For some reason Sam decided he wanted to go see the NC Zoo.  Of course his original idea was that he could drive there by himself or maybe with a friend – keep in mind it’s 3 hours away and you have to drive through Raleigh to get there.  We finally convinced him that wasn’t a good idea and said we would take him.  We had always wanted to take the boys when they were little, but 6 hours in the car seemed like a lot.  So on Saturday the three of us jumped in the car and drove to the zoo (Alex opted to stay at home and yell at the Playstation).  Since it was early on a Saturday morning (before 10am) we let Sam drive through part of Raleigh before Dad took over the rest of the way.  We don’t know if it was the yelling from Mom and Dad because he failed to listen to our instructions to slow down or the realization that it was more difficult than he imagined, but Sam did say later that night that he would not be driving to the zoo by himself in the future.

The NC Zoo is the world’s largest natural habitat zoo which means that there is quite a bit of walking – we put in a little over 5 miles on the day.  There are also quite a few hills and lots of trees for shade.  We are sure the shade would be quite helpful in the summer but unfortunately Saturday was one of the coldest days so far this fall as it only was in the mid-50’s and windy all day.  Overall we did have a great time and we got some good photos.  Sam apparently took over 700 photos, none of which we have yet seen.  Mom probably took at least 500 while Dad probably just a 100 or so.

Glass domed desert – warmest place at the zoo that day.

At this point we were thankful to see this sign, we were all tired, cold and pictured out. Thankful that we only had about 3/4 mile to get back to the parking lot.

Not the kind of sign you really want to see at a zoo.

Mom is still mad she didn’t get credit for this idea.

So what does Dad do on his weekend off.  Cook Dinner, Mow the lawn (just to pick up the leaves) and build a TV cart for the deck.  We had an old TV (probably about 8 years old from what we can remember) that had been sitting out in the garage for at least the last year and we had some left over 4×4 posts from the garden project earlier this year.  Throw in an old set of heavy duty wheels and the last of the roofing material from the firewood shed and you have a TV stand that we can wheel out onto the deck.  Of course there was a few more bits and pieces that had to come together, but today we got to watch the Chiefs play football and part of the NY marathon later on during dinner.

For dinner on Friday, we had breakfast dinner but of course none of the boys managed to make it in time for dinner – they ate later.  Saturday was hamburgers on the grill and then on Sunday Beef Stroganoff… of course the boys don’t really like mushrooms (Sam actually picked them all out) and Alex had to pasta noodles because he didn’t want the egg noodles and then we didn’t add in the sour cream because of Sam’s lactose problem.  You can’t imagine how hard it is to get everyone together for dinner, much less find something that everyone will eat.