So last week, as I was about to chase Olivia off to bed, Tiffany stopped me and said "No, wait, there's stargazing on the Esplanade tonight. Why not take Olivia out for a few minutes and let her look through one of the telescopes?"

(I'll pause for a minute to explain that our neighborhood contains some amateur astronomy buffs, and when conditions are favorable they sometimes gather on the esplanade on our street and set up their equipment to look heavenward. This was one of those nights.)

Olivia, of course, was amenable to this - hey, anything to delay going to bed for a few minutes. We got outside, and I pointed out the big telescope to her, and she was excited about looking through it. Her preschool class had been talking about the solar system that week, and so she could name a couple of planets, one of which was Saturn, which just happened to be visible that evening.

We were the first people to wander over and ask about using the scope, so Olivia was able to get a crack at it right away. There was a stepladder that we moved over for her to climb up so she could peer into the eyepiece, and once it got good and dark, she had a great look at Saturn, which she thought was very cool. She chattered about it quite a bit afterwards.

Oh, and did I mention that there was a reporter for the Houston Chronicle there as well, doing a feature story on neighborhood "star parties" like that one? And that she had a photographer with her? And that they and the telescope dude just about fainted at the prospect of photographing a cute little girl in her pink Minnie Mouse nightgown as she looked at Saturn through a big telescope?

Here's the story. Scroll down a bit to see the picture.

I should note, by the way, that the Chron reporter asked me a few questions as well, but none of that made it in. Obviously, we can tell who has the real star power in this family.