actually, a lot of trees grow in brooklyn

It's been a wonderfully eventful weekend here. On Friday, we got together with my cousin, Chelle, and her husband, Joe, and their three-month-old, Colby (who we were just meeting for the first time). They live in Chicago, so we don't see them much -- it was great to catch up over a leisurely dinner. (Perhaps too leisurely, according to our server...) Somehow, even though we were there for three hours, nobody took any photos. (Argh.)

On Saturday night, Ian and I babysat for Colby so his mom and dad could go on a date. We all had a blast. (Except when he got the hiccups -- twice! -- and we were all miserable. You can't exactly tell a baby to hold his breath...or scare the daylights out of him.) Here are some of our fun moments.

This morning we awoke to loud, incessant tweeting. It was Anita, the female cardinal who lives somewhere in our backyard. (We named the pair of cardinals Bernardo and Anita after the two coolest characters in West Side Story.) We put up a feeder (on Wednesday, I think) right outside our bedroom window. The cardinals let us watch them from our bed, so we're about four feet away, separated only by a window. We've also had a few house sparrows and mourning doves. Now I'm hoping the feeder attracts some of the blue jays we've seen in the trees. I don't know if they will, though, because Bernardo has been chasing away anything else that comes by -- he seriously hops behind the sparrows and tries to peck them. Here's our star pair!

After we finished watching the birds, which we did for a good half an hour, we decided to take a walk around Prospect Park in Brooklyn. First, we stopped for brunch at an incredibly kitchy neighborhood diner called Tom's Restaurant (not to be confused with the mediocre-at-best place of Seinfeld fame). It was fabulous. The service was so good they had a guy that walked up and down the line of people waiting to be seated with free snacks, coffee, and even hand sanitizer. And then we got the food...oh man (the photos say it all).

When we finished eating, we rolled ourselves to Prospect Park, and along the way, we passed some cool Brooklyn landmarks, like the museum, the botanic garden, the main branch of the library, and a roundabout full of monuments dedicated to Americans in battle (we have a lot of those). The park has a much different feel. It's very wild and hilly, and there are a number of old, ornate structures that have been consumed by the wilderness around them...it reminds me of how Narnia might look in the fall. Take a look.

What did you do this weekend?