Full of Hot Air

Tonight the W. family took a trip to a nearby town to take in a hot air balloon festival.

Here's a little secret about me, even though I am very wary of heights, I dream of flying in a hot air balloon. It's one of the things on my bucket list (along with zip lining, going to Italy or Greece and maybe France, and driving along the Gulf Coast in a convertible.)

We were hoping to take one of the tethered rides that were being offered, but when we walked in (an hour after the gates opened) all the tickets for the tethered rides had been sold. Ryan and I were kind of bummed out about that, but Wesley was pretty relieved. I guess we know to show up early next time.

Despite missing out on the rides, we had a lovely time. We got some dinner and watched several balloons inflate and take off while we ate.

The tethered balloons for rides

The pink pig balloon being inflated.

 Ryan and Wesley loved watching the balloons. They kept pointing different ones out to me as we watched them float into the sky.

"I can't believe I finally got to see a real hot air balloon!" Ryan exclaimed. Wesley was equally impressed, "This is the best day ever!" he said. He has a lot of those.

There was an illuminated balloon launch/balloon glow to close the event, but we decided to duck out a bit early and skip that part. I'm sure it would have been beautiful to see (and Wesley wanted to stay), but the idea of sitting in the parking lot for over and hour with several thousand of my not so close friends afterwards prompted us to leave. We did manage to see a couple of the balloons glowing on the launch field as we were leaving though, so I guess we didn't totally miss it.

We got each of the boys a toy hot air balloon as a souvenir of the night.

I'm pretty sure they are going to have high flying dreams tonight.