Krispy Kremed

Jason arrived home Wed at midnight...I was so happy to have him back home. He was off to work before the kids were up, so Ethan kept asking me repeatedly throughout the day when daddy was getting home. He showed up around 5:00 pm, then had to go back into work Thursday night around midnight and got home at 4 am, then went back at 6:30 am, worked all day Friday, and crashed Friday night. Nothing like jumping right back in. Saturday morning he ran the Krispy Kreme Challenge with my brother Mark and my dad. You run a little over 2 miles downhill from the NC State belltower, consume one dozen Krispy Kreme donuts, then run 2 miles back uphill to the finish line. The "challenge" is to finish in under one hour, which they did. (The unspoken challenge is to finish in one hour without casting the donuts back up along the way.) Jason had a really tough time choking down the donuts and may never eat another Krispy Kreme. I'm not sure it's good for Jason and Mark to live near each other, since they seem to be good at getting each other involved in things like this. Jason got Mark to do this, and Mark persuaded Jason to get his motorcycle license and to do the Polar Bear plunge a few years back, which involved jumping into the freezing waters of the Chesapeake Bay in January. They are crazy. After the "race," Jason and the boys and I headed to the zoo for the afternoon. It was 50 degrees and sunny...chilly but not miserable. The animals were more active than when we were there last in August in 120 degree weather. (I was 9 months pregnant so that statement may be more a reflection of how it felt to me than the actual thermometer reading.) Ethan had a blast. He loves this kind of stuff. Since it was so cold, it seemed appropriate to pretend to be polar bears. The cougar was pacing right in front of him. It totally freaked him out at first, but since he loves things that scare him (it's strange, I know), he kept begging us to take him back to the cougars. The bobcat was also willing to stalk him, but it's not quite as intimidating so he was a little less impressed.

Colin, on the other hand, was unimpressed by the whole thing. We've seen him cry and we've seen him smile and laugh, but we've never seen him frown before yesterday. He had a very disgruntled frown on his face almost the entire time. We're not sure if it was the cold or our insistence that he stay bundled up in his car seat in the stroller. He hates to miss a party.

Jason got him out while Ethan played on the playground, and he cheered up a little.

Later, while we were waiting for the tram back to the parking lot, it warmed up quite a bit, so we got him out and played with him, which improved his mood considerably.

All in all, a very fun afternoon as a family, which we needed since Jason just left town again for the week. He's moonlighting in Goldsboro until Friday night. We miss him already!