Last Space Shuttle Launch

We knew back in May when the space shuttle Endeavor took off and Brayden chose to watch CNN all morning instead of his usual cartoons, that we had better take him to the next shuttle launch.  We were able to sort of see the smoke trail from our house in May, but that was about it.  So we realized that we only had one chance to take him since the launch of the shuttle Atlantis on July 8th would be the last one.  I was really sad to hear that there wouldn't be any more after this.  I can still remember seeing a launch when I was little with my family and I'm just grateful we were able to take our boys to see one as well.  

Here's a video of the boys before we left Thursday night

Since it was the last launch ever, it drew huge crowds.  They estimated about a million people would come to see it!  I have no clue how many did, but we wanted to make sure we had a good spot to watch. We really wanted to be able to see the shuttle take off and not just see it up in the sky.  You had to pay to watch it at the Kennedy Space Center, and I'm pretty sure that was sold out a long time ago, so we found a spot in the nearby town of Titusville at Spaceview Park. The weather forecast wasn't looking very good and they were only estimating a 30% chance that the shuttle would actually take off on the 8th.  Not very good odds, but we hated the idea of not going and then having it actually take off and missing it.  So we took a chance and luckily it worked out!

Originally we were going to just get up really early (like 4 a.m.) on Friday to drive there, but spontaneously on Thursday night, we decided to just head down there and sleep in our car. (Yes, we are CRAZY to do that with a 5 and 2 year old.) I'm still glad we did because we were able to set out our chairs and get an awesome spot, but oh man, it was a LONG night.  All 4 of us crammed in our Nissan Altima.... I think Guy and I both said "We NEED a bigger car" like 500 times that night! Tyler woke up at midnight and played until like 4:30 before he finally went back to sleep. Such a stubborn kid. So that meant that Brayden was the only one who really got a good night sleep since nothing wakes that kid up.  Lucky boy!

So around 5:30 we couldn't take being stuck in our car anymore and the rain had stopped, so we went over to our spot and slept on our blankets until about 9:30 or so.  The launch was scheduled to take off at 11:26 am so we went and walked around for a bit and Guy bought the boys little space shuttles to play with.  They were definitely excited about that!  

Finally at 11:29 am the shuttle blast off into space and it was just amazing. We were right across the river from the launch pad so we could see it all perfectly. It's just too bad it was such a cloudy day or we would have been able to watch it go up longer.  Once it hit the clouds, it was out of sight.  It really was pretty fun to be around so many people and have everyone count down and cheer as it went into the sky.  Brayden watched from Guy's shoulders and he was so excited. In fact, it's all we've heard about since!  And Tyler loved it too, but cried when it was gone because he wanted it to come back.  Brayden told us after that we need to hurry and go back to Texas now so we can watch it land.  If only it were that easy :)

Traffic leaving was kind of crazy at times, but not too bad.  We really thought it would be way worse.  But it did literally take us all weekend to recover (staying up all night is no longer something I can do.) I am just so glad we were able to take the boys and experience this as a family. It's definitely something we'll remember and I'm grateful we lived close enough that we could go see it.  It was amazing how many people traveled from far away (even other countries) to watch it take off! I'm really hoping we can find a coupon or deal somewhere so we can take the boys to the Kennedy Space Center once before we leave FL.  I know they would love it, especially after seeing this!