First Day of School!

As always, we had our back-to-school dinner at Pizza Pie Cafe. Luckily, everyone had left from the eclipse so it wasn't too crowded!

The next morning was the first day of school. Cooper is in the 5th grade and starting at the middle school, and Amelia is in the 8th grade and back at the junior high! I'm thinking Cooper will catch up and maybe even surpass Amelia in height this year. He's already two shoe sizes larger than her! He's set to be a tall, gangly teen. Amelia will be a petite little ballerina--which she's just fine with!

I took a last few pictures at my school before they left--it was hard to see them both go out to the bus. I missed having Cooper around!

The Great Solar Eclipse!

We had the AMAZING luck and opportunity to be in the path of totality for the solar eclipse that occurred yesterday. We didn't have to go further than our side lawn to watch it and that was fabulous! We set up camp about 10am. The first contact (when the moon begins to move in front of the sun) was at 10:15am. Armed with our eclipse glasses we watched as the moon took a bite out of the sun. This reminded Cooper about the snacks I'd brought out, so he decided this was a great time for a cookie break. He nibbled his cookie to match the sun, showed us, then ate the rest in about two bites. Here we are in the beginning, ready for this once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event!

For the next hour we alternately checked on the moon's status and read or chatted. We noticed the crescents in the shade caused by the sun shining through the uneven and rough surface of the moon:

Cool, right? We also checked out shadows and watched them go blurry then sharpen up. We watched the nighttime lights blink on as the light dimmed, and we felt the temperature begin to drop. It cooled off enough that Amelia broke out her blanket.

With about 3 minutes to totality, the cool app I had downloaded told us to start looking for shadow bands. We had our glasses off by now, looking around at the darkening sky, listening to the quiet (no cars or birds or ANYTHING), and looking at the stars that started coming out. Cooper was actually the first one to spot the shadow bands. I tried to take a video of them, but it didn't turn out. They were the neatest thing to watch! It was like a shadow wave rolling across the lawn! With one minute to go, we put our glasses back on to watch the sun wink out.

The officious guy on the phone app counted down to second contact (total eclipse by the moon) for us. When the last ray of sunlight went out, we ripped off our glasses and stared at the blocked sun. We could see the corona (outer atmosphere of the sun) glowing around the moon. It was a white-blue and amazing to see. We took a quick picture to document the moment:

We had only 2 minutes and 17 seconds and believe me, when you are experiencing something like this is goes quick. It was disconcerting to have the sky dark in the middle of the day, and have the temperature drop about 30 degrees. We could hear the crowds in the park cheering and yelling. About a minute and a half into the eclipse my children's excited shouts and voices faded as they just stared at the eclipse. It was suddenly quiet and a little eerie, almost like time had stopped for a bit. Definitely not a moment I will forget!

Pretty cool, huh?

The conscientious voice from my phone broke into the moment and reminded us third contact (when the moon would begin to pass from the sun, no longer blocking it out totally) would happen in 30 seconds. We took once last look and put our glasses back on as the app commanded. As soon as the tiniest bit of sunlight broke through the cover of the moon I was amazed at how much brighter everything was, just from that sliver of light.

You can see our lights that come on at dusk are still on. This picture makes it look brighter than it was, but you can also see the actual sunrays.  We stayed out watching for another ten minutes or so, then started packing up, glancing up every so often to check the moon's progress. As we settled inside and watched the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Main Street last two more hours, we were doubly thankful we had to only step outside our home to watch the eclipse.

I'm so thankful my kiddos and I were able to experience the eclipse! We'd been hearing about it for so long I was beginning to just want it over,  but after seeing it I realized what a wonderful and incredible event it really is!

Summer is Winding Down--But We Aren't Slowing Down!

WARNING: LOTS of pictures in this post. I feel like I'm making up for the months I didn't post more than once or twice.

Now that Girls' Camp is over, our summer is winding down quickly. We had figure 8 races, Celebrate Youth party in the park last week, registration, and this week we have the eclipse! If we survive that we have school the day after. :-) I had a bunch of training this week, and Amelia and Cooper did SO WELL babysitting themselves at home. A massive fort construction might have had something to do with it:

We also registered for school. Cooper will be in the middle school this year (gasp!) so Amelia took him on an in-depth, detailed tour while I paid the fees. Cooper was excited to find his homeroom. He has the same teacher Amelia did for the 5th grade. It's the first time that has happened. I usually like to have them experience teachers that haven't had a sibling, but during Amelia parent/teacher conference with this teacher three years ago I mentioned she had a little brother who would be coming up. She asked about him and I explained he was a little wild, a little crazy, and a lot a little boy. This teacher said, "I love teaching boys. They have so much energy and are so unpredictable and fun." At that moment I decided she'd get Cooper! Anyone who has that opinion will handle him just fine. :-)

Amelia showed Cooper her old locker. He won't get one until the 6th grade:

When we were finished we headed over to register Amelia:

That's the only pic I have. She was bustling around finding her classes, talking to friends, and finding the best locker. She'll be in the 8th grade this year and is veeeeeery excited!

For the first time this year we attended the Figure 8 Races during the county fair. It was a lot of fun and we may have to add it into our yearly schedule:

The next day we had Celebrate Youth. (No moss gonna grow on us!) Amelia stuck with us long enough to challenge Cooper in the Battle Balls, then ditched us for her friends. Cooper and I had a great time visiting each booth and collecting all the free stuff. Cooper ended up seeing a few of his friends and I think it's only a few years from now when BOTH children will ditch me!

Lastly, Cooper had an opportunity to play an electric guitar when we went into the music shop to get his guitar fixed. He really, really, REALLY liked the extremely loud amp that went with it:

Whew! What a crazy week! Tomorrow we have the eclipse. which I'm thrilled we can view from our front yard, then our traditional back-to-school dinner at Pizza Pie Cafe---assuming all the people have left town. School begins in THREE DAYS!

Girls' Camp 2017

Amelia and I had girls camp last week. I was on the stake committee (hooray), so I had the honor of being up there the whole week. Are you catching my sarcasm here? You'd think Amelia and I would spend lots and lots of time together, right? WRONG! I think I saw her at flag ceremony, certification, and a few times at the pool. I could've gone on the hike with her, but it's the longest and steepest one of them all, so I wished her luck and took one of the easier ones!

Here are a few pictures:

Amelia before we left. I dropped her off at the church and at the first sign of an adult, left her and hightailed it up to camp to be there to greet all the girls.

These are pictures of Amelia on her hike. Yes, the one I opted out of. I like being a leader! :-) She came back so coated in fine dirt and dust I couldn't get it out of her white socks, even after soaking in bleach all night!

Isn't she just adorable? The hat, sadly, did not stay that white.

They hiked down to Sheep Falls for lunch. Then they had to hike back UP.

We had a good time and are happy camp is behind us. Now onto school! Ahhhhhhh!