Summer’s quickly cooled down, making for lovely weather to take the kids down to Sandy Park to play outside or have dinner out on the deck at home. There’s also been rain off and on, but our kids still manage to have fun even indoors.
If you haven’t heard by now, there’s a total eclipse of the sun coming up on August 21. Vivian and I plan to brave the crowd and traffic and head to Beatrice (AKA “Ground Zero”) to catch a glimpse of it.
The Fontenelle Nature Center had a fireside chat at Camp Brewster on Friday to tell the little ones all about the eclipse with a demonstration using balloons (Hannah got to be the sun), eclipse glasses for us to try out, and a reading of the story “Someone Is Eating the Sun.” Hannah and Aaron seemed a bit more interested in climbing on trees and a fence to look at the view of the river, but I hope in a week or two they’ll want to catch a glimpse of an eclipse as well (with the glasses, of course).
On Sunday, I returned to the Nature Center to hear a few guys from Rockbrook Camera give a brief talk on eclipse photography. I learned that I could get a paper solar filter for a little less than the $150 products I’d seen in my dad’s photography catalog, so I went ahead and ordered one so I could get a snapshot of a few phases other than “totality.”
Then on Wednesday, I took the day off so we could take our kids to Fun Plex for the very first time. I’d visited the park with Vivian twice before, but this was the first time we’d made use of the kids’ attractions. Hannah and Aaron got to ride the merry-go-round, the cars, the planes, the train, and the alligator roller coaster multiple times throughout the day. They were both also tall enough to ride the bumper boats with mommy and daddy as we tried puttering about and squirting each other with water, and we all went up in the balloon ferris wheel as a family. There had been rain in the forecast that fortunately passed us by, leaving us free to enjoy getting wet at the water park as well. The kids spent most of their time in the kiddie pool or sliding around the new Makana Splash area.
We took a lunch break across the street at Dairy Queen before coming back for more water and rides. Mommy and daddy even got time to try some “adult” things as well, doing the roller coaster, cars, and big water slide at least once before calling it a day.
