An Eclipse, a Birthday and Easter make for a busy weekend!

It was an action packed weekend with lots of family time! It all started Saturday morning with the Lunar Eclipse. Over the past couple days, I had been noticing the moon the last couple evenings and how beautiful, bright and full rising over the Timpanogo range and setting over the hills across Utah Lake.  Then, my brother Bob and I were talking about the lunar eclipse Friday evening and I decided that I was going to get some pictures of it. When he told me it was starting at ~5:30 CST, I was like…wait, what? That is 4:30 my time! But he was nice enough to volunteer to call me and wake me.

That night I spent some time reading up on how to take pictures of the moon during an eclipse. There are many options on how to take pictures of the eclipse. Not only that, there are different settings for pre-eclipse, during and for the total eclipse itself. Battery charged, camera on tripod, memory card empty, I was ready! True to his word Bob called about 4:30 and woke me up (and Barb too!). Barb did not seem quite as excited as I was and opted to stay in bed and look at the pictures later.

It was a heck of a lot colder than anticipated but I stuck it out and took about 300 pictures using different ISO’s fstop’s and shutter speeds. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while and I figured if I took enough pictures at various settings I would get at least one good picture! In the end I ended up with about 6 that I thought were really cool.

 

I took this one the night before while practicing

Partial Eclipse

These two were during the full eclipse or Blood Moon



Post eclipse just before dawn

Later that afternoon we headed to Jessica’s for Kendall’s first birthday! Kendall wanted all the attention on her so she only invited Dylan and Lily to her party. We had brats, potato salad and her specifically requested Dairy Queen cake. According to her dad her first words were “I want a Dairy Queen cake for my birthday” No one else was around to hear it and sadly he did not record it as they would have made millions on commercial endorsements had he recorded it! In addition to that cake, Jessica made Kendall her very own cake to play with which made for some great pictures.

I think Lily and Dylan opened most of the presents

Kendall showing off her new book....

....and her new cell phone!

Sunday morning broke with the sun shining and the promise of another glorious day. Until Barb said….”Time to search for your Easter basket!” Oh, crap Easter! I replied with a smile….”Time for you to look for yours too honey” There are not too many places to hid a basket in a 400 sf trailer and I found mine in short order. Barb on the other hand is having a little more trouble finding hers. I think when this blog is posted and she reads this she might figure it out and stop looking. Hey, I guess we are now even for Valentine’s Day!

My basket!



The kids coloring eggs on Saturday morning

That afternoon it was off to Jessica's again for more Easter fun! We had a Easter egg hunt then went out to dinner at a local barbeque place named The Sugar House BBQ Company it is probably the best place in town. Then back to Jess' for a little post dinner dessert. By the end of the day we were all whooped from the eating, drinking and kid activity.

Lily filling her basket

There's one!

Dylan in action!

Kendall even found a couple!

 

Happy Easter Everyone!

 

We heard from our new employers the other day. It looks like we start on the 13th about an hour and a half outside of Salt Lake. In the meantime we are going to take a few days to get the rig fix (more on that next time), rotate and change the oil on the vehicles and get a new belt on the Ranger. We won't have time after that as we will be back to the daily grind working 40 hours a week!!!!!!