Up, Up, and AWAY!

As many of my blogging friends have already done this weekend we made it out to the Plano Balloon Festival this afternoon. Haley invited us to go with her and the kiddos (Rob was out of town) and it was great!

We loaded all the little ones up in a couple of strollers for the mile hike to the festival grounds. I'm just going to go ahead and count that as my exercise for the week.

We made our way to the kids area where they ripped parents off by requiring tickets for inflatables. I mean really, two dollars to spend 10 minutes in line and 15 seconds going down a slide? Please.

Of course we weren't aware there would be charges for these activities until AFTER we'd dangled the promise of raucous fun in the bounce house in front of the kids ("Yes, this is a long walk but we're going to the BOUNCE HOUSE! Yippie!") and they'd laid their eyes on all the brightly colored, oh-so-fun activities.

Sigh.

They enjoyed the bounce house.



I thought the evening was going to be a disaster because Bennett was being terribly cranky and clingy.

But apparently some festival-food sustenance was all that was needed to cure the babies' crankiness and the older ones' disappointment over not being able to go down the Spiderman AND Batman slides.

Corn dogs are yummy!

The funnel cakes were a hit too. This mama does love her some funnel cake so I joined in the skirmish for my share.



Soon after we'd settled down with our artery-clogging dinner the balloons started to go up. It was really fun to watch!







As interest in the hot air balloons waned, Charly combed Bennett's hair with a corn dog stick. I think he enjoyed the attention from her. She's such a sweet big-sister figure to him.


I'm so excited that Bennett gets to grow up with such special friends as these.


And I just have to include this picture of Haley and Charly because they are so darn cute.


After all the balloons had flown off into the sunset (except for one cool-looking rain forest one that never got off the ground) we packed up for our trek back to the car. I'll count that as next week's work-out.

That's fair, right?


All in all I'll say the Balloon Festival was a hit! We'll definitely plan on coming back next year. Although next time I'll bring more water (we were parched!) and will also consider packing a picnic dinner and limiting promises of unlimited inflatable fun.