Festival of Balloons

The Festival of Balloons is something I did quite often growing up with my family, or friends, or church group. Actually, the first time I was ever mentioned in Max's teenage journal, it was when we went to the balloon festival. We've gone a couple times with our kids but only in the evening so we didn't get to see the balloons launch. We decided that we wanted to go in the evening and the morning   which is quite the endeavor with all the kids considering that the launch is at 5:45am. So we decided to make it a slumber party at my Grandma's house who lives walking distance from the park that hosts the festival. Thankfully, my grandma was super excited about the idea too. We arrived after dinner on Saturday evening. We visited with Grandma for a bit then made our way down to the park. We walked around and looked at the vendors for awhile. 

 Miles started out pretty grumpy...still not sure why

 Max was super excited to find this Chilean food cart. He served his mission in Chile and loves their food but we haven't found many authentic places around here. We had already had dinner but we got a dinner empanada to share and a dessert empanada and some lemonade. We sat in the grass to eat.

 Turns out that Edwin is pretty ravenous when it comes to Chilean food, or at least Empanadas.

 Then we walked around some more and had to stop and pose here since this is the company I worked for when I drove busses. I love that all my boys fit. haha

 Usually the balloons are set up as it starts to get dark so they can do the night glow. We weren't seeing any balloons set up and later found out that it was too windy to set them up so that was a bummer. But it was still fun since there was live music and the boys were getting all sorts of swag from each vendor. We barely went into the fair part because the rides are super expensive, haha. But we walked through quickly, and ate an elephant ear, because Max just really loves Elephant ears. 

Then we had a slumber party at grandma's and we all slept pretty well. When we were getting our kids ready for bed, I was showing the boys, these photos on the wall of my mom and her siblings. I first asked Edwin which one was Grandma Sharolee, he looked and thought about it for a bit then pointed to the temple and said, "Gramma in da temple!"  I asked the older boys as well and they both guessed incorrectly. (I know this is a blurry photo but my mom is in the top right)
We decided that I would go down early in the morning and then call Max if the balloon launch was actually happening in case there were issues with wind again. (There was no point in waking up the whole fam if there weren't any balloons. I asked Miles and Charlie if either of them wanted to go with me, just checking to see if either of them were even a bit awake. Charlie popped up and said he wanted to go. So Charlie and I walked down to the park, and immediately saw the ReMax balloon. (Funny side note, when I was pregnant with Charlie, we had a friend call the baby, ReMax since that's Rebecca and Max combined and he was also a replica of Max) Anyway...So we called Max and told him some balloons were going up and they should come to that park.

The fair grounds were nearly empty so Charlie and I got some front row seats to a couple balloons being blown up.

They do give tethered rides, but by the time we realized they were doing this, the lines had gotten pretty long.

 And then it turned out that the wind picked up and they had to let the balloons down anyway. But Charlie and I were right next to one of the balloons and were first in line when a pilot announced that the kids could get in the basket and have a photo. Also, just for fun, I let Charlie play around with photo editing, I wanted to see what he would come up with. Here is his photo.

 I had called Max in the meantime to let him know that he didn't need to come since the balloons were down, all the booths were closed and the rides weren't going to be running for awhile. But he was already on his way and wanted to come anyway. Charlie and I walked through the fairgrounds and looked at all the closed rides, and it turned out that we could still walk into some of the rides. Not sure if that was allowed but we did it anyway.

Haha, I was joking that this is a Before and After photo. 

Anyway, it was still a nice calm morning and fun to wander around the rides.

This was another photo that Charlie edited. He was really proud of the color he turned the sky.

Max stopped by the basket to get a photo before he found us

But then Max, Miles and Edwin arrived and they told us that there were some balloons blown up in the farther field that they noticed when they were walking in, So we went that way and took a couple photos.

 The Baertleins, bright and early!

 Then we decided we needed to go back to get to our church meetings on time. We didn't see as many balloons as we hoped, but Edwin was sure pleased with his free helicopter toy, so totally worth it.