Christina, Reid, Candi, and John were all staying in DC, so Jason and I took the Metro down for the day on Saturday to go adventuring. After some mild confusion as to where, exactly, we were meeting (Jason and I popped into the wrong museum and then were walking around the wrong floor of the correct museum) we all met up to peruse the halls of the National Museum of American History.

And, I don’t know how familiar you are with the Smithsonian museusm, but they love having these strange white plaster-looking statues everywhere.

Reid really liked them.

The museum was pretty neat though. And they had a gargantuan train there that was from Charlotte, NC—where Jason’s family is from—and that was impressive.

Then I got this sweet picture of Jason, but I have no idea what the picture above him actually is. Something in a ship I think. YOU’RE WELCOME.

The four of us popped into the National Museum of Natural History for about five minutes, but we barely made it through half of the dinosaur exhibit before growling tummies forced us to leave for lunch. I did get a picture of Jason and a t-rex though.

And us in front of a triceratops.

And whatever this is.

We accidentally went to an upscale lunch at The Capital Grille, but it was absolutely delicious. Jason and I got crab-stuffed shrimp because we are fancy individuals. Oh! And they gave us free shots of homemade pineapple vodka. It was the bomb. Jason managed to get his hands on three of them from around the table. Yup.

After lunch, we decided to walk around and check out the monuments. We started at the Capital Building. Jason and I went to pose in front of it and at the last second he leaned over and fogged up my glasses.

We wandered our way down the mall while Candi regretted her choice of heeled boots, until we got to the Washington Monument. Of course, more pictures ensued.

Then Reid joined.

And this happened.

And here’s Jason looking handsome.

After what everyone else informed me was a grueling walk, we made it to the Lincoln Memorial. Jason and I took a picture in front of that, too. So touristy!

Shortly after that, Reid spit right on my glasses. He was trying to fake-spit on them and then accidentally did. Unfortunately, didn’t snap a picture of that. Here’s this instead.

Oh! Christina, Reid, Jason, and I also went to a Redskins game. My dad was kind enough to give us the four tickets that he had gotten through work, so we got to go for free.

Even though the Redskins got stomped, we had fun. And we saw Gano sail in a 59 yard field goal, which was pretty amazing. (Not sure how he can make those but have blocked PATs. Who knows.)

The next weekend, Jason’s mom and dad came to visit. On Saturday night, they came over to my parents’ house and had dinner. Jason and his mom played a couple rounds of ping pong.

Which promptly ended when he smacked her right in the nose with the ball.

On Sunday, instead of praying to the gods of football, we went back to DC for more adventures. This time we started with the National Air and Space Museum.

Jason and his dad seemed to really enjoy walking around and talking about engines and things. It was adorable.

In case the name didn’t give it away, the Air and Space museum has lots of planes. Surprise!

And Donna took a picture of us looking at a plane.

But I got a cute family portrait.

And Jason took this.

We went to a sports bar for lunch so that we could check out what was going on in NFL-land. Jason’s mom got attacked by a plant.

We went by the National Archives, too. I’d never been to the one in DC. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, of course, but we were impressed by the giant things outside.

We also went to the Holocaust museum. I don’t know if you’re allowed to take pictures in there, but it didn’t really feel like I should. It was an amazing museum though. I absolutely loved it. It was both fascinating and terrible.

Finally, a short metro ride took us to Ted’s Bulletin in Eastern Market where we had dinner. It was really scrumptious and they have amazing milkshakes. I highly recommend going by there.

So, those were really the two exciting adventures of the month. Thanksgiving came and went. Jason was in North Carolina with his family and I was in MD with mine. I’ll get back to better blogging pronto. I promise.

In conclusion, here’s this neat thing Jason did and I was impressed.

On Saturday, of course, it snowed. In October. According to the news it was the first time since the 70s. Which was just lovely news for Jason and I since we had purchased our nonrefundable tickets to Fright Fest on Wednesday. Hooray! Needless to say, we were super bummed. The park’s website even said it was closed for the day, so there was no chance of even going up there and freezing our butts off.

Thankfully though, a short call to Six Flags let us know that we would be able to use our tickets on Sunday instead. The only problem was that this threw a monkey wrench into our weekend plans. Number one being, now what were we supposed to do to fill up our Saturday? (Play video games, carve pumpkins, and drink beer.) And two, how were we going to fit Fright Fest and football into one day? (Moderately successfully.)

Overall, everything turned out wonderfully, though. We still had a great weekend. I bought a replacement pumpkin for Sad Pumpkin which had been thrown away, and Bruce and I transported it very safely to Maryland.

Have I mentioned that Bruce is my new favorite thing? Because he is. Except for maybe pumpkin carving. And I guess Jason is alright, too. And he’s the one who got Bruce for me.

So, with Six Flags off the table as an option for our Saturday evening, Jason and I bought some beer, utilized our Renaissance Festival mugs and went to town.

And as soon as we set up shop on the counter, we decided it’d probably be easier to put the pumpkins on the floor to clean out the guts.

I looked considerably more pleased to be doing so, though.

As soon as we cleaned them out though, we were back up onto the counter, applying our paper stencils. Fun fact: tape doesn’t like being stuck to pumpkins.

We poked holes and outlined the stencils and then got to work carving.

At some point, my horse’s leg snapped off and Jason’s fingers snapped off of his pumpkin. Jason even had to take a short break from carving because he was so discouraged by the mangled-looking hand. But! We persevered and the pumpkins turned out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself.

We very cleverly used nails to hold the broken pieces on, so it’s almost like it never even happened! Pumpkin magic!

We couldn’t find any normal tea lights, though. So, we put pumpkin spice candles in them and let me tell, you. They smelled delicious. We even had a trick-or-treater come up to the door and say, “This house smells amazing.” Oooh yeah, pumpkins. What’s up!

On Sunday, we decided we would hit up Six Flags at noon when they opened and then head back early so we could still watch football with my family. And catastrophes abound, a crazy woman tried to murder us in her car. She missed her exit and cut across three lanes of traffic—on 495 no less—and veered directly in front of us, almost perpendicular to the road. Thanks to Jason’s amazing reflexes, he managed to stomp on the brakes and bring us to a halt mere centimeters away from her bumper. Then she drove off the exit without a care in the world. Didn’t even look back to check on the potential destruction she’d left in her wake. Once our heart rates had settled, which took a good twenty minutes, Jason and I spent some time cursing that woman with great creativity and vehemence.

Shortly thereafter, we made it to the park unscathed and headed in for some thrills and chills. We discovered upon entry, however, that the Fright Fest portion of Six Flags only occurred after dusk, so we were going to miss all of it. I lay the blame for that fully on the snow. We still got to ride some sweet rides though with almost no lines! The only times we waited in a line was if we wanted to sit in the front row. And even then it was only a handful of people in front of us.

I even made the executive choice to risk my iPhone and take some pictures while we were riding on the coasters. You. Are. Welcome.

And I got a nice view of the park as we were on our way up.

Because the ride is super tall.

I even snapped a shot of Jason as we flew around the track.

We also rode the Joker’s Jinx:

And the Batwing:

But I was too scared to actually take my phone out on either of these rides. Also, Jason kept warning me that we were going to get thrown out of the park if I kept using my cellular device while on a ride.

We saw a short comedy/stunt skit while we were there, too. It was pretty good, it had sword fights:

And at one point one of the guys jumped on another’s shoulders and shouted “Transformers, robots in disguise!”

But they were still no London Broil.

After that, Jason and I left and went to my parents’ house to watch some football. It was a nice, relaxed sort of night.

And, of course, then next day was Halloween! Jason and I went over to my parents’ house again so that we could hand out candy. I tried to get a cute picture of us and ended up with this:

Okay, I got this one, too:

We handed out a whole bunch of candy and maybeprobablysortof ate a whole bunch, too.

In conclusion, here’s a picture of Jason looking really handsome holding his roommate’s dog.

A lot of set up was included in us getting there, including me acquiring a sleeping bag, appropriate shoes, wool socks, and food. Jason even bought me a beautiful North Face backpack since I didn’t have one.

It was about a six hour drive to get to Mount Rogers and we couldn’t leave on Friday until after Jason got off of work. So, it wasn’t until around 3ish when we headed out. There was a fair amount of traffic, so it actually took us a little longer to get there than it should have, but it was totally worth it.

It was about 11pm when we parked at the trailhead and let me tell you what: It. Was. Cold. So cold. But, we bundled up in hats and gloves, strapped on our head lamps (a wonderful fashion accessory, if I do say so myself) and started out. It was pitch black without the head lamps, which was crazy. And the trail was about 2 miles uphill. And Jason saw two bears. In the dark. He saw a momma bear and a baby bear. Which scared the poop outta me. But, Jason yelled and scared the bears away and we hightailed it to our campsite.

We (and by “we” I mean “Jason”) put up the tent and just crawled inside because we were tired and it was sometime around midnight. It was hard to sleep for how cold it was, but when we woke up in the morning, it was so much warmer and we decided it’d be better to just sleep in another hour now that the weather was tolerable. And Jason was smart enough to document our campsite that morning with his GoPro camera.

And me looking like a beautiful flower first thing in the morning.

I tried out the GoPro, too, but didn’t do as hot a job.

We hiked through the densely wooded trails, where Jason saw another bear. I didn’t see any because Speedy McTrailblazer was always ten feet ahead of me. But, he scared this bear away just like the other, too, much to my great relief. After a little while we emerged out into this beautiful meadow. The pictures don’t even remotely do it justice.

And, of course, us with the meadow.

After we got over our awe at the sight, we turned back into the woods and hiked some more. And it wasn’t too far before we came upon some wild ponies, which apparently run rampant through the Mount Rogers area. And holy crap that was awesome. They let us walk right up and pet them.

They were the fluffiest.

And Jason got this really nice picture of the adult pony.

They even let us feed them.

It took some convincing to get me away from the ponies, but finally we headed out again. Jason and I wanted to climb pretty much every rock that we saw, and that’s basically what we did. Up on top of one of those rocks, Jason and I saw this gorgeous view:

And it was super windy up there.

It made my cheeks pink.

We stopped to eat lunch around noon because our (my) energy was flagging. We were at the bottom of the Mount Rogers trail that took you to the top, but as we were eating our Mexican rice and chicken—which was bangin’—people kept coming down saying how wet and snowy it was at the top and that there wasn’t even a view. So, Jason and I decided to opt out of that part of the climb. We turned and headed in the other direction.

And Jason found another rock to climb. Except this one actually involved more real “climbing.”

And then Jason had me pose for a picture because I was too much of a sissy to climb part of the rock. After I saw the picture though, I realized he was pretty much just taking a picture of my butt.

The view up there was really pretty though. (I managed to find another way around and got up that way.) Jason got some nice pictures.

And I very precariously worked my way back down.

And Jason found this strange little cave opening.

Some more hiking took us to our next campsite. Jason was a lot better at photo documenting this weekend than I was. He walked around and took some shots of where we’d be spending our chilly evening.

Then Jason built us a fire which I can only assume he did via black magic because everything was wet. But seriously. The fire was amazing and I think we would have frozen our tushies off without it. It actually melted one of my socks!

The temperature dropped along with the sun, but at least Jason got a great picture of the latter.

Jason boiled water for our dinners and we chowed down. The freeze-dried food we ate was actually a lot better than I had anticipated. I had teriyaki chicken and rice while Jason had beef stew.

The rest of the night was past by cuddling up by the fire and idly chatting and staring at the stars. It was really nice. It wasn’t long before we were too pooped to still be awake. So, into the tent we went. Even walking two feet away from the fire was a severe temperature drop. We basically leapt into our sleeping bags and wrapped ourselves up.

In the morning, we closed up shop and hiked out again. This was another longer hike and we had to follow along a horse trail for awhile. Which, I discovered, is code for “shitty-trail-also-literally-covered-with-shit.” We had to backtrack a little bit on the last leg of the trail, but it’s okay because it was the same portion of trail that we’d gone when it was dark, so it was like doing it for the first time, almost.

When we finally emerged at the bottom, I insisted that we take a victory picture.

And this conclusion is actually a side story: Sometime around Junior year of college, Jason found a smooth river stone that was in the shape of half of a heart and he’d kept it since. While we were hiking, I announced that I had found a half-heart rock. To which Jason replied, “Shut up. No you didn’t.” And our heart shapes matched. Go ahead, say it. You know you wanna.

“Awwww.”

Pretty much as soon as the clock struck October, I started telling Jason how much I wanted to get pumpkins. Which was a lot. Because I love pumpkins. I have no real explanation for this love of pumpkins, but there’s something about them that I find particularly satisfying. Especially turning them into Jack-o-Lanterns.

We’d been trying to figure out a good weekend to do that while simultaneously attempting to plan a trip to North Carolina to visit his family for the first time since Jason had moved to Maryland. So, when these two stars aligned, and his sister suggested that we do a family outing to a pumpkin patch while he and I were in town, I was over the (harvest) moon.

I loved every second of this adventure. It was one of those whole shebangs that have a maze and face painting and everything. Of course, Jason and I went for pumpkins straight away and promptly found the most spectacular pumpkin on the lot.

After that, Jason and I chased a woman to her car to ask her for her wagon (yes this was as weird and shady as this sounds) and went in search for the perfect mate to pumpkin numero uno.

We were actually pretty successful in our endeavor. Except later in the week pumpkin numero dos started turning into mush and Jason had to throw it away. Sadface.

After awhile of pumpkin picking, Jason got tired.

But to be fair, earlier he’d been lugging added cargo.

And the pumpkin patch was next to a huge field of sunflowers. So… photo op! Obviously.

After obtaining pumpkins and storing them in the car, we went to see what else the farm had to offer. Such as the hayride.

And I took a creepertown picture of Jason’s cousin, Candi, and her boyfriend, John.

Oh, and I caught Jason’s mom going in for a sneak attack.

A successful one.

After the hayride was over, we took a tour through the hardest maze ever.

Just kidding. It was a straight line from the front to the back.

We had to work to get lost in it, but still couldn’t even do that. We always found the exits right away. And it’s important to note that it was ‘exits.’ Plural. Because every path led to an exit.

After the tantalizing maze journey, we walked over to the animal pens and Jason almost got his fingers bitten off by a piglet.

And we saw a goat.

When everyone was walking away, I thought it’d be cool to take a picture of everyone going as a group. But then I realized that I’d really just taken a group butt shot. Story of my life.

This might be the best picture I took all day, though:

In conclusion, here’s Jason looking like a model:

PS- Stay tuned for later in the week when I post about Jason and I going backpacking around Mount Rogers.

I was feeling pretty irritable about being stuck in traffic and Jason, being—once again—the best boyfriend on the planet, said that he knew exactly what would cheer me up and proceeded to click through to “California Girls” by Katy Perry on the iPod and start dancing. Luckily for Jason, I was too busy laughing to take pictures of this event.

But, eventually we made it into Baltimore, around 45 minutes later than anticipated, and we parked in the most expensive parking lot known to man. $25 for three hours. So, we were pretty much robbed. But, but the time we were there I told Jason I didn’t care what I had to pay for parking as long as I got to get out of the damn car.

As soon as we got to the aquarium, it was our scheduled time to go to the dolphin show, so Jason and I hightailed it over there and got seated on benches which were so uncomfortable I could only assume that were not really fashioned for sitting.

I was surprised how crowded the aquarium was at 6:30 on a Friday night. (Actually, throughout the entire evening, Jason and I basically had to drop kick people out of the way any time we wanted to see anything.)

The dolphin show was pretty neat. It was pretty education-heavy about saving dolphins and the ocean and the world. But the jumpy bits were awesome.

And one of the trainers hopped in and swam around with the dolphins.

After the dolphin show, we ventured out into the rest of the aquarium to see what there was to see. Which essentially resulted in me taking 800 pictures of what are now completely unidentifiable fish to me.

And I got a lot of these:

And as I quickly came to discover, the lighting in the aquarium really wasn’t that conducive to picture taking.

But that didn’t stop me. I had a job to do.

Also, as it turns out, I was immensely interested in taking pictures of things that scared the poop outta’ me.

Oh, and I also discovered that my iPhone is not really equipped to handle taking pictures of things that are moving around. Which is pretty much all that fish do.

Unless you’re this guy, making out with the wall.

I did get some really neat shots, though, too. And here’s where I’m going to insert them to impress you with my photography skills.

Now, I don’t want you to start getting excited, but I actually took a video, too. Pretty high-tech stuff, I know. Jason and I saw a guy doing a demonstration where you could hold a cricket while an archerfish shot water at it, so, of course, I volunteered Jason to do it.

The only thing this video is missing is that during the first attempt at recording, I exclaimed, “Ew! You’re holding a bug!” Which was just about the girliest thing that has ever happened.

After we’d had our fill of the aquarium (aka it was closing), Jason and I went and had a late dinner at Hard Rock Café before heading home. It’s important to note that Hard Rock is definitely more for the experience than the food quality. Which, unfortunately, both Jason and I had forgotten until after we’d received our food. But, overall, it was pretty alright.

And the weekend adventure doesn’t stop there! Jason and I drove down to my apartment in Virginia on Saturday because it was my friend Shannon’s 21st birthday celebration.

That night, we went out to Capital Ale House in downtown and got Shannon completely hammered.

Hammered enough that she leapt onto my back when we were leaving so that I would carry her. Although, to be fair, she had gotten the idea from Jason who had just done the same thing.

When we got back to the apartment, there was more beer drinking and hanging out and fun to be had. Fun that mostly included playing Madden, Guitar Hero, or Dance Central. All of which were highly amusing, but by this point I was slightly too inebriated to be a responsible picture taker. I did get this though:

And here’s a picture of my roommate, Erika, and her boyfriend, Cameron.

To wrap things up, here’s a picture of Jason looking trepidatious on an escalator.

PS- Microsoft Word doesn’t know that “trepidatious” is a word. So, there’s that.

And we spent most of the weekend either at his place or at my parents’ house. Although, I have to say, it was a very football weekend. On Saturday, we played through the entire regular season of a franchise on Madden ’12.

We actually came back Sunday night after watching football and played all the way through the Super Bowl. Which we won. Duh. Actually, we went entirely undefeated. Yeah. Don’t pretend you’re not impressed.

And somehow I took a picture of this, which pretty much makes it look like Mike Tomlin kissed a guy.

But yeah, most of Saturday was pretty slow, what with Jason dying of ebola and all. But, on Sunday we managed to drag ourselves out of the house and go over to my parents’ place to watch some football.

The night before, my godfather Jimmy, who we will henceforth refer to as “Uncle Jimmy,”

Drove up form North Carolina and was staying with my parents. He called me to inform me that he was looking forward to meeting this “Jason fellow” and that he’d see if he “approved of him.” Yay Jason!

It all went fine though. The guys—my dad, Jason, Uncle Jimmy, and his brother Bobby—all ended up bonding and playing pool for hours.

They were playing on teams, my dad and Jason against Jimmy and Bobby. And my dad and Jason spent a significant amount of time actually plotting their choices.

And standing together.

And fist bumping.

And this also happened.

(You’re welcome for putting that on the internet, boyfriend.)

I spent my time taking pictures of everyone. (No, seriously, I’m getting mildly better at photo documenting. Even when we’re not really doing anything. What’s up!)

And forcing people to take pictures with me.

And maybe taking pictures of me. Maybe.

And my dog.

Oh, and my mom had a lot of fun too.

All in all, I think we made the best of it despite Jason’s stomach AIDS. (By the way, he’s feeling better now.)

And, don’t you worry your pretty little heart. I still managed to accidentally take a picture of a butt.

Anyway. Sometime around 1 we finally left the house—starving—and Jason was kind enough to take me to lunch at Red Robin. Here is where I would normally insert a “yum!” about the restaurant and food, but I refuse to feed into that stupid commercial. You know the one. Yeah. (It was delicious though.)

After lunch, we hopped onto the Metro, where I decided we should start our photo documenting. I’m getting better.

To be fair, my first attempt at this picture somehow framed the girl in the background better than it did us, but what can ya do? (Take another picture. Check.)

But back to the adventure. We got off at the stop for the zoo and came out to what was the largest escalator that Jason has ever seen. I managed to capture his wonderment, but not the escalator. So, use your imaginations for that part. Or, remember back to a time when you rode on the Metro and got off there and saw the escalator. That would also work.

So, a short walk later and we were at the National Zoo!

Lots of animals in our lives recently, it seems. Like the sloth bear for instance:

Although, the real reason we went to the zoo was because I wanted Jason to see a panda. Since DC is one of the four zoos in the country to have one. (Facts that I have gathered from Wikipedia. Yay internet!)

Jason and I walked all around the panda enclosure with no success. It was completely devoid of panda cuteness. It was terrible. I told him maybe we could come back later and there would be pandas out. But, then we overheard someone saying that the panda was inside, so then I promptly power-walked away from Jason and to the panda house where we saw this:

Don’t pretend you’re not impressed. I was a little sad that this was the view of a panda that Jason was getting, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I’m pretty sure I told him, “There’s a panda. You’re welcome.” more than once.

I think Jason and I are a little jaded now since he already took us on the best date ever wherein we got to PET A BABY GIRAFFE (yes, I will bring this up forever, thank you very much), so we spent a lot of zoo time looking like this:

It was cool though. The great ape house was really fun. Jason took an adorable picture of a baby gorilla.

And I took a picture of her, right before she yakked and then ate her own vomit.

We even saw a silverback! It was hard to get a good picture of him because he kept running around everywhere and stirring up all the other gorillas. I think Jason ended up taking this picture:

Then, inexplicably, I took a picture of Jason taking a picture of an orangutan.

Although, to be fair, he accidentally took a picture of his shoes. So, we’re even after the Renaissance Festival.

He did take these neat series of pictures of a lemur though:

And I countered by taking a picture of a naked mole rat. Side note: naked mole rats are freaky.

I think Jason’s favorite part of the zoo was the reptile house. He got some really cool pictures.

Including a picture of this drunk-looking iguana:

Oh! And we saw a tiger anxiously waiting to be fed. This wasn’t in the reptile house though. Just letting you know. In case you weren’t sure.

Just as the zoo was closing, Jason and I toured an Amazonian house thing. There was a sign warning us that the animals in this area were free to roam around and we should keep an eye out. It was mostly fish. Such as this beast, which Jason told me the name of more than once, but I still can’t remember.

Other than that, we didn’t really see anything until we turned the corner and saw these birds just hanging out. And Jason decided to get dangerously close to them.

And what trip would be complete without me getting at least one picture of a butt? In this case, I got three.

Ah, photography!

After the zoo, we hiked uphill for about a mile to get to a different Metro stop. We decided to get drinks at the Five Guys just outside the entrance to the stop before we walked in there because we were so hot. We were standing on the platform, sipping our drinks, when a police officer in full bulletproof vest and getup walked up to us and we had the following conversation:

Officer: Hey, I’m gonna need you to do me a favor.

Me: Uhh. What?

Officer: See that trashcan over there? Could you walk over there and place your drink in there for me? *creepy smile*

Me: Uhh. What?

Officer: Yeah. And grab his straw, too. *points to Jason* And put that in the trashcan, too.

At this point I’m flabbergasted. I’m thinking he thinks my drink has been contaminated or has a secret bomb in it. So, I’m slowly pulling Jason’s straw out of his drink when it occurs to me to ask, “Um. Can you tell me why I need to be doing this?”

Officer: Oh, yeah. Eating and drinking is prohibited on the platform. I saw you drinking, but not him. So, I’m gonna have to ask you to place your drink and his straw in the trashcan.

WHAT. I was so blown away that I didn’t say anything and just went and dumped my stuff in the trash. It wasn’t that he asked me to throw my drink away. That was okay, he was just doing his job. But he did it in the douchy-ist way possible and that was pretty irritating. And I had just spent $2 on that soda. Jason and I complained about this for a solid 15 minutes. Jason was very unhappy about the injustice of it all. (So was I.)

So, that was the zoo. We actually went out and did other stuff after that, too. As if this post weren’t long enough already, I’m gonna go ahead and tack that right onto the end here.

We went to the Rio in Germantown for dinner and a movie, and when we got there, we were greeted by live music and this AWESOME old woman straight up shredding on the guitar.

People were dancing like fools. There was quite a crowd.

Including this woman and her fanny pack.

It was a lot of fun. We had dinner and saw Moneyball, which was a lot longer than we anticipated, but really good.

On our way over to the movie, Jason and I walked across a bridge and I excitedly asked if we could take a picture in front of the fountain on the lake that the bridge was crossing. Jason’s response:

Me: Pleeeeeeease?

He loves me. And then noted that you can’t even see the fountain in the picture.

Hopefully you’ve all already seen the petting zoo pictures, and if not, abandon this post altogether and go here instead: baby giraffe! ‘Cause that was photo documentation round one. Round two came this past Saturday when Jason and I went to the Renaissance Festival in Annapolis, MD. And to be fair, Jason had to constantly remind me that I should be taking pictures of things, so I can’t really take any credit. Except that I actually took all the pictures. So, fifty-fifty.

The first thing Jason pointed out to me was a dude on stilts pretending to use another person as a puppet. And being the excellent photographer than I am, I turned around and snapped this:

Which pretty much looks like I was trying to take a picture of Maryanne. How do I know her name is Maryanne, you ask? Because I showed her the picture and told her I was putting it on Facebook. She told me her name was Maryanne and that I should tag her and her sweet makeup. So that’s what I did.

We also went and saw jousters. I didn’t take pictures of any actual jousting. It wasn’t as exciting as A Knight’s Tale, or this guy’s facial expression, would have you believe.

But here’s a horse!

And here’s the guy one of my roommates dubbed the Cowboy Knight again! This time he has a sign! Exciting!

It’s also important to note how much terrible, but so, so delicious, festival food that Jason and I ate. Steak on a stake (twice), funnel cake French fries (don’t try to imagine it, you’ll give yourself diabetes), ice cream, and a small mountain of curly fries.

Not to mention the beer we drank from our sweet, sweet mugs.

Actually, we each only had two beers over the course of six hours because we’re responsible human beings. (So I can’t even blame the fact that I inexplicably took a picture of our shoes on alcohol.)

So, now I get to talk about what was, hands-down, our favorite part of the Renaissance Festival: The London Broil.

It’s a juggling trio that is just downright hilarious. Jason and I actually went and saw their show twice while we were there because they were just that good.

There was one particularly drunk man in the crowd named Alan that the group took a particular liking to.

Alan would leap to his feet after the guys would do something impressive and scream, “YEAH!” as he drank beer from a horn. Eventually, they brought him up onto stage to do a special performance.

Alan got tied to one of the performers, Duncan, and then Louie and Matt juggled machetes around them.

And at one point, Matt took a juggling club right to the eyeball.

Our second time seeing the London Broil show brought us to the end of the day. But as we were walking out, Jason and I saw elephants!

Still in the mind-frame of the petting zoo, I whispered to Jason, “I wonder if we can pet the elephants?” And a man standing ten feet away from me, whom I can only assume has super hearing abilities, shouted, “NO! No touching the elephants. Get back. Stand back behind the poles!” Oh well. They were still cute and holding “hands.”

In conclusion, here’s a picture of Jason and I looking precious.

THIS.

No seriously. Look how big it is in comparison to that Jeep.

Good job, Virginia.

The thing is, Annie—yeah, she and I are on a first name basis—isn’t just an adorable baby giraffe in a stall. Annie is an adorable baby giraffe that I got to pet. Because Lazy 5 Ranch is a petting zoo. That has giraffes. And a bunch of other animals, but most importantly giraffes.

She is the softest. She let us pet her neck and her nose and behind her ears. I was in such a giraffe-love induced euphoria that I didn’t bother to take a picture of Jason petting Annie. (I’m the best girlfriend.) The first picture I did take was this:

Yeah, I’m pretty much a professional photographer.

Then we got to go on a sweet wagon ride through the ranch/safari. Everyone was given a bucket full of food pellets to lovingly toss by the handful into the waiting mouths of the animals.

Some of the animals would get excited and chase after us.

Some… not so much.

And we cruised around on the wagon, petting more animals.

And tossing smelly pellets.

Until we got to the main event of the wagon ride: more giraffes. As soon as we rolled up the giraffes abandoned everything else they were doing and came on over. We were up close and personal with them. Talk about awesome.

And this time I even managed to take a picture of Jason with a giraffe.

More than once, I asked if the petting zoo was like a pumpkin patch and I could take home whatever I could carry, but I was repeatedly told no, that was not the case, much to my own dismay. Despite that, it was an excellent day.

And to wrap it up, here’s a picture of Jason petting a camel.