Starry Starry Night

Our evening under the stars was a complete success!  The oppressive heat lifted right before dinner and we had a great cook out back by the pond.  My older daughter was the Chef du Jour and she cooked hamburgers out on the grill with a secret recipe she learned this summer during her Navy duties.  They were excellent!!!  She has never grilled before nor has she made hamburgers and I say she has it down.  Everyone loved them.  A good friend of ours came by to join us.  He was the best man at our wedding and he is a great guy.  He brought a homemade chocolate silk pie for dessert that was delicious! We had a fun time reminiscing about the old days and the kids got a big kick hearing all about their dad back in the day.  It was really funny! After our friend left we cleaned up and then packed up our things for our night out under the stars.  We had pillows and blankets and cushions and headed out shortly before 11:00pm.  The meteors, while not as plentiful as I had hoped, were brilliant and did not disappoint.  We had blue streaks and green streaks and meteors that left huge trails of brilliance across the night sky.  The clouds had cleared up right around dinner and the sky was ablaze with thousands of twinkling lights.  The dock was the perfect viewing platform for the show.  We all laid out in the night air gazing up at the milky way and gave the appropriate "WOW and OH" with the occasional "DID YOU SEE THAT ONE?!!!" until one by one we drifted off to sleep.  My younger daughter and I were the first to awake a few hours later as Mr. Yesteryear Acres was snoring loud enough to wake the surrounding countryside.  Just to make sure there would be absolutely no sleeping, my son's dog who joined us out on the dock for the star show, was also snoring at full volume. We tried to block out the "symphony of snores" but really - I can't imagine ANY one sleeping through that! We laughed and then enjoyed some really brilliant meteors.  As the dew began to soak us completely and our pillows and blankets were absolutely wet all the way through, we all decided maybe we would sleep the rest of the night in our own beds.  We all headed back to the house a little after 3am and slept like babies in our own dry comfy beds dreaming about the meteor shower and all the beauty and brilliance of the spectacular night sky.