Hot Air Balloon Festival

OK this year was a BLAST!! First of all we went and enjoyed the festival on Friday night as a family then Saturday morning I went to help put up a shaped Azul dragon balloon, but after I got started helping another balloon guy asked if I wanted to ride in his!! Well YES I did that would be awesome!! So Ethan and I rode together with another couple in this striped balloon, the guy called it a roll of lifesavers!! It was great we rode from Chester East Lincoln school to Atlanta Illinois!! (we got the longest ride of all!!)

Here is a picture of the balloon we rode in and a few pictures from the town in the air. The first picture is of Lincoln Christian College and then a picture of a farmers field with the shadow of our balloon!


















OK then we had even more fun!! Saturday night I helped get together a crew of people from church to help "chase" a balloon sponsored by the City of Lincoln. Azul. This balloon stands 84 feet tall! (each tooth is 3.5 feet tall, crazy big!!) It was so much fun! First we had to help hook everything up to the basket then undo the balloon. Because of the size we each had to stand and wave each toe for the air to flow, then once we had it going we had to help hold it down for the balloon glow. As you can see it took several guys to keep the balloon from going were you don't want it to go!!

Here it is in the air



















After the glow was over then came the hard part for all of us girls! (and guys still had to help) We had to push all the air out and roll it back up so it could be put away for the morning launch. This process took OVER one hour to do (closer to 1 1/2 hours), but as you can see we had a blast.














A Super big THANK YOU goes to: Scott, Kayla, Mindy, Zach, Libby, Kirk, (little Emma), Deb, Brian, Brady, Shawn (or Sean not sure on the spelling), Devon, Jeanne for helping out!! I enjoyed having you all there!!