Hot Air Balloons

Ella has been fascinated with Hot Air Balloons ever since reading Curious George and the Hot Air Balloon with her Grandma Holbrook. When we moved here, not knowing much about Albuquerque, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that Hot Air Ballooning is a big deal here. Apparently it is something with the mountains and the wind currents along the Rio Grande that make for ideal conditions for ballooning--at least that is what I am told! Anyway, we have loved that we can go outside in our driveway and look for hot air balloons almost every morning and find some. As soon as Ella wakes up, this is the first thing she wants to do is "go see if there are any hot air balloons", and most mornings we are successful. On a typical morning we see anywhere from 2-10 hot air balloons in the sky (and that is just from our driveway). Here is an example of a normal sighting for us from our driveway. . .

Last weekend we had the particular surprise of Daddy coming into the house one morning as he got home from work (he is working the night shift right now) and announcing that there was a hot air balloon landing at the bottom of our street. He took the girls (I was already in the shower) for a front row view of the excitement!






The pilot came over and gave the girls his Hot Air Balloon card (I guess like a business card) and talked to them for a few minutes. The girls (especially Ella) were so thrilled about it all. Ella even got to talk about it at Show-n-Tell at preschool that morning!

Ella always asks if she can go in a hot air balloon sometime. I usually tell her we can when she is older. I think we will have to do it while we are here in Albuquerque sometime. October 2nd-10th is the International Hot Air Balloon Festival here this fall. Apparently, this is what we will see dotting the skyline come that time and on the mornings we go to the festival we can walk in the fields among these balloons as they take off. I think it will be like a dream come true for Ella--we cannot wait!




One of the days of the festival is a "character" balloon day, which I think will be especially fun for the kiddos.


This is one of the great things we are loving about Albuquerque right now.

I really do mean it too---if any of you want to come on over and join us for the festivities we would love to share it with you--we've got the room in our house and we would love the company!