for Ada and Liam, anyway. Helena gets two more days of summer.

Liam’s last year here, Ada’s first year in middle school, and Helena’s legacy on the wall in her old English room.

It didn’t look good for us the morning of the eclipse. It was raining so hard that water was being splashed over the cement lane barriers on the highway out of town. At 11:30 it was still raining. Those glasses weren’t doing me much good in the rain.

So we waited inside the library watching the NASA telecast on their screen. Thankfully the library staff gave us snacks and the boys played on the computers. Suddenly and unexpectedly one of the library staff came inside from stepping out and yelled to us all the the sun could actually be seen. At this point, it was much lighter outside but the sun was covered by white clouds. 

Then, just out of the blue, the clouds cleared and we all got to watch the whole show.

I tried getting pictures, but they didn’t really turn out. The girls’ artwork was better.

About ten minutes after the full eclipse, the clouds rolled back through.

We went to the local grocery store for some snacks and we found more eclipse related things.

After a very long drive north from the eclipse traffic, we stopped to eat in Des Moines at Jeanette’s favorite restaurant. I think that she had made reservations about four months in advance. On our way out, we had a more common sky show.

We drove straight through from Maine to Kansas City in order to see the eclipse on the way home rather than just head to Minneapolis.

Kids watched many, many movies on this trip.

Jeanette actually drove for about two hours while I watched Chelsea lose their first game of the year while getting red carded twice in the process.

We did get BBQ, but we weren’t too hungry, so much of it wasn’t finished. Then Jeanette took us to Baskin Robbins, where she wanted to go the whole trip, but wimped out when she saw the non-coupon prices.

After losing my phone in the bay, photos taken were lost and many photos weren’t just taken. These are the rest of them from Maine.

Our first day in Maine was enjoying the water, picking blueberries, going for a walk through John and Anne’s family’s property, and exploring their house.

Today was beauty salon and betting horses day at Libby’s.

We spent the day in Manhattan with Libby and Peter and their kids, and pop-pop.

We began by fighting traffic, then walking through Central Park marveling at the rats, going to the MoMA, getting real pizza, taking the subway, and then spending some time successfully escaping from Escape the Room. Lastly we went up to the top of the Empire State Building at night before going home. Peter had some discounted tickets for us, but actually redeeming them was a nightmare that had him running up and down the building just to try to find a place to print them since the images on the phone wasn’t good enough.

At Libby at Peter’s house, we spent time playing in the back yard, barbecuing, and going to the beach with Sofia and Jake. Dori and pop-pop were there as well. And we had a small birthday party for Ada and Sofia.

On our trip to New York we stopped in Chicago late at night to eat before heading to Pittsburgh early the next morning where we spent the day. After a night there we traveled to Fort Necessity since Liam had done his History Day project on the French and Indian War during the school year. After that, it was on to Commack, NY to see my family. This time, we didn’t break down.

First stop was in Wisconsin Dells for miniature golf.

Here we are in downtown Chicago, but only walking around while we wait for our table.

We then drove through the night until we got to Pittsburgh. Early breakfast, then long walks through town until dinner at the hotel where we ate our pierogies that we picked up at Forgotten Taste Pierogies while out.

After a night at the hotel which included lots of swimming in the indoor pool, we left Pittsburgh and drove to Fort Necessity.

Ada opened presents from her mother a few days before her birthday because of our upcoming trip to New York and Maine. The neighbor came to the party, too.