We had to move houses again on the Sunday, the day before the eclipse, and thankfully I have a good friend who lives in Melissa (a suburb of Dallas) and she invited us over to watch Sunday Conference! Annie was my counselor in a Young Women's presidency years ago, and we still see each other once a year or so when she comes to Utah. I never thought I'd actually make it to her place in Texas, so I was thrilled when we actually made plans to get together! She and her husband Jon are so awesome. Sam and I met them for dinner without the kids one night and talked till late in the evening as if no time had passed since we last saw each other. My Daisy and Annie's Sam are the same age, and then Annie has two younger daughters Junie and Teddy's age too.
A tiny spot of sun emerged
And then a sliver
And then a crescent…and the light was back…
It was so good to have a place to watch Conference! Jon and Annie even made tacos for lunch. So good!
We went on a walk between sessions (here are Seb and Gus and Clementine walking)
The little boys built with bristle blocks
And here we all are! So fun! (Jon is taking the picture.)
On our way out from Jon and Annie's house, we had to drive past the high school football stadium they were telling us about in their city. It's a new multi-million dollar stadium and indoor practice facility. Nicer than most college stadiums I've seen. High school football is crazy in Texas!
The date of the eclipse was the worst date of all for our house problems, and we miraculously found this newly-listed place after another cancelation literally just a couple weeks before our trip. It was extra miraculous because it didn't cost a million dollars like every other rental house on those dates. There were no reviews (I think we were their first guests) and I was afraid there must be something wrong with the house or something! But there wasn't. It was great.
We found a little Book of Mormon reader on the bookshelf in the house, and a Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley along with some other church books, and the coffee maker in the kitchen was brand new and clearly never-used, so we were pretty sure the owners were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints like we are. That was a fun little connection. I emailed them a grateful note after the trip for being an answer to our prayers for a rental house!
Is this the way to use a treadmill?
The morning of the eclipse dawned completely cloudy. We couldn't see even a patch of sky. Abe and I went out to get donuts and spent the next half hour saying resigned things to each other like, "Well, even if we don't get to see it, we had a great time!" But there were a few hours to go so we were still hopeful the clouds might clear. The kids all dressed in the eclipse shirts we'd made for Family Home Evening a couple weeks before. (We just painted them with glow-in-the-dark paint. We made them for the last eclipse too and it was so fun!)
I wore my "eclipse shirt" too. Doesn't this pattern look like little suns and moons?
Everyone was making dire predictions about traffic and how there were some huge number like 700,000 extra people in the Dallas area, and there were signs up saying "Expect delays up to 3 hours" and several freeway exits closed in anticipation of the crowds. We were glad we didn't have to drive anywhere to get to totality. But the city we were in (Murphy) seemed almost deserted that morning. Hardly any traffic at all. I don't know if everyone just stayed put because of the dire predictions, thus changing the outcome? Or if the dire predictions were too dire in the first place? But we didn't encounter any crowds at all. When the time of the eclipse came, we went to a park a few blocks away with our picnic lunch and our eclipse glasses. There were a few people there, enough to feel festive, but it wasn't crowded by any means. The clouds had broken up a little and we were seeing patches of blue sky, which seemed promising!
Malachi got some cool "phone lens through eclipse glasses" shots
There was a modest crowd sitting in the amphitheater on picnic blankets, contributing to the holiday atmosphere at the park, and some radio announcer talking on a P.A. system. I can't imagine that anyone wanted to hear his commentary, but that didn't stop him from giving it. We walked far enough away that we couldn't hear him.
We got out the bocce set I got in my Easter basket and played a bit
There was a playground, and some police officers walking around who stopped and talked to Ziggy and gave him a sticker. That was enough to make the day a success for him!
The clouds would gather and then clear and then gather again. It was worrisome. But we could still make out the sun from time to time, being slowly bitten into a crescent shape.
Another phone/glasses shot
Seb took lots of pictures of Clementine, as is his custom
And he got a shot of our whole family too, minus himself of course. Wish we had managed to urge him into the picture with us!
Malachi is quite the iconoclast, isn't he!
Even under the clouds, you could tell the light was changing and cooling, in that strange way it does during an eclipse.
As totality approached the clouds were pretty thick again, but we could see the sun through them some of the time. It was actually pretty cool because you could see it without glasses (the clouds did the filtering).
It was definitely going in and out of view, though, and I was afraid this was the best we were going to get.
It started getting darker and darker. We all lay down on the grass so we could watch the sky better.
And then the moon slid all the way over the sun, and we were in totality!
It was so dark, the kids' shirts were all glowing!
You could never get used to that sudden dusk. It's the strangest thing in the world.
Miraculously, as darkness fell, the clouds around the sun just seemed to fall apart, leaving a little hole where we could see everything. We took off our glasses and stared up in wonder. The corona around the dark sun is glorious! Breathtaking!
And I know. This could be taken so many ways. It's the kind of small miracle you don't always get, can't always get. My brothers didn't, in 2017 when they went all the way to Missouri for the eclipse and only saw clouds. Plenty of people along the path of totality were probably praying for clear skies and didn't get them. I'm not trying to say our experience was because of anything special about our prayers or that we mattered more to God or anything like that. It wouldn't have been the end of the world if we missed seeing the eclipse—we told ourselves that all week long! So I don't want to boast of a miracle. But also…it seemed like a miracle! So many clouds, and then that little window right where the sun was, at just the right time. It was humbling and awe-inspiring.
The purple darkness and the 360º sunset, so astonishing.
Seb was taking the most beautiful pictures. I was so glad he got them to turn out well—it's hard to get the settings right for an eclipse, but he did it! And this is what it really looked like even to our eyes, except with a lighter field of clouds around the sun. The black disc of the moon in the dark sky, and the sun's corona just weaving and shining out in a bright pulsing halo around it.
In Seb's pictures, you can even see the red of solar flares and prominences. That one on our right is so fiery and enormous! How big must it be for us to see it all the way from earth?!
Totality was almost 4 minutes, a minute and a half longer than when we saw it in Idaho in 2017. But still too short, way too short. We could see the edge of the huge shadow racing toward us over the earth, bringing that orange sunset light with it.
…as if it had never been gone. Before totality the daylight seems dim and cool, but after that shuttered darkness, even the partial sun feels bright and clear.
After a half hour or so, the clouds disappeared altogether. It was so funny…"NOW it clears up…why couldn't it have been like this 30 minutes earlier?" I heard people saying. But I was glad it happened this way, with shifting clouds and filtered light before the sudden clarity of totality. It made me feel more certain that the cloud-window was a little gift from God.
We stayed at the park until the eclipse was all the way over. We heard lots of frogs in the pond, and were occupied with looking for them for quite some time.
They were cute little tiny guys. Daisy finally caught one, to her great triumph. Junie wishes it to be recorded that she touched several frogs, but she didn't quite succeed in catching any.
Clementine was hot and rosy and tired by the time the sun was completely clear again.
She was grumpy too. She fell down about 30 times on the walk to the car, as kids always do when they're already tired and grumpy, and got a bunch of scrapes on her knees and elbows.
She cried and wailed, but she couldn't help cheering up just slightly when Junie brought her a little ladybug.
Poor little lamb.
We went home for much-needed naps, and Abe and Seb and Daisy and I played Wingspan, and then Philip's family came by to say goodbye and pick up a battery pack they'd left at our other house. During Sunday conference, they had made eclipse shirts to match ours! We made a fine group, I must say. We talked Philip and Allison into coming out to dinner with us, to a Mediterranean place we'd tried with Seb on our layover in Dallas in August. It was just as good as we remembered!
The kids enjoyed a little more time with cousins
Teddy and Adam and Daniel
Daisy and Ben, the "other twins" (only 3 weeks apart!)
Ziggy and Joseph and Rachel
We finally said our last goodbyes and headed to our separate homes. On the way, we saw huge dark clouds gathering, and the sky began to be filled with bright flashes of lightning. There was a tornado watch for our city. We were all very pleased (except Ziggy, maybe, because he was already worried about tornados—but we downplayed it for him) because Abe was always telling us how ferocious the Texas rainstorms were, and now we were going to get to see one for ourselves! We reached home just as the clouds opened and the rain started pouring down. We all got soaked just running from the car to the house!
We got everyone snuggled into their cozy beds, listening to the rain pounding on the roof. It felt like the perfect end to our trip. Of course, had there really been a tornado I suppose it might not have been so good. Our rental house host texted and told us to move our car in close to the garage, what to do if we heard the tornado warning siren, where to shelter in the house, etc. But the storm ended up moving away and all was well. The rain died out and it was clear by morning.
It's always so sad to leave, but it was time. We got up early to start the long drive home. Clementine quite liked this little lap desk she'd gotten for Easter. Did it keep her quiet and entertained for longer? Maybe. She was really good for most of the drive. It rained most of the way through Texas, and we ate our meals huddled under gas station awnings, trying to stay dry while not spilling too many crumbs in the car.
Seb stayed behind and took an Uber to the aquarium, where he met Philip and Allison. Then he went to the airport and rode the train around and took pictures of planes until 9 pm when his flight left. He flew home with layovers in Denver and Chicago, slept in the airport overnight, and got home only a few hours before we did! His tickets were cheap, though, and the extra flying/airport time is a bonus for him as it wouldn't be for most people. :)
Back to the tiny apartment in Albuquerque, with a welcome hot tub after a long day.
Then back through New Mexico, a stripe of Colorado, and Utah, with a stop for a freezing and windy standing-up picnic lunch at a rest stop. It looks deceptively warm in this picture, but we were all shivering and trying to huddle next to each other while holding onto our blowing yogurt lids.
At least Gus got to see this tiny front-end loader.
And that was the end of our wonderful Eclipse trip! What a blessing to be able to go all together.
You have the best vacations!
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