ABF2018 - Part 3

     This blog post will wrap up our time at the balloon fiesta. It's hard to believe that it's over already!

The children always enjoy the crafts. Here the younger group was painting hot air balloons.

Playing London Bridge is Falling Down while we get the next activity ready.

Stringing colored noodles onto pipe cleaners. Makayla choose to help the little ones since she didn't want to get all messy making.........

......a paper mache balloon! It's basically strips of paper towel dipped in glue. They layered them over a balloon then it dried in that shape. Pretty cool!

Ethan stringing noodles.

Friends :).

The few mornings we didn't go to the field, we could watch the balloons rising over the treetops. 

One morning close to a dozen landed in the field near us!

It was a wild scramble as the kids tried to get a trading card from every balloon.

I thought this one was pretty cool!

Coming down!

This was our group, in the cemetery. We weren't actaully in it but everyone called it that. Photo credits to Dustin Schroeder.

Michael painting his paper mache balloon. Photo credits to Michelle Simpkins.

Hundreds of balloons! Photo credits to Dustin Schroeder. 

Flying above the Rio Grand. Photo credits to Jason Simpson, who got to fly with his pilot.

The adults had coffee talks so the these guys wanted to have a tea talk.

One morning I helped crew the Liberty Bell and took Emily and Michael with me.

View from our living room window!

Up close and personal with Cynthia Seal.

Emily saying good-bye to our next door neighbor, Anna Belle. These 2 were together pretty much all the time and had such a good time!

16 pounds of pork shoulder! By last night only 10 families remained so Eldon smoked this all day then we had everyone over for a potluck.

     We had a great time rekindling old relationships and making lots of new ones. Of course, the balloons were a highlight too!

     We were without hook-ups for 14 days and are so excited that we didn't need to run our generator once, thanks to the solar. Our 110 gallons of fresh water was plenty. Eldon did take 55 gallons out of our gray and black tanks once but I'm not even sure if we would have had to.

     For the next 2 nights we're at an RV park in Albuquerque with full-hooks. So lots of laundry, cleaning, and long showers going on!