shooting for the stars

yesterday I was remembering that a few times in high school and college a few of us would get together and watch a meteor shower in August...

got me thinking...

does that happen every August...

so I got on google and learned, that YES it does...

read some more about it...

it's called the Perseids meteor shower and of all the meteor showers throughout the year it's the 2nd best (the best being Geminids shower in December)....

it does happen every August...

the 'peak' nights for viewing are the 12th & 13th...but we'll have a full moon, making the sky possibly too bright to see very many of them....

1 week on either side of those dates will also work for viewing the meteors...

and the best time to view the meteor's is around midnight....

so the girl child had a friend staying the night last and I told them around 8 that I was going to wake them up at midnight to watch a meteor shower...

the response was lots of jumping and screaming...

and then the questions of what and why...

what was a meteor shower?  

what would happen if a meteor landed in our backyard?

why wake them up at midnight?  

why can't they just stay up until midnight?

answered all their questions and tucked them into bed...

stayed up until about 11 myself, tried to make it to midnight, but my eyes were just too heavy...

set my alarm...

woke up at midnight...

went outside to check it out before getting the kids up...

and the sky was too bright with the combo of the moon and the city lights...

so I went back to bed, not going to wake up sleeping kids to look at a nothing sky...

all asked me this morning why I didn't wake them up...

now I'm thinking I should have woke them up...

maybe tonight I can convince Beau to pack up the car and drive north a little out of town to see if we can catch a few of those falling stars...

some lessons I learned when shooting for the stars..

1. rather than tell the kids of what 'might' happen surprise them when it DOES happen...

2.  IF you tell kids something is going to happen...it's best to follow thru even if it's not as great as you were hoping...

3.  I'm way older than I was in high school and college when I would stay up late with friends watching these...

I'll update this post...if/when we try again tonight....