Balloon Festival

Every year in September the sky around and at times above our dear little home is filled with hot air balloons. We have the perfect spot to enjoy this amazing festival. The balloons launch if the weather is right first thing in the morning and after supper for 5 days in a row.

 The girls roll out of bed and run to the yard, and I serve up breakfast with hot chocolate and bring it out to excited girls to eat in between excited shouts.

 The balloon  fest happened one week after we got home from our Lunenburg vacation.
This year was very different than the last 2 for us in that  we had gotten news that our dear Grammie Skaling was on her way to Heaven , and Ryan was leaving to say his goodbyes to her just after our breakfast was done.  But in spite of our sadness,God had something very special planned for our little girls this particular morning to lift their (and our )spirits.

 So we spied this particularly interesting shaped balloon soaring close-by our house and Ryan asked if we wanted to go "chase" it. Chasing hot air balloons involves following them in your vehicle and being there when they land in someone's yard or field. The balloon team welcomes any and all help packing the huge balloon up again into its tiny bag and into their truck or trailer . Folks will put white balloon,or streamers up to indicate to the pilots that they are allowed to put down on their property when the run is over...wherever the wind happens to carry them.

 So off we went and watched it drift closer and closer to where we had parked.

         When it was obvious they were setting down, we decided to go closer and watch them descend.

It came closer..

   and closer,

  Then much to our surprise the pilot seeing the girls and other children around yelled" does anyone want a balloon ride....first come first served." Well the girls started off on a run!!

  They lifted all the girls up into the basket along with another little girl,

              Offered the girls a crash course on how the balloon works

  Then they lit the burner and away they went. They only lifted a foot or so off the ground but the girls were flying!!!

                                  They finally arrived at the place to where they were going to have enough space to lay the balloon down

 And one by one the girls were lifted out. They were sooo excited!!

          .

 That crazy huge beehive started to deflate.

Then we all pitched in pushing the air out of all the individual bees and eventually out of the entire balloon

                  It went pretty slow at times!

     Emily got the job of putting the velcro strips around  the main balloon after it was all pushed into a line of material.

                     Then they started stuffing it all into a canvas bag, and threw the girls in to"push extra air out!!" The girls got to do this part last year with another balloon team and looked forward to "helping" with this stage again!!

 The funny thing is that the balloon billows up around the child and they are almost swallowed by it. We did lose a flip flop or 2 that had to be retrieved after the child was removed from the depths of the  collapsed balloon.

                   The girls didn't tire of reliving that morning for a while, and it put a smile on their faces, when there were more tears than smiles and more sad moments than happy ones over the next week.

 The next morning, missing Ryan badly and sad that Grammie was leaving us soon, we headed to the lawn and saw 30 balloons go up. Such a beautiful sight and almost magical to see the colors floating up and over the trees.

          Breakfast on the lawn for the second day!!

 The girls and I also headed over to the festival grounds later that day  to see our pilot friends again and be there for the opening ceremony and the cutting of the cake!!