Merry Christmas 2018

Another year with three Christmases... we celebrated Christmas at the Conrad's on the 23rd, then had our own Christmas at home on the 24th, then at my parent's house on Christmas Day. 

The annual sibling picture at the Conrad's Christmas:

On the morning of Christmas Eve I picked up donuts. Hy-Vee had Cap'n Crunch donuts, which was awesome and awful at the same time:

Time to open presents:

Dueling photographers:

We opened our stockings first:

Emily is a big fan of opening presents:

Rose is a serious Queen fan and was pretty stoked when Bohemian Rhapsody came out in theaters earlier this year:

Cynthia's first attempt at making kringla was a success! They are a lot of work to make:

Christmas Day at my parent's house. After opening gifts Cynthia and I made chicken parm and then dad and I did some target practice in the backyard. Later, we video chatted with Abby (and Ashlen) in TX and then played Telestrations.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Comet

Comet 46P/Wirtanen made its closest pass to Earth in 20 years tonight, so we nerded out and went to our favorite stargazing spot to check it out. It's a very faint green glow in the sky and super hard to find, but one of the 10 closest comet passes to the Earth since 1950. It took us a while to zero in on the spot where it should be, but we found the general area (thanks to the SkyView app) and even then we couldn't see it, but with a slow shutter I was able to photograph it. It was between Aldebaran (part of the Taurus constellation) and the Pleiades star cluster. Anyway, all nerdery aside, here ya go:

See it? No? It took a bit, but I think this is it:

That weird glowing spot just below a bright star – I think that's it and the interwebz seem to confirm. Also, if you look back at the first photo there's a satellite just coming into frame in the upper left. Nifty!

A zoomed-out photo to provide context:

Before we left, Rose and I took some long exposures of cars going past on the highway: