An Evening Out

Our little town holds a huge festival every Memorial Weekend. There are parades, food vendors, carnival rides, live music, hot air balloons races and a 5.25 mile run.  Saturday night we hung out on the field to watch the balloons take off.

I guess flying balloons is a risky venture and of course everything depends on the wind.  Sometimes they have to cancel the flight at the last moment and send everyone home.  But we came prepared.  We brought a blanket and our books to read (of course Jess brought her laptop and kept editing).  We sat and enjoyed the beautiful evening around us.  The rest of the crowd was getting restless as the sun sank further into the horizon.  Inexperienced parents brought their new babies and young children thinking it would be fun to sit and wait for hours before anything happened.  As the event's organizers announced that the wind gusts may cause cancellation, many people decided to leave.  The frazzled mother next to us had had enough.  She and her husband packed up and left.  I looked around and thought about all the people who left.  For them, having an enjoyable night depended on the balloons flying and as the prospects of that dwindled all they could focus on was getting out of there before the rest of the crowd, maybe they could still salvage the rest of their evening.

That's when I realized that I didn't care if the balloons flew or not.  We were all there as a family, sitting outside relishing the unhurried time together.  That was where the fun was.

Ten minutes later they announced the balloons would fly...and the crowd cheered.  We were rewarded with a fantastic spectacle of 6 balloons launching into the darkening sky.    

Here's a short video of Ryan being a hot head! :)


Have a Happy Memorial Day!

Kathy :)