Balloon Rally

This weekend is the 10th annual Children's Miracle Network Balloon Rally and Music Festival in Wisconsin Rapids. Typically, they have launches set for around 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights and 6 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. So far, due to sketchy weather (rain, fog or wind), there hasn't been a launch this weekend yet. Maybe they'll get lucky Sunday morning.

Carter and I ended up spending the entire afternoon and early evening at the airport. Our church had one of the food vending booths so we helped sell chicken sandwiches and Schwan's ice cream treats. Can you believe I didn't have ice cream all day, though? Honest.
Carter found this mammoth snow-cone type treat! I ended up getting an Elephant Ear later right before we took a 90-minute break from 2:30-4 p.m. We took the Ear over to our friends Mike and Christine's house and shared (honest) as payment for cooling off in their air-conditioning. That was nice.

It wasn't long after we got back that the balloons started arriving. The organizers knew it was going to be too windy to launch, but they still "inflated" them with hot air for the crowds to see.

There weren't too many balloons around this evening, but the ones that were there were pretty -- and unique, like this Honey Bear one.

A couple landed at the show grounds, too. Not sure where they were launched from, but the wind probably got them to Rapids pretty quickly.

Carter humors me for a scrapbook picture before running off to find friends. He did manage to accidentally run into a gal pal named Autumn (who you may recall). I wonder if they planned this. Hmmm. Actually, it was unlikely. There were thousands of people there this evening so it was hard to see anyone!

When it got darker and our shift was done, we got to enjoy the Glow. All the balloons light up at the same time. Pretty cool. We didn't stay for fireworks, though. We just wanted to get home and sit down. Now this feels good! I hope I have enough energy to get out of this chair and get to bed. Where's a hot air balloon ride when you need one?