl back inside... and repeat.

We planned to return a week later (last weekend) for the annual Sakura Matsuri Cherry Blossom Festival, which has been a treasured tradition for Scott and Christiana since we can remember:

We went as fiancés a mere month before our wedding.

And when I was pregnant with Everett, and ended up wearing Chicken Teriyaki all over my shirt when I tested my balance to the limit, trying to go from standing up to sitting on the grass with a full plate of food.

And we went the next year, with our six-month-old, and running into some of our closets friends.

Since the kiddos have come along, it's been a little hit and miss: 

There was the one year I was too incapacitated with morning sickness to leave the house.

Another year when we sat idle in traffic for so long that Everett had a meltdown and we had to

turn around and go home before we even got there.

And this year we just had so much happening last weekend.

And it's been a little heartbreaking because we talked about how we were coming back soon, and literally every morning for the past two weeks Everett says "garden? house!" and we have to tell him that we'll be going back really soon.

And we will. We promise.