UVA date night and Baby animals

Last night Mark and I went over to the McCormick Observatory at UVA for our date. We had heard about the public nights there for years now but had never made it over there.  We were slightly concerned because it was pretty cloudy but after waiting in the cold, long line the sky was clear and we got a great view of the moon.  The telescope is quite large and the details we saw of the moon were beautiful.  It was fun to chat with the guy manning the telescope.  I asked a few questions about the telescope and learned that as big as it is its actually quite small compared to many others in the US.  There is a telescope in AZ that has lens that are 27 feet wide!  This lens is 26 inches.  So, tiny comparatively.  It's been at UVA since 1885.  We quickly walked around the little museum and then headed over to Fuzzy's Tacos on 5th Street for a fun treat.  It was a really good date night.

For some reason it did not occur to me that we would be in an open air room.  I am not sure why because obviously there would need to be a place for the telescope to look out into.  While we were waiting the man in charge had to rotate the roof and it was cool to see it move. Cold but fun.

We didn't have any real plans for Saturday.  I have found that there seems to be less community events in February and early March so we have been taking it pretty easy on Saturdays and its been really nice.  Well, taking it easy except for my long runs.  Today I ran 11.2 miles.  I have never ran over 10 miles in my life so that was a cool milestone.  It was not a great run as I ran into some crazy gusts of wind while running up hill but I got it done.  It was so windy last night that our large grill got blown over so this wind was no joke. I hope my 12 mile run goes better next week.  I was so sore after and took a nice 30 minute nap while Mark and Jared completed their 3 mile run.  We are reading the news  and travel advisories carefully trying to figure out if spring break in Budapest is going to happen. I have looked up a few back up half marathons but really hope we can make it to Budapest.  This virus is not going anywhere anytime soon and is already close to us.  Our biggest fear is not necessarily getting sick but more getting stuck in Budapest for who knows how long. So far we are still planning on going.

I suggested we go over to Crozet to visit the library there and give Jared and Lydia a chance to play at the playground there but Mark countered with Yoders to see the animals and get ice cream so that is what we did. It turned out to be a great idea as there were baby lambs and goats there.  They were so adorable and friendly.  Even the new baby lambs.  They frolicked over and I got to pet them and I loved it.  The alpacas were also very friendly today and Mark, Jared and Lydia decided they were their favorites.  It turned out to be a great afternoon outing.

We ended with family movie night, watching Frozen II which is such a great movie.  Mark and Jared had not seen it and they also agreed that it was better than the first one.