What to do the morning the world didn't end...

Last week, we received an invitation to a gathering in honor of the sun's return following the longest night of the year... a Solstice Sunrise Celebration.

It sounded pretty amazing...except for the "get up before dawn" part. We made the unilateral parental decision that it would be a whole family outing...and in the interest of it being extra awesome, we would ignore all complaining and whining and be super upbeat the whole time. I know, I know... drugs ... what drugs would we be using? Surprisingly, none. Not even caffeine.

However, we did give ourselves two possible 'outs'... 1) in the event the world ended (as per the Mayan prediction) before dawn, we would not be attending and 2) we would stay home if it were raining.

So...as most of you know, the world did not end. We had a hard time sleeping in anticipation, though. Kind of like wanting to see Santa, you stay awake all night hoping to catch him, thereby insuring that he doesn't come. So you can thank us for laying awake all night in the hopes of witnessing the apocalypse which never showed up most likely because we were awake waiting for it.

We did hear some wicked storming though. This led us to not be too concerned about not getting much sleep, thinking that it would be raining during the event, bringing into effect Out #2. But, as luck would have it, it was not raining when the alarm went off. It was also not raining as we loaded into the car.

It started to rain when we were about 5 minutes into the drive.

As it was a sporadic rain, we braved the elements and journey on.

Upon parking, we looked up the back of the specified grassy knoll and saw our people.

We climbed to the top...

To see this...

It was cold. 

So we were dressed like this...

As it got closer to sunrise, we collected up our instruments and donned our sunny apparel...

And, for some reason, headed down the backside of the hill away from the sunrise...

We congregated, for some reason, under these trees and awaited the signal...

As soon as we received the signal, we then began our mad scramble back up the hill, 

toward the rising sun...

Once atop the hill, we joined hands and hummed in a circle as the sun came up.

Some people read poems.

There was even an opera singer.

It was pretty cool.

San Francisco gleamed as the new light after the longest night struck the glass buildings...

And we were treated to a glorious rainbow arching toward the Golden Gate...

I, for one, am really thankful the world is still here...

...I am looking forward to so much :)

Did you really think the world was coming to an end? Or did you have some reservations?
–I didn't know for sure...and wasn't too concerned. I am working on taking things one day at a time ... living in the moment :)