Picture Day

Today I thought I would talk about some recent fun adventures and post a few pics of Silas. For those of you concerned about this blog becoming a daily brag book of my son, you need not worry. But for today, he can have the spotlight. My apologies for not keeping up with the blog over the past week.... work was crazy as usual and I was in bed as early as possible.

Sunday night was the season opener for the Oklahoma City Thunder, which is our local NBA team. Perhaps quite foolishly, BJ and I have spent hard-earned bucks on season tickets in the upper level, and we intend to take Silas to the vast majority of these 44 games (this being the possibly foolish part). He has done so well at sporting events like baseball, hockey, and football games in the past that we thought, what the heck? Let's give it a whirl. We bought Silas some rockin' Baby Banz Hearing Protector Earmuffs, Camo Green (although his are actually Camo Blue) and off we headed. Silas was mesmerized by the crowd and the brightly-lit court until he drifted off to sleep in the second quarter. He stayed sleeping in BJ's lap until well into the fourth quarter. Thunder won, by the way. Next game is Sunday night.

 Yesterday we headed to the Oklahoma City Zoo. Silas seems to really love dogs, and he laughs frequently at Tex and my parents' dog Sam. Tex is pretty great with Silas. Here is a picture of Silas and Tex conspiring together:

We thought that since Silas now seems old enough to enjoy experiencing animals, perhaps the zoo is the place to be. Silas seemed to have a pretty good time, although admittedly he took only a mild interest in most of the animals. He was particularly interested in the nocturnal exhibit where he watched fruit bats flying all over the place. He also seemed fairly interested in the gorillas and orangutans. A couple of times we had a neat experience, such as the time that the sea lion swam right in front of our window or when the black bear paused only inches away on the other side of the glass and made eye contact with us. I thought with excitement, "Silas has got to be loving this!" only to look down and see that he was enthralled with wrestling a beast in his own hands...his pacifier. Ah well. We'll take him again in about another six months.  Here are some pictures from the zoo:

Last night was also a Halloween festival at BJ's parents' church, so we dressed him up in his lion costume, courtesy of Aunt Pat's marvelous garage-sale-ing. He got some ooh's and ahh's from friends and family (as well as a few from polite strangers), but no candy this year! We'll save that for when he has teeth.

I don't have pictures of OSU's Walkaround from last Friday, but Silas was a real trooper and joined us in Stillwater for that as well. I'm telling you, there are schools that celebrate homecoming, and then there are schools like OSU that CELEBRATE HOMECOMING. Everyone around here knows that homecoming in Stillwater is tops because of the hard work done by the sororities and fraternities in making the incredible house decs (as they are called there). When we lived in Minnesota, I was depressed each year on Walkaround night that we couldn't be there, so it's so great to be close again. We had a blast!

In other news, I am running for considerably longer distances. On Monday I ran 2.2 miles with no stops, albeit at the tortoise pace of 26:45. That last lap of the park was abysmally slow, but I never stopped moving my feet or else I knew I couldn't get going again. But the distance is what I need to focus on here, the DISTANCE. 2.2 miles! I am going to be able to do this on Thanksgiving morning. Then I followed it up by running a mile and a half, check it, a mile and a half, with a jogging stroller on Thursday. And Silas was in the stroller, so add nearly 20 pounds on to that workout! No wonder my arms are still sore.

Have a good weekend everyone. Shazam.