I’ve been busy, sorry for the delay in posting. It’s been almost 2 weeks since I’ve posted, yikes! Maybe one of the longest times I’ve gone without posting. Sorry about that, everything is fine. I’ve just been busy doing other random stuff. Let’s go backwards a bit. On April 4th, I went for a nice long morning walk in Kristen’s neighborhood which has some rudimentary trail system and is very beautiful, but not at all maintained and goes under freeway overpasses which is a little spooky but we didn’t see anyone there on a Thursday morning and we got to see lots of invasive plants and walk and talk a lot. She’s going to be an ER nurse in like 5 days, a big career shift and I’m excited to hear about it.
We walked through flooded areas that grew these beautiful plants that could survive both above the soggy ground and underwater. There were frogs and ducks even though the water seemed in most parts to be less than 5 inches deep. Elka was on this walk and happily found sticks to carry.
On April 5th, Jeremy and I and Edda went to Friday Vibes, a dinner program at Main Street and we all had pizza and played Bingo. The Bingo (for me) was a little tiresome, but it was fine. Again, we have a very dedicated “Ambassador” Ashley who has dinner with us and Edda seemed to enjoy it.
Saturday, I flew with Ning and Noah to Kansas City to see Mike and Sofie. It was a fantastic trip because I got to see everything through a kid’s eye again. It reminds me that life is FUN. Noah was beyond excited, thrilled and happy. He was happy to be going with just his mom and without his little brother. He was happy to see the plane take off. He was happy to buy snacks. I sat between him and his mom to give Ning a little break, Noah is all wiggles. Like entirely a ball of wiggles – but he did fantastic.
Noah, likes screens, but I think I can tell he won’t be completely drawn in by them. He likes to draw and now my own bullet journal which I use everyday has some drawings by him.
So we got to the Kansas City airport (beautiful and newly renovated) and headed to Mike and Sofie’s house where we met Pip. Who really was named after Bob and Katherine’s Pip and is very very fun and sweet.
And hugged Jojo (who is getting a little crotchety in her older age).
We had BBQ at a local shop and headed to a playground where we got our wiggles out (we found a kite which was a lot of fun) and then went for ice cream.
The next morning we headed to St. Louis. McDonald’s for breakfast and then a long drive.
We made it to the St. Louis zoo where we looked for the mysterious capybara (I’m on the hunt for one). Didn’t find it and then Noah really, really wanted to go on the train. It was great to catch up with Sofie and see Ning and Sofie together – these two have a very special bond.
Soo.. there weren’t a ton of animals that we were able to see from the train, Noah, instead of yelling bear!, yelled bulldozer! But it was very cute. (I will tell you the perfect child to adult ratio is 1:4 – Noah ping ponged his attention to all of us and therefore, the child entertaining was evenly spread out during the day.)
Then we headed to our airbnb which was the three bedroom servant’s quarter of a mansion of one of the leaders of the 1904 World’s fair in St Louis and it was a ton of fun to stay in this historic building. I also made sure everyone got their own room and own bed.
It had fun details like an old elevator and call bells from the different areas of the house.
Here’s a photo of the house we stayed in with horses to get around.
On monday we went to see the arch nearby.
And we were going to go to the path of totality, but we missed it by twenty miles. We were at 99.7 % coverage and it turns out that 0.3 % is still a lot of light from the sun – for sure twilight-like, but not total darkness. I didn’t plan this part of the trip well, we were stuck in traffic and realized that we weren’t going to make our predetermined spot and we pulled over and found a lovely park with lots of people viewing and kids on the playground and we had packed a picnic lunch. It was so perfect in so many ways, but you know…also not. So honestly, I’ve been spending some time moping that I spent all this time/money to chase down the eclipse and missed it by 20 miles. But I’m almost over it. Almost.
Haha, but we were very very lucky on the way home, we flew out of St. Louis because we needed to be back in DC on Monday night and as we pulled into the airport at 3:30 pm, I looked at the app and realized that our 6:30 flight was delayed until 9:30 pm which meant 6 hours at the airport with a squirmy toddler and a very late night in DC, but by luck and pluck, we walked from the car, through a security line with 2 people in in right in front of the door we walked through and then 20 feet to the gate of the 4 pm flight which had 8 empty seats and promptly got rebooked on that flight. And with three boarding passes in hand, we walked to the gate as they announced family boarding. And so we spent less than 10 minutes at the St. Louis airport and we got home 2 hours early. So if we had made our eclipse date 20 more miles away, I would have been up until 1 am – at least. So maybe that’s a good tradeoff?
I wonder if that plant is not watercress?🤔
If it makes you feel any better, we were in the path of totality, we watched it from our street with our neighbors and we were glad we did so because the traffic was unbelievable at any of the areas that were in the Hill country or downtown Austin. It didn’t matter where you were. It was bad. Also, it was really cloudy and every once in a while, the clouds twould part and everybody would go wow and then the clouds would come back immediately afterwards. I’ve decided that eclipse events are not really about the eclipse but more about the sense of community you have with whoever you’re watching it with…