I'm BACK!!!

This time, I promise I'm not going to whine about anything... I mean it is just not fair if you have to listen to all the bad parts and never get a glimpse of all the great parts!

Here it is, the topic you are just dying to hear ANOTHER person post about!  The ECLIPSE!
Yeah I know you are thinking "we've heard ALL the stories lady, why submit us to that same thing all over again/plus you didn't even see a total eclipse, you live in the wrong area."

BUT  you have not seen how incredibly adorable my kids and my best friend's kids are, and I've got pictures for you!

So here's the story, I thought briefly about taking the lovely kiddos down to the Gardens downtown to check out the solar power of the sun and moon pooled together, and then I remembered I have FOUR of them, and watching the sun in a strange and highly crouded place just didn't sound like a lot of fun to me, so I opted to build solar viewers from home... of course this meant no one would look at the ACTUAL sun.. but what would the kids care right?
I don't know, my kids were COUNTING DOWN the days till the Moon covered the sun, and repeating EVERYTHING they heard on the radio about the upcoming event, even though I heard it at the same time they did, "MOM DID YOU HEAR......" "yes, yes I did, I'm sitting right here."

So solar eclipse day was upon us, we started it out by cutting up a pizza box, some tin foil and poking holes with our super duper home school single hole punch in said tin foil and taping it to the pizza box projectors... I'm a rock star with spur of the moment projects... maybe, sometimes.

Then we continued to proceed with our school day as normal... checking occassionally through the window to see if we were in fact missing anything with the sun.  We didn't.

After most of the school work was complete I asked Patrick to go out and move our patio table which no longer resides on our patio, but in a forest of table high grass, to an area where the children could actually eat off from the surface of it, then made lunch, sandwiches, chex mix and carrots with chocolate chip cookies for desert, and Kool-aide for drinks, and Patrick even set up the gazebo to keep us all cool in the heat of our Oklahoma day.

As we ate our meals and drank kool-aide we often checked the progress of the sun in our pizza box projectors, and the kids played in the kiddie pool, the day got cooler and cooler and less of the kids were even interested in the pool, but they were incredibly interested by what they could and were doing with their shadows.  lacing their fingers together to see the shadow of the moon over the sun, playing with the projectors, and Patrick even poked a bunch of holes in a piece of scrap paper which ended up looking like hundreds of tiny moon shaped suns dancing on the patio.

At some point I realized that while it hurt my eyes to try to photograph the impossible to photograph sun, it didn't hurt as bad to look at the sun through my camera lens as it would if I looked straight at it... so I got the brillant idea (don't remember who suggested it, Neva?  Maybe Patrick) to use a pair of sunglasses over the lens, this didn't help a lot, but it did help, so then we layered two pairs of glasses over the lens, then I could actually see it with my eye, I still couldn't get the picture though.

Then Patrick found two more pairs of sunglasses and we layered all four together, between the three of us adults trying this just to look at the sun we did get one or two images that actually showed the shape of the sun behind the moon, which was awesome, but the picture is anything but high quality, and I can't say I took it, Neva or Patrick took it when they had their turn to look.

After playing with the lens of my camera this way we eventually decided to put all four pairs of sun glasses on at once and look directly at the sun... and guess what!?!  It actually worked.  Sure it was funny looking, but it worked!  All the kids got to try it, and we captured some fun photos of the time we spent together.

Patrick, and I don't have lots of fun moment as a family right now, so it was extra special to me, the lack of stress going on was wonderful and uplifting, and the intimacy of having fun together is rare but liberating.  Neva and her children got to share in all of this with us, and it was just a really good time, all the kids got to see the eclipse, and we all enjoyed the day!

Here are some pictures we were able to capture.  I hope you enjoy them as much as we did.