Alpine Vacation

We hope that everyone had a great 4th of July!

The boys and I went on a little trip with Mawmaw last week to Alpine, TX. (Mawmaw was able to go to her math class that she has been wanting to go to for two years now.)
While she was in class the boys and I played. We drove all over the area to Fort Davis, up to the McDonald Observatory, Marfa, and Alpine and it's other surroundings.
The weather was wonderful, we left the 100 degrees behind in central TX.
I took lots of pictures and tried to get the boys together for one brothers pic. (They can't be serious when I ask them to have one picture of all three of them together.)
We started the trip off with a star party at the McDonald's Observatory, it was wonderful, and a little chilly. We were able to see Saturn, it's rings, Titan it's largest moon and four other moons - not quite as big. We were able to see the moon up close and look at it's terrain. (After looking in that telescope we were all blinded for a bit, because the moon was extremely bright that evening.) By 11:45 WC and CJ were tired and ready to go, so Mawmaw went and sat in the car with them and HJ and I stayed and learned about the different constellations. They taught us the tricks to finding them, what their main stars were called, past north stars, and future ones. We were able to see the stars so clearly, you felt as if you could almost reach out and touch them. HJ was really amazed at the amount of stars and WC thought it looked like a black tent with wholes punched through the top. The boys had a great time, even CJ. Every time he got up to a telescope and was given a turn to look through the eye piece he would say..."yep" or "bewtiful". We would ask if he saw anything because he would stick his eye on the piece and then leave in a split second and he always said "yes, I saw it!" and then hop off into the darkness.
At about 12:30, I told HJ we would have to cut it a bit short because I knew I was going to have to drive down the mountain, and I was already exhausted. Mawmaw and I both thought it was the longest trip. It felt like forever getting back to the hotel and we were both sooo tired, so we ate banana chips along the way and tried calling anyone who we thought would be awake - no luck, everyone we knew was tired and going to bed early (early is definitely before 1:00 for me, but for others in our family, that is nothing).

I will continue later on our wonderful stories from vacation, but for now it is late and I need to go to bed!