Skyfest 2010

Jim, Connor, and I got up bright and early last friday hoping the weather would cooperate with us for a balloon ride!  I had never been and was way excited. Jim told Connor where we were going and he was so excited.  He loved seeing all the balloons and the "fire" that blew up in em

 I think my favorite part was watching 20 HUGE balloons blow up and fly away.  They are so big up close!

It was amazing to watch how they get them ready.  Here's one of the guy inside checking the ropes as it was blowing up...

Right after we took off....

Connor realized how much he didn't like the noise the fire made whenever the guy tried to elevate us higher.  Thats about when he decided he wasn't quite sure about this whole balloon thing.  He was way good the whole time, but wasn't digging the noise.

I was actually surprised at how calm and quiet it was up higher, in between fire blasts, it was smooth and completely still. 

I also found out real fast that the combination of the change in altitude, the fire blasts that made us go up and down and up and down, not to mention the heat wave everytime the fire would blast was not in agreeance with my pregnant self and I started to go downhill fast.  Thats when I was way thankful Con was sitting on the floor of the basket so I could pretend to be comforting him when I was really needing to keep from puking. 

All in all it was a cool experience.  Very beautiful and couldn't have asked for a better, calmer day to float around.  It did freak me out a bit that they had no control over where the wind chose to carry you.  We floated towards fiddlers canyon first, then went back over the freeway towards Enoch.  He'd go higher then float down trying to hit this field and the wind would push us back towards Mel Clark's gravel pit, so he'd have to go back up trying to over shoot then come back down only to try again.  His wife and crew chased us in their trucks waiting for us to touch so they could catch and steady us.  We finally made the field.

I had called my mom who had come to stay with the girls since we had to leave around 6:45 in the morning and they were still asleep.  She fed them breakfast and as soon as I knew we were approaching coming down I called her to tell her around about where we were.  I wanted her to get there in time so that the girls could watch us come down.  They were having a grand ole time seeing all the other balloons in the air.  I was on the phone with her trying to explain where we were coming down, she said the girls were too busy watching this yellow, red, and blue balloon landing.  She thought we were somewhere else so she pryed them away from watching that balloon to find ours....turned out they WERE watching ours and didn't know and missed us landing trying to "find us."  They still had a good time I think seeing all the balloons everwhere.