Plano Balloon Festival

The first and last time we made it out to the Plano Balloon Festival, Mara was about six months old—almost the same exact age as Jack. Since Mara got a free admission ticket for tonight, we thought it would be a fun thing to do even though Jack went to the doctor for his six-month checkup this afternoon.

The day started off with being able to see the early morning media launch from our neighborhood. If you can't tell, there are five balloons in this picture (one is hiding behind the power line structure just above the horizon).

We decided to pick up our dinner from McDonald's and take it with us so we could make it in time for the parachuters. However, on our way to the park, we noticed that it was getting awfully dark as some clouds rolled in. When we parked, other people were checking the forecasts and radars and decided to go ahead and head into the festival. Since we had food, we didn't want to chance it, so we decided to havea picnic in the back of the minivan. It started sprinkling, so we were glad we did. People started coming back saying that they were turning away people at the gate, so they were leaving.

When we finished eating, Jack decided it was time for him to eat as well. Mara helped me feed him a bottle while we watched to see what the rain would do. (You can see that the window behind Mara is wet.)

When he was done, we drove back to the parking lot entrance to find out what was up. They decided to reevaluate at 6:30 to determine what they were going to do. We went to get gas, and then came back. They decided to only have the concert and balloon glow (no liftoffs), so they were offering free parking and admission. We had already paid for parking, but it wasn't a big deal. The balloon glow was really the main thing we wanted to see anyway. We went ahead and moved to the parking lot closest to the event and piled out of the car.

By the time we were finally able to go, Jack fell asleep, so we just left him asleep and pushed him in the stroller. He seemed a little confused when he woke up, but I think he enjoyed looking at the balloons too.

Mara picked seats that were pretty close to the balloon. If we had sat up higher, we would have had a better view of all of the balloons, but it was nice to sit that close. The ground wasn't even wet since it didn't really rain all that much where we were.

While waiting for the glow, I gave Mara her bubbles to play with, and she made several friends with them.

We enjoyed watching them air up the balloons and test the "glow" functionality.

After most of the balloons were up, they let people walk around the balloons. It was neat to get that close to them. Most of them even had little collector cards that they use as business cards, but they also hand them out to kids. Mara picked up quite a few of them. She also got to get up on a basket for a picture. It was a fun evening.