In honor of his 9th birthday, Akiva requested that I attend his first softball game.

Akiva takes his scooter down to the skate park.

He hops over the jumps

and off the jumps

and on the rails.

Then, without the scooter, across the playground

and up the slide.

Iris and Brook go down the slide.

After a brief lecture on how to walk the x-wave,

Brook goes up,

across,

and down.

All together now! Up,

across,

across,

across,

across,

get down!

Now that we have eclipse glasses, we can wear them any time we like.

For example, some people find them good to wear while playing board games after dinner.

Some people disagree about the utility of eclipse glasses for after-dinner games.

Able to see what she is doing, Iris contemplates her final tile

and wins the game.

Ari came to visit for the eclipse.

We had some time to pass before the earth and moon were in their proper places

relative to the sun.

Ari brought a filter that she’d bought for her camera. She set it all up on a tripod.

I gave her an old black shirt to use as a photographer’s cloth.

As she photographed the sun, I photographed my family.

Ari says she didn’t get any good photographs. Neither did I. Nor did I try very hard.

Ari tried exactly as hard as a $15 filter can try.

Fortunately, there are squillions of people out there with better cameras and fancier filters than we have

who got decent photos of the hole in the sun.

There are at least an equal number of people out there who turned on the AI to paint some donut-sun photos.

This photo was taken at 100% coverage without a filter and (unfortunately) without the tripod.

We have no neighbors living in the new house behind ours yet, so Akiva practices batting in the back yard.

Iris brings the cat out for an airing.