For those of you that don't know, my husband is a serious night owl. It is super rare that he is in bed before midnight any day of the week. One benefit I have noticed from his awful sleep schedule is that he is usually up when the auroras come out to play. Like this morning, he just happened to do his nightly aurora check (I'm not exaggerating). They were just barely visible from the driveway, so he woke me up and told me.

I was not interested and went back to sleep. A few minutes later, my phone rings. Matt really thinks I should come outside. Fine...! But I'm just going out and then coming back in. Until I saw them - holy cow! They were the brightest I have seen since the one good show we got last year (and there was no good photos of that one!). So I went back in to get the camera and start taking some photos to share with you all. :)

I ended up giving up and going back to sleep after a long while, but the lights kept dancing and dancing. Matt took over photographer duties after I went back to bed, so most of these are from him - I take credit for the camera settings though! I think he finally gave up at 3am, all I know is that the memory card was full of shot after shot of awesome auroras.

Here are my favorite ones, enjoy!

Pretty awesome, huh? And to be that awesome in a neighborhood and with an incredibly bright moon is super uncommon! So the best (most likely!) show of the year just happened to show up right on my birthday... That's a pretty good birthday present in my book. :)