I know that absolutely everybody either saw the eclipse for themselves, or didn’t really care all that much about the eclipse in the first place. I know that one more post on the topic isn’t really needed out there on the internet, but for the sake of the blog-scrapbook, I wanted to dedicate a whole post to this amazing experience.
We had a partial solar eclipse in 2017, and it was…boring. I mean, it got a little darker and we could see the moon covering the sun, but I honestly forgot about it within a day. My Dad went and saw the total eclipse in 2017, and has been talking about it since then, but I kind of wrote him off as a little bit over-excited and nerdy about these types of things. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law invited the entire Hines family to come to their property, since they were in the center of totality- about 3 mins and 50 seconds of totality. I thought it sounded fun, but then I started to hear how bad the traffic would be and I almost talked myself out of it. Theo was working and being stuck in traffic for hours with all the kids around dinnertime didn’t sound very appealing to me. But when I heard that multiple other Hines’ would be there, I decided it would be totally worth the trip just so my kids could play with their cousins for the day.
I AM SO GLAD WE WENT. IT WAS INCREDIBLE. Totality was INSANE. It just cannot even be described in words or pictures or videos. It’s like knowing ABOUT how birth works and then experiencing it yourself. Or knowing that the ocean has waves, but then experiencing it yourself. The way that it felt like the whole world just shushed itself and went to bed. The sunset at 3:12 pm. The AWE from everyone who saw it. Just incredible.
We all gathered around noon and the kids ran around outside. It was a GORGEOUS Ohio day…it seriously couldn’t have been more perfect weather!
We brought a picnic lunch and the kids ran and played with their cousins. The eclipse started around 1pm with the moon just slowly starting to cover the sun. At first it wasn’t noticeable or even all that interesting.
As the moon moved more over the sun, the color of the day and the temperature started to change.
We did the pinhole experiment and even used a colander to see the shadows. There wasn’t many leaves on any of the trees, so we didn’t get to see that part of the eclipse, but all the other stuff was still cool!
Check out these three pictures, taken as the moon covered the sun in totality. Look at the lights on the house!
I took one video and like two photos during totality because I just had to put the phone down and take in the awe of the moment. Once the moon fully covered the sun, we all took off our glasses and just gasped and oohed and awed. Truly it was one of the most incredibly experiences of my life!
The sun slowly came back out and we headed home just feeling so happy and in awe of what we had seen! It was amazing!! And we didn’t end up stuck in any traffic, but even if we had…it would have been worth it! We are already making plans to travel to totality for the next total eclipse!