The Loos: August 2017

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

First day of school

Here are Kate, Scott, and Austin on the first day of school. Kate was starting a new school, and was a little nervous.

Scott

Austin

Meanwhile, Mom, Logan and Ty had a nice day at home (but there was some serious excitement when the kids got home)!

Max and Ty

Kate got assigned flag folding duty. The first few weeks were hard, but Kate loves going to school now and loves her amazing teacher.

Monday, August 21, 2017

Solar Eclipse

While we were in Idaho, there was a total solar eclipse! It was so incredible. The moon completely covered the sun so it was as dark as night with a full moon. It was such an amazing experience!!

Mom, Logan, Kate, Dad, Austin, Ty, Scott

Austin

Scott

The moon started to slowly cover the sun and it took about an hour and a half for it to complete totality. During this time, Grandpa took the kids on rides in his bulldozer

Ty helping drive

As the moon covered the sun more and more, the sunlight that went through leaves turned into crescents instead of the normal dots.

We tried hard to get a picture of the sun, this was when it was mostly covered.

As we got very close to totality, everything started to look really weird. Colors, people, everything. It made mom a little nauseous (just a bit), it was really crazy! Here, we tried to get a picture of the shadows. They weren't sharp anymore, kind of a softer line. The picture looks blurry, but if you look at the rocks, they are still sharp. There were lots of weird things like this happening.

We walked over to a field so that we could see the whole horizon when we entered totality

This was very near totality. The sun was completely gone except a ring!!

This was taken at 11 am, totality or very near it. Totality lasted just under 2 minutes for us!

After totality and the moon had moved off the sun, we got into our car (all preloaded and ready to go) and tried to beat traffic. Thanks to Dad's excellent driving and Mom's great navigation skills, we made it!

We had other friends that went, it took some people up to 11 hours to get home--their response to that was that it was totally worth it! It was just a cool life experience, something we won't ever forget!!

Dad had some ice cream for the way home.

Kate helping to keep Logan happy, it was a rough ride home with him!

Coolest thing ever!!

Sunday, August 20, 2017

Idaho Fun

We stayed in Idaho for almost 2 weeks this summer (Mom and the kids). It was SO fun!! We stayed between the Durtschi reunion and the solar eclipse.

Just some sheep crossing the main road, no big deal.

The kids all playing dress up, they scared us a little bit, but they had fun!

We drove up and spent a day in Driggs with Great Grandma Durtschi. We all enjoyed it so much, it was hard to leave!

One of the favorites is the zipline!

Grandma pays $1 to each great grandchild the first time they can climb this rope and touch the top of the swingset. Here is Austin doing this.

Scott doing this, it is actually pretty high!

Alicia brought her kids up to hang out, here are Logan and Theo

Austin and Palmer

We went to the park one night and met up with Angie, Elise and Brian, Grandma Packer and all the kids. Everyone had a great time.

Austin and Jax

Kai and Scott

We also set up the slip'n'slide at Melissa's house. The kids all had a great time! Scott is wearing the green and blue shorts, Austin the solid blue (and he has a buzz)

We also got to go ride horses with old family friends the Hannys. It was so nice of them and we had so much fun, it was a dream come true especially for Kate!

Austin on the fourwheeler

Happy Girl!

Kate and Ty

Scott

Scott left, Austin right

Grandma Packer was the one that set it up, Austin left, Kate and Logan right

Scott and Ty

Then, Merrill Hanny took us on a ride in this special carriage he got, it was really fun and cool for mom to get to see the old house she lived in as a kid.