Balloon Fiesta- Special Shapes Rodeo

Here's our first early morning on the field...

  It was soooo early, thankfully we knew we had the afternoon to nap :)  I think our plan was to catch the bus down to the field at like 530am!  It was a long bus ride, but well worth not waiting in the line for parking and then fighting traffic to get out again!

Although it is October, here in Texas its about 80 degrees for our average day temperature and doesn't drop below 60 at night- which means the jeans and heavy jackets are still packed away in the attic.  New Mexico is relatively the same day temperature, but much cooler in the mornings.  Guess I should have brought them down before the trip :(
Thankfully, we have a solution to the shorts and light jackets in 40 degrees... HOT CHOCOLATE :)  Dad packed a gallon thermos with hot water, one with cold water, and 3 boxes of hot chocolate mix.  AHHH 

 First lights of day, and the first balloons ascending.  It was great to be this close as they inflated the balloons.

 I loved how they had American Flags attached to the first balloons.

 Almost all of the balloons started inflating about the same time, it was great to walk around and see them popping up everywhere.  I felt like a kid in a candy store for the first time!

 We saw them laying out a HUGE one, and went to see what it was.  We got there early enough to be right next to the guy as he pulled the burner to hot inflate the balloon.

 But you had to quickly stand back as these balloons inflated.

 It's Noah's Ark!!

 Gotta love the Pirate and the Witch :)

I know Alex looks mad in this picture, but he says it just hurt to smile.  Too bad we forgot the chap stick in the car at the bus stop :( 

Ben didn't like walking, or riding in the stroller, but wanted to be held most of the time- I guess he got a better view :D

Look at all these great balloon shapes!!  What's not to love about this?!?

Josh said he heard people talking about Darth Vader and wanted to go see it, but I couldn't find it anywhere!  Matthew wanted to go see the "Earth" balloon so we split up, Nana took Jeremiah and Matthew, and the rest of us set off to find Vader.  I'm so glad that after enough walking we were finally able to spot it.  The bad news is that they were taking it down as we were walking over there :( 
And see, more awesome shapes!!

This was Benjamin's favorite balloon.  "PLABLO" he called it.  It's a reference to his ultimately favorite TV series, The Backyardigans.  Pablo, a Penguin, is 1 of 5 animal characters that sing and dance, using their imaginations to create different environments to play in each episode.  It wasn't Pablo, but still exciting to see.  Apparently this balloonist is from the Dallas area, and his Penguin made it's first event flight just a few weeks earlier in Frisco :)

It was so fun to see characters near the Darth Vader balloon, and an enormous amount of people waiting to take pictures with them.  Ben was NOT a fan!!  The funny part to this story is that our separated group had managed a near sighting here at Vader.  We were standing on one side watching the balloon deflate, and they were a quarter of a turn around the balloon, in a sea of people.  Nana was upset that there was no camera to take Jeremiah and Matthew's pictures, while I was taking one of Ben and Alex about 20 feet away!

I wanted to see this cow fly!  Unfortunately when the sun comes up the winds picks up, so as we got warmer and could see better some of the balloons started deflating and fewer and fewer took off :(

Ben loved these "Police Horsies"!  And for weeks talked about his police horse, and how one day he was going to ride on it :)  Totally cute.

This balloon was the shape of a pencil with a hat and glasses, and was my favorite balloon.  Perhaps because his sunglasses picture all the balloons :)

Here's the deflated Zebra, and more hot chocolate.

I am ever so thankful for the balloonist that tethered his balloon to 2 different cars so that he could take children up and down.  Josh didn't want to go up, Jeremiah backed out last minute, but Ben and Matthew were so excited!!

This is one happy bunch!

Another balloonist was allowing kids to climb into his basket for a photo op, he even pulled one burner :)  Not as cool, but still wonderful, and even Josh and Jeremiah got in the basket!!

On to breakfast!  They had seemingly endless vendors and variety of food to choose from.  Mom had these burritos last year, and recommended them for us.  The adults loved it, kids were iffy. 

Here is Ben and the biggest burrito known to a 2 year old :)  LOVE IT!