Our day started early--4 a.m. early. I had set an alarm for 4 and was under orders to check the sky and weather forecast and if it was clear, to wake everyone up. I'll admit to being torn between wanting to see the meteor shower, and wanting to go back to bed, but the skies were perfectly clear, so we all got up and bundled up and drove about 15 minutes south to a spot in the hills where there's a lot less ambient light.
It was early, a little chilly, and even after an hour, Peanut never did see a shooting star, much to his dismay, but otherwise, the trip was a great moment of making memories. We saw shooting stars (Bug wins the prize for seeing the most), several satellites (Peanut DID see those), and Venus and Mars. We could see so many more stars than from our house, so the sky looked cool even without the occasional streak of light, and we had the police stop by 5 minutes after we got there! We had parked just before the closed sign to a regional park, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and they randomly happened to be driving by right after we'd gotten set up, but luckily they let us stay. Luckily, they knew about the meteor shower and didn't question us much. They did shine a very bright flashlight right in Daddy-o's eyes, so that set him back another 15 minutes or so in being able to see much in the dark sky.
We got home by 5:45 and everyone went back to bed, so we technically got two starts to the day. The second one was slow and much later than normal for everyone. We had a 10 a.m. zoom meeting with our teacher from the charter, and the boys were still eating breakfast as we began. But it was worth it for the memories.
We played a game outside, did some art, read some books.
The kids discovered the bee game Google had up in honor of the 50th Earth Day, which led to watching a short documentary about an up-close look at bees.
Peanut had online art class, Bug played Dungeons and Dragons with the children of a couple of friends from San Diego. It was so fun to see them all online together--one is a second cousin of ours who Bug has met several times, but the others live in Japan and we haven't seen them since the boys were 1, so kind of crazy to have them all connect now over a mutual interest in D & D.
Not the most outdoorsy Earth Day, but we try to honor the earth every day.
