Eclipse Last Night

The moon in all its eclipsing glory.

I was exhausted last night. Around 8 pm I helped Elias brush his teeth and get ready for bed. He sleeps better if someone lays down with him so after brushing his teeth I laid in bed with him while he fell asleep. I don't know when he actually fell asleep but I know Kristin woke me up at 8:30 pm. It had been a long day, but I really didn't want to go to sleep before 9 pm. :) I drug myself out of my slumber, made Kris and I a couple of delicious mochas and settled in to watch a movie. We borrowed Shall We Dance from Kris' Grandmother a while back, so we watched that (It was good, but that's another blog entry).

After the movie I was ready to crash. I had to get up early the next morning after all. Right before bed, Kristin checked her email and read a message from the Sonoran Desert Homeschoolers. At 2 am last night (or this morning) the moon was going to begin a full eclipse! We debated staying up for it or not, and settled on setting the alarm for 2 am thereby procuring a couple hours of sleep before hand. Before going to bed I had to get my camera ready to take pictures of the moon. This meant delving in the more manual settings to actually get a good picture. I twiddled with the camera for an hour (what can I say, it was neat!) until I captured the large image above and the full moon picture. By this time it was around midnight, and we both went to bed.

The alarm woke us on the dot at 2 am and I seriously considered turning it off and forgetting the eclipse. Something kept me awake though, and I managed to claw my way out of bed 10 minutes later. The night was beautiful! The eclipse had just begun and I started snapping pictures like mad. My settings weren't quite right for an eclipsed moon, so I had to slow the shutter down to 10 seconds to let in enough light to see the moon. I pulled out the telescope. Kristin grabbed a blanket, made a cup of Chai and woke Sam up. Then we sat on the grass and took pictures, looked through the telescope and enjoyed the night.

By 3 am the moon was fully eclipsed and would remain so for the next hour. We watched for a little while longer laying in the grass in our backyard and then finally turned in around 3:30 am.

My alarm went off again at 6 am and I grudgingly got up to go to work. My bike won't ride itself to work after all! This is going to be a tired day I think. A deliciously caffeinated Dr. Pepper is calling me... or maybe this will be my first morning trying straight coffee. (or both!)