Since most of my blogging purpose is posterity, I feel I would be remiss not to document this day – this day that has been talked about and talked about for months (and for the last week, has been freaking me out via the Interwebs and eyeball burning warnings) of the Total Solar Eclipse 2017.

But since Hastings really was in the “Path of Totality,” we had a prime spot for taking in this monumental day/night and we ended up taking full advantage of it.

For a while now, I have wanted to pull the kids from school for the eclipse, simply because I wanted to be with them for this once-in-a-lifetime experience, which was a sentiment echoed by several of my mama of school-agers over the course of the last few weeks. And since the hubs was down for that, we proposed the plan to the children at the end of last week: get to come home in the middle of the day for the eclipse.

We were met with one “Cool” and one TEARS.

Poor Miss Raegan; she was so excited to start school last week (and also so warn out by starting school last week) that after school on Friday, she was in hot mess meltdown mode because she wanted so badly to have it both ways – her whole family with her at school for the eclipse AND her whole class here with her family for the eclipse. Sorry, Love – no dice on either since TJ needed a nap and I wasn’t really down for inviting 20+ Kindergartners to our yard (for potential eyeball burning).

So we kind of let the issue sit and on Sunday, my aunt and uncle from MN arrived (he is a high school science teacher and was excited to get in on our view) , and Ben and I decided on the wild plan of not just pulling the kids from school for the event, but for the whole day. It just seemed like the best way to keep RL from losing it again and it made for less runaround during our day before and after our observation of the sun/moon dance. And because Ben happens to have plan during the middle of the day and did not have study hall today, he could even join us as the house for gearing up and viewing all the way up to totality (and then he had to split).

While there were definitely moments this morning of wishing I had just sent them (long side note: RL might have stayed home today anyway because she woke up from a bad dream – that’s new and hopefully done – at 2:00 a.m. and with a horrendous barky cough – and I ended up “sleeping” with her the rest of the night to keep her calm and on her side which meant NOT much rest for me, so my patience level plus excitement level of the children just were not on par, but cookies and coffee and extra helpers around the house make a world of difference), I am ultimately so glad that we kept them home and got to be all together (minus the napping baby which was a blessing as far as safety goes) for what turned out to be very much worth the hype.

We did not see everything (no Shadow Bands that we could see, and I’m pretty sure I missed both the Diamond Ring and the beads), but dang, Totality came and it was UNREAL.

Honestly, I was a little freaked out that our timer app was wrong and we’d taken them off too soon, but just like that, you could hear people all over town cheering and hooting and hollering because it was just that wild to have it so suddenly be like night time out (with the 360 sunset around us) including street lights and cooler temps and this perfect ring of light around the moon up in the sky. And lucky us, we got to experience it for over two whole minutes!

The kids – and all of our grownups – were drop-jawed. And it was crazy how, just like that, it was then reversing and the day was returning to normal(ish).

At that point, we headed back inside to return to our regular afternoon routine (as if we have a “hooky” routine! As we told the kids – the staying home from school offer was pretty much once in a lifetime, too!) and I will admit, I felt a little off. Some of that was fear of “OMG. Did we just burn retinas?!” and some was exhaustion from the previous night and the rest was hangover from the awesome craziness of the eclipse. And it legit took most of the rest of the afternoon for that to clear. I mean, does anyone else who experienced it feel like they lived more than one day today?

Although the kids couldn’t quite give us a highlight/favorite moment of the eclipse, at dinner RL said to the table, “Raise your hand if you had the best day ever!” and everybody did, so I would say all the hubbub and such was totally worth it. And thanks to our homemade masks, I think we are all more than fine, even though the 4yo was stressful to watch because he fought the mask for so long, but geez – let’s hope there are no lifetime ramifications of the lifetime event, for us or for anyone else (eventually I’ll get over this fear, I swear).