Super Harvest Moon Photos

So facebook is good for something... some times!  Texas Parks & Wildlife posted a link to an article about tonight's Super Harvest Moon, so I was on guard to watch!  David & I went outside and enjoyed the eerie twilight light with the full moon light on the opposite horizon and in the 9 o'clock hour, we enjoyed the magnificent view of the full moon high in the sky with Jupiter just below.  Here are my best shots with my simple, old, point & shoot camera, night setting, flash off.  Enjoy!

Our first glimpse after the clouds thinned 

with Jupiter not really visible in the photo.

Now Jupiter shows up as a little speck.

Boy, it was hard to hold that camera still for the long exposure!

Then I backed off.  This is with no zoom.

Then I zoomed in as far as I could 

with both objects still in the frame.

Jupiter looks faint, but you can tell it's a sphere!

This is one of the reasons I love homeschooling so much!  Now when we get to our Jupiter chapter in Astronomy, I'll be able to say, "And remember when we looked at Jupiter a few months ago?"  Last night, we viewed it though our cheap-o telescope and saw 2 of it's moons.

Speaking of homeschool, today David slept until 10am.  And I let him - because his body is still recovering from the insomnia that was caused by his first medication.  Then we had to go to the pharmacy to pick up a refill on the other medication, to the health food store to get more melatonin to help him fall asleep, to the hardware store for nails, and to the grocery store for milk.  We had school today after dark.  And that is perfectly OK when you're doing it at home.  (There were also less distractions!)

Lunar Eclipse

5:30 am - Dad woke up for some reason, looked outside, and noticed the eclipse. As he was climbing back into bed, Rebekah started crying. I sat up wondering what was going on. He told me about the eclipse. I grogily fixed a bottle for Rebekah because she wasn't going back to sleep & gave it to her. She fell back asleep. As I was laying her back in her bed, David sat up & asked what was going on. I told him nothing, go back to sleep. He tried, but couldn't, so I took him out on the back porch to see the eclipse. We watched it until it went behind the trees at about 6:20 am.

Beach Day!

David has been looking forward to this moment for over a year... Beach Day!

This first beach day was actually Oyster Lake, but you'd have thought we'd landed on the most beautiful beach in the world based on the kids' reactions.

Kalaya, Lavery and Brigid went with us. Sarina was at PreK. The beach was actually made of crushed oyster shells. Dad even broke an oyster open while we were there.

No, he didn't actually eat it... he didn't have the horseradish! Dad also caught a number of hermit crabs and showed them to the kids. One of them was HUGE!

They walked on the sand bar, threw shells into the water, dug in the sand/shells, David caught his own hermit crab at the shoreline, and we saw lots of wildlife.

I forgot to apply sunscreen to the kids & Elizabeth got pretty red even though we were only there for the morning hours.

Perhaps the most exciting part, for me, was seeing a dolphin! It swam pretty close to where we were and looped around, flopping & thrashing as it caught fish. You can just barely see it as it headed off into the distance here:

We picnicked in the car & headed back to the house to rest. After supper, Dad wanted to try out the fishing on the piers & jetties in Palacios.

Something was pulling on his line, but it broke before we saw what it was!

Kalaya & I try to get together at least twice a year. Usually at my house in the winter and her house in the summer. I think we've been faithful to get together every year since college. Our gathering has now grown to 10 when we include husbands & kids!


And David's last words at bed time, "Is tomorrow another beach day?"

To Congratulate Andy...

To congratulate Andy on his high school graduation, all the family went out for a dinner at Red Lobster tonight:

Andy, Will & Jesse

Uncle Bubba & Aunt Wee

Andy's Uncle D & Family

Andy's Other Grandparents

Grandma & Grandpa

and our family.

You'd think at a dinner celebrating Andy, I would have taken a picture of him, right? Um... I knew I forgot something! I did get some cute pictures of the kids, though! : ) Here's Aunt Wee with all of her youngest nieces & nephews:

In every photo with Elizabeth, she was looking at Aunt Wee with admiration! How sweet!

Now, not quite so sweet was this creature that Grandpa found near our new house this morning! Actually, he found it where Dad & I had been collecting rocks just a few days ago!

In case you don't recognize him, it is a Copperhead... with it's head cut off. The third snake I have seen up there since construction started... and the second poisonous one! (and I have not seen a rattlesnake!) Aren't we blessed to live in a state that is home to so many venomous snakes?!

.

BTW, I'm going to post-date some entries, so scroll down (or click the links) to see some things that I forgot to blog earlier: Our Cubbies Party, The Splash Pad is Open!, and House Update with Sprinkler Pics.

This Week at the House!

I can not tell you how exciting it is to see work on the house starting!!!
This was Wednesday. The guys were building the forms for the foundation. Here's the stack of forms. Notice that they brought their own microwave to the site!

There were absolutely no workers at the site today (except for us). That was kinda disappointing. I raked up a ton of mesquite twigs. Dad dug a hole & worked on his signal mounting plan. He also found something interesting in his pile of railroad signals and is showing it to David...

A chicken snake curled up on one of the lenses!

Oh, the joys of country life!

This is what the house site currently looks like:

Rebar in the foreground is prepared to go into the piers. There are little orange flags all over the flat site, marking where the piers will be drilled.

Here's the fam resting in the shade while I walked around.

Bluebonnets

We hiked around the North Place on Sunday afternoon. Here are some of the bluebonnets we saw. They like the bare slope on the west side of the tank.

This is as good as it gets for a picture of David in the bluebonnets! He was too hot & tired by this point!

Friday Morning

We woke up to this view Friday morning:
I showed David how to build a snowman... kind of. This one actually looks more like a penguin.
Then I introduced David to the wonderful world of snow balls.
Just thrown...

Growing

Spring must be on it's way, because things sure are growing around here!

Look at that lanky little boy! In the last month, he has grown an inch taller!










Elizabeth wore her first pony tail Sunday afternoon!


And she roamed around the yard for the first time, too! She just crawled back & forth, gave Bob Barker a nose kiss, watched David, and crawled some more.

Doesn't that look like a pilates move?