As I mentioned a couple posts ago, our spring break week was a bit lacking, mostly due to the weather and my busy work week. The only photographic highlight (literally the only pics I took all week aside from a work one) was that Carter and I did manage to color eggs on Tuesday night so we could color the maximum number of eggs and still get him some egg salad for his lunches at home all week. We played around with crayons (note the two-color R, the orange bunny, and the red one with baseball stitches), rubber bands (the two with white-ish stripes), dripping dye (the bottom left), and purple (they look black here--one was an experiment that accidentally went blacker).
Carter enjoyed his egg salad, both boys have had hard-boiled eggs, and this past weekend I made my beloved creamed eggs and asparagus! But yeah, if this was a highlight, clearly the week was really uneventful. It made me realize Jacob really needs a job or more regular training schedule for the summer because he played a LOT of video games. He tried to get in the gym more but kept getting thwarted. Carter diligently chipped away at his homework but also got a lot of screen time. I took off Friday if only because it was the one day I could take off and also because it helps my mental health to not be sitting at my desk working while both boys are home. I had hoped to do something fun but the way the day went it just didn't work out. The relaxation was fine, though.
Saturday ended up a lot busier. Craig was working but had opportunities to stop home and keep Jacob moving. After lunch Carter and I headed out to the activity I wanted to go to on Friday but didn't work out--the Memorial Art Gallery! I had been trying to get him there since the fall when their big current exhibit, INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM – LET’S SURVIVE FOREVER, 2017, began. I loved it when I went in December, and I really wanted Carter to see it. He had a field trip there last month, but they didn't go into the special exhibit. When I realized there was only a month left before it closed, I decided we had to make it happen. And bonus points that the weather cooperated since Carter hadn't seen the new additions to the outdoor sculpture garden yet.
We walked to the garden there first, and stopped along the way on this fun bench. Carter tried to set it up for us to take one picture of him on a plain bench and then flip to the fun one with a surprised expression, like it had changed as he sat, but we couldn't get the positioning right so we'll just leave it at the nice picture!
Carter is a treasure that should be at the end of the rainbow, but we'll go with under it instead!
Selfie time!
Carter decided to have some fun with the wall above when I explained that the faces are meant to be an audience for the performers at the School of the Arts across the street. He tried to do a comedy routine for me, but ended up postponing it until later when he could gather up some new jokes in his head!
I love the rainbow but it's hard to capture all the colors. This angle gets close...but I tried!
Inside, we went right to the Infinity exhibit. I was excited for him to see it. It's less of a disorienting feeling than the mirrored room in Buffalo, but still sort of surreal and interesting. He liked the column that you can look inside that is more like the Buffalo experience!
I think he was originally a little unconvinced that this little outing would be more entertaining than the video games he'd been playing all week, but he said the room was worth it, even if it was only a minute long.
That minute always feels so fast! After that we were off to the rest of the gallery. There's always something new that catches my eye, and this trip was no exception. I really liked this colorful hollyhock painting.
Carter had loved seeing this one on his field trip (along with the pitcher behind him that looks like wood but isn't, and the hat made out of straight pins just out of the frame), and it made me happy since I love Wendell Castle pieces too, and this was also one of my favorites when I first started going to the gallery! It's wood but looks like a soft pillow getting squished under the chair!
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| He's pretending to knock on it! |
This picture jumped out to me too. It's a cubist painting from a New York artist who moved to Germany and later had to leave because the Nazis called his work "deranged". I think it's really cool, from the design to the colors, so it just shows you how messed up their perceptions were back then and how limiting that kind of mindset can be. I'm happier that this is in the world, you know, so what did the Nazis think it was going to cause? God forbid there's some sort of interesting, independent thought!
This was in the entry/exit gallery. It is all beading! It was stunning but had to be so much work (and probably deceivingly heavy)!
We went back out to the garden for Carter to do his comedy act, and I made a friend!
Carter liked that he could see over the wall along the side.
His jokes were cute, and after that we headed back to the car, just in time to pick up Jacob at home and take him to his basketball game. He was playing in a local tournament with a team that was half school players and half travel team players. It was a little odd because it felt like it should had had a school team focus but seemed to lean toward a travel team warm-up based on who was playing most. Jacob didn't get a lot of points or playing time in the Saturday games. He was clearly getting back in the game groove after most of a couple months off, and was also nervous about getting injured in a tournament like this where the players aren't necessarily that good--he figured a good portion were just JV players. It just didn't feel worth it to him, so mentally I don't think he was as all-in as he should have been. After things didn't go particularly well in those two games on top of his anxiety, Saturday night was a bit of a struggle to talk him down. Plus the Knighthawks lost a tough game which makes the playoffs look really unlikely, and there was also an odd rumor pertaining to the future of the team that got passed along to Craig and caused some concern (seems to be unfounded for now), so despite the fun afternoon Carter and I had, the evening was not the best for anyone.
Sunday was another full day. The boys and I did church while Craig caught up on sleep, and immediately once we got home, Jacob went to get some shots up. We did a quick lunch and then I was off to my monthly coffee date and Jacob and Craig headed to another basketball game. Jacob still didn't want to play, but apparently a switch flipped because he was ON. He got 20 points in the first game which launched them into the championship, and he ended up with 21 in that one. Not only did they win, but he got MVP! The trophy was a little...lacking...haha.
My coffee date was delightful as usual. Always so good to catch up with my friend Marcia and vent about our motherhood challenges and all sorts of life stuff. And I really love the coffee there. At least if it's overpriced it's a local place we're supporting! It was so gorgeous outside when I got home that I immediately went out for a 40 minute walk. It felt great, but I was a little sad inside because we'd had two perfect days and yet the forecast for the next day was cloudy--for the ONE DAY it could not be cloudy or risk ruining a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Monday was set to be the first full eclipse here in many decades (and the last for just as many), and the clouds were set to ruin it. It killed me that we had this lovely weather leading up and it was all going to go to crap at just the wrong time. Even still, my walk was lovely, Craig grilled dinner, and overall we just had a really nice night.
Over the weekend, while we watched endless baseball videos and video game games, Carter worked on this magnetic tile Pirates logo. He did a really good job, given the slightly awkward medium! He wanted to do more to the middle but there probably wasn't a good option and we were running low on yellow tiles anyway.
In addition to Monday being the eclipse, it was also supposed to be Jacob's brain study day. He's been doing this nationwide brain study since he was 10. He always gets annoyed about going, but he gets paid really well, so now is not the time to drop out! This year it was a full-day visit with his lengthy MRI, but we made an eclipse day deal to do a half day on-site, get out by midday, and do a Zoom visit for him to finish his surveys later in the week. I was a little nervous about the whole setup, mostly because they were warning about traffic congestion due to an influx of tourists and I didn't want to somehow get caught in anything and delay getting home. I'm pretty sure the forecast reduced any risk of issues since a lot of people probably went elsewhere when the forecast tanked. But I was apparently still overthinking the details of the day because I dreamed about eclipse stuff all night, including timing issues and one where the clouds were coming and going to ruin it. Up until that point they had been saying we might just have some high clouds, but it seemed like the forecast was sounding worse, so I guess my fears were coming to the surface.
Indeed, it was a little cloudy in the morning, but it only got worse as the day went along and by the time we made it out of the study around 1pm, it was really cloudy, like not a glimpse of sun. That did not bode well. Totality was around 3:20. I took a half day from work to account for the time I was doing study surveys and for watching the eclipse, but it was pretty clear that it wasn't worth watching the eclipse during the hour prior when the eclipse began, because you couldn't even see where the sun was supposed to be. No glasses were needed, either. Around 3pm I went outside to keep an eye on things. The clouds were looking really funky. I honestly couldn't tell if they were getting thicker, or if the half blocked sun was making it slightly darker.
Around that time I started watching the Cedar Point webcams because they were also in the path of totality. Their weather was better and they were doing an event, and I was curious what the cameras would show. They seemed to have the light cloud coverage we were originally supposed to have, and it was pretty clear that the sun was out. They were hitting totality around 3:12, so I kept watching the cameras, and sure enough, the horizon got sunset-ish and you could see lights popping on around the park. Suffice it to say these do not do it justice because I saw footage from someone who was there and it got really dark--and, of course, they had a full view of the sun and the corona. Lucky ducks.
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| Notice the parking lot lights and the light reflecting off the concrete near the entrance |
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| The pavilion lights behind the ferris wheel were really noticeable here |
The ride lights all started popping on, but then, all of a sudden, I realized the sun and shadows were back and their eclipse was over! But just around that time, the boys had been out playing baseball in the yard, and we realized it was almost our turn! It was definitely getting darker but again, it was hard to know if it was just the clouds getting thicker like an approaching storm would do, or if the sun really was getting blocked more.
This was right as things were getting noticeable and the street lights popped on. Ignore the baseball banter...
In this video you can almost see how quickly the darkness came on. It may be partly how the camera adjusted to the lighting, but it pretty much felt that fast and was darker than it looked.
The real darkness came on so suddenly, it looked like a sunset but the speed was nothing like a normal sunset. We couldn't believe how dark it got. These pictures don't do it justice, but you can tell based on street lights and house lights how dark it was.
The sky to the east stayed a bit brighter and was so dramatic! It was gorgeous.
This video seems to do it more justice, but again, ignore the weird banter. Jacob kept being a goober and asking where it was--I'm not entirely sure if he was joking or, like he insisted, really thought it was just going to pop up out of nowhere despite the clouds. The neighbors across the street were the only other people we saw out. We did hear fireworks somewhere nearby, which apparently was a pretty common thing, as I heard a number of other people elsewhere say they heard fireworks, too.
Craig got this picture of Carter as I was documenting everything from the porch...but again, no glasses were needed so he was just needlessly blinding himself!
And then, just as quickly as it came, the horizon began to lighten again, and before you knew it it was back to being a normal afternoon.
It was such a weird, surreal, crazy experience, and we didn't even get to see the best part. But maybe darkness was even darker because we didn't have even that little bit of sunlight. It was a little more of a bummer that we got shut out because Buffalo had some clearing just as it was happening so a lot of people got a couple pictures of the sliver of sun peeking through the clouds. Had we just traveled and gone to the party we were invited to, we might have seen it. Boo. Other areas had some great views, and even just seeing a bunch of videos from different gatherings here was pretty neat. But it's sad that we had this literal once-in-a-lifetime thing and it was only half the experience because we had one half-day cloudy period...despite two perfect days before, the sun reemerging three hours too late that evening, and the next day being pristine again. Ridiculous. I said to Carter the next morning that God must have had some good reason to bring in clouds so perfectly placed in that timeslot...maybe someone who needed to keep their sight to fulfill their future destiny but was currently destined to look up and blind themselves! That seems silly, but I mean, what were the odds? No, it's not usually sunny here so I was fully expecting clouds, but given the amazing weather that surrounded it, it was such a bummer. Regardless, the experience was really amazing and I'm glad we got what we got. It makes me want to seek out more, but there are none even close for like a hundred years, and given what people went through this time with traffic, inflated prices, hotel cancellations, and weather, it doesn't seem like a great idea. Maybe if you build it around some other trip so it's just a tiny fraction of the overall fun? I don't know. I wish it would have worked out better, but what an experience.
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