Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

This week is the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque. Every morning and evening the sky fills with hundreds of balloons from all over the world. David was excited to see one that came from good ol' England. We see them almost daily here, but never in such numbers and it was quite magical. Like with normal balloons Eli has a love/hate relationship with hot air balloons. He talks about them all the time and he gets really excited to see them, but when we got up close he was absolutely terrified.

On Saturday we woke up at 4:30 and drove the 6 miles to the Balloon Fiesta Park. It took 2 1/2 hours and we were too late to see the initial mass ascension at sunrise (7am). I was shocked by the amount of people that were there- think Disneyland on 4th of July weekend. Insane!

Eli was super excited and kept yelling, "Fire! Hot Da-doon!" You could get up close and personal with the hot air balloons and their pilots, which was really interesting. I loved to see them blow them up and take flight, but Eli did not. I have never seen him so scared in his whole (short) life. He didn't really cry, he just shook violently and clung to us with a death grip and buried his face in our neck. We eventually figured out it wasn't the balloons that were frightening him, but the loud shoots of flame that were blowing the balloons up.

Once we backed away from the filling balloons, Eli was much more happy. His favorites were the character balloons. He especially liked an aquarium one with fish and one that was a Yoda head, which he called, "green man."