Balloon Festival 2010

This past weekend was Plano’s 31st annual Balloon Festival. We had free tickets for us and 3 for Kirk, Alison, and Maxum on Friday. We all got packed, loaded up, sun-screened (it was very hot), bought dinner to take in, and drove to Plano only to have rain, severe rain, fall down. Lightning so bad they weren’t letting anyone park even. Bummer. We waited for about 20 min in a Wal-Mart parking lot but it was getting worse so we made the decision to leave. Gracie and Maxum were so disappointed :( I really, really wanted to go back so we headed out again on Saturday night. Kelly’s team was playing so we left around 5 and the traffic was a nightmare. So bad that we moved about only 15 yards in 30 minutes. My husband, who hates TRAFFIC, I thought was going to have panic attack. It was bad! We finally just pulled over, parked and walked miles to get in. We already were seeing balloons taking off as we were walking in. That’s what we came for so we were bummed, again.

It was still fun to watch! Gracie enjoyed the view from her wagon!

We finally made it to the gates and there were so many people. We could barely walk through the crowds yet alone pull a wagon!!

Most people brought blankets, chairs and a picnic. We will be doing that next year! We brought snacks and drinks so that kept Gracie occupied.

They had a band playing so we walked around as best we could and found a pretty good spot to people watch and wait for the “Glow” they were going to do at 8.

In other news Gracie used her very first port-o-potty. Can you say gross? She was all excited to go in and me, not so much. It was like 100 degrees in there and very little room. I’m glad that’s over with :)

She was a little full of sugar but that’s okay!

I even taught her how to do the ‘hello sistas’ picture. My Baylor girls will love this one!!

After lots of waiting around it started to get dark, yea!

She insisted on using her noc-ulars, as she calls them.

It was neat watching them set all the balloons up :)

Finally, GLOW TIME!

       I think she ate the entire time we were there!!!

My camera doesn’t take good night time pics so I used my flip camera to take some video.

Just a few videos to show the fun. We left our viewing spot at 8:06 and high-tailed it back to our car finally making it there at 8:45. (That’s how far away we parked!) We were all tired and thankful for some a/c. On the way home Gracie said she had a lot of stuff to do like feed her babies and change their diapers, and give them a bath… It was cute. I told her we would just do that tomorrow and she crashed :)