These Solar Eclipses (at least full ones) are actually quite rare in our area of the world but do happen quite frequently if you want to travel to different countries to see them. The next one that will happen in our neck of the woods actually won’t occur again until the year 2017. So five years from now. So yeah, we were pretty excited to get to see this especially with how much we love astronomy in our family (Adam has his own telescope and everything).
Sunday morning we took things easy, had a nice breakfast of scrambled eggs with cheese with bacon and hashbrowns and a little salsa to top it rolled into a tortilla and then headed out to church at 11:00. We stayed for all three meetings and then went back to our condo for a light lunch and some long leisurely naps. We were all EXHAUSTED!!! Then later that afternoon Mum and Smurf came over and we enjoyed a big pork roast, potato, fruit salad, baked beans, carrots, and rolls dinner. YUM!
Then around 6:30 we headed over to the house Mum and Smurf were staying in which is actually owned by a family in their ward. The wife Leeda Alger (sp?) came down for the Solar eclipse as well and was kind enough to allow Mum and Smurf, our family, and my brother-in-law Dean and his wife Janet, and daughter Erica over for the big event. We set out some lawn chairs, put up some tri-pods with camera’s and telescopes, brought out the junk food, and slyly slid on our awesome solar shades. The glasses were awesome and helped you to look at the sun all you wanted without hurting your eyes as well as see the eclipse MUCH better. I don’t think you could have seen it period with your naked eye – and nor should you have since it would have probably fried your eyes and brain out! đ
The eclipse started at around 6:30 and then lasted until about 8:30 just as the sun was going down. My father-in-law took pictures every five minutes to show the progression and its awesome. The ring of fire (as they call it when the moon is directly in front of the sun) happened around 7:20 or so and boy was it incredible! There is just something spectacular about seeing something like that. Here are some of Smurfs awesome pictures!
Afterwards we had some treats and ice cream and then headed back to our condo where we put the kids to bed and then had our good friends the Kerics over for some talk time. We ended up chatting until almost 1:00 (Adam excusing himself to go to bed earlier at midnight) and then called it a night. We sure do love spending time with these friends of ours. Such good people.