My beautiful, my beautiful, BA-LLOOOOON. Ok, so I sang that song in 5th grade chorus and it’s one of those ridiculous and catchy tunes that I’ll always think about whenever I see ANY balloon.

Yesterday, on the way to taking Ally and Zachary to school, Gabe and the kids saw the hot air balloons in the sky. He got home, I grabbed the camera and we took the younger two kids outside and watched the balloons hover and float above our house as the kids waited for their bus. It was neat to see them so close to our house. They were literally right above our rooftop.

The hot air balloons then landed at schools in Midland, so the kids got to see them during school, too. If you click this link here: http://www.remaxofmidland.com/balloonfest.cfm you can see some photos in their gallery of the balloons landing at the schools and various other shots.

This morning we headed out to see them again (over 60 of them) at and around the fairgrounds for the balloon festival. We grabbed some food and drinks and snapped a gazillion photos. We didn’t go downtown yesterday evening to see them. Gabe has to work tonight, so we won’t see the evening Afterglow, but seriously now, even I have my limits on how many balloons I can handle seeing in 24 hours. Ha-Ha.

The kids loved the Halloween and Sugar Bear balloon the best.

It was great to see them launch from various fields around Midland. The kids were pointing and yelling and so excited. We saw quite a few land, too.

Clearly, all the photos I’m sharing are excessive (Aren’t they always?), but the kids will really enjoy looking at them all again and again. I want to show my mom, too. And no one can say if there aren’t pictures, it never happened, right? Ha-Ha.

Ally wanted to ride in one so badly. Years ago, I remember it costing about $150 to ride one. Gabe and I joked that we should use Photoshop and superimpose the kids at Disney, in hot air balloons, etc. See? Look at what you did when you were just a baby! What? You don’t remember that?

The balloon fiesta in Albuquerque is in October. My mom lives there and I wish I could get all of us there to see it. But then again, I’d like to get through the birds and bees before I subject them to the difference between the valley and the heights.

I haven’t seen the fiesta in over 20 years and it’s truly an amazing thing to see. It’s one of those experiences in my life that I’ll never forget. It was absolutely incredible to see so many balloons launch (well over 500, if I remember correctly) and then to watch them float with the mountains as backdrop.

It was nice to get an early start to the day, too. We packed a lot into the day before it was even noon. 🙂