The Moon was at a Fiesta.

The moon in a crystal clear sky at night drew me outside to practice using my tripod.
The activity caused me to lose track of time.
My fingers however soon protested that it was below freezing outside.
  I couldn't manipulate all the equipment with mittens or gloves on my hands; of course one can't manipulate equipment with frozen fingers either.
In fact, it was the fact that I couldn't feel the shutter button that finally woke me up to the fact that I had better knock off taking moon shots for the night.

Maddeningly, an even better moon picture taunted me on the way to work yesterday.
The sky was still barely lit with the breaking dawn and the full moon hovered like a giant pink pearl above the dark blue and snow white rugged mountains to the west.
To the east the sun struggled to crest above Mt. Olympus.
It was simply magical seeing the pink moon retreating from the valley to hide from the approaching sun.

Did you know there was a children's book written about when the moon and the sun are both in the sky at dawn?

You see, the sun is supposed to reign during the day and the moon by night, but sometimes it happens that something really exciting happens at night, something exciting like a fiesta!

Sometimes the moon just can't bear to leave the fun before it is all over and when that happens, sometimes the moon is caught in the breaking light of dawn.

When that happens, the author said, the reason is quite obvious:

The Moon was at a Fiesta!

Isn't that a fun little story to tell?

The book "The Moon was at a Fiesta" is a wonderful story and the link above will allow you to take a peek at the book.

I was lucky enough to have the author come to visit the school library back when I was a school librarians (my all time favorite job!) and I got to hear author Matthew Gollub read his book in person!