365 Project.2013 | Week 21

Well, me thinks I ought to be bringing my duster to bear. :) Thank you for your patience. Pictures, they are awaiting, but the days have been blessedly full and the eyelids heavy by the time the house is quiet enough for Mommy to have a bit of quiet. I'm ignoring the call of my pillow this evening ...

 

Without further ado, enjoy the beginning of summer vacation with us ...

 

Day 140. Ironically, Hannah spent today playing school. :)

My rising third grader obviously still has some work to do on spelling, but I had to laugh at her school schedule. :) Although, maybe I ought to be taking notes for adjustments to my own ... ;)

Day 141. One of the special things we're trying to do this summer is make regular "blessing visits" to some of the widows and/or shut-in members of our church family. It's been fun ... and most definitely as much (probably more) of a blessing for us than for them. Hannah's holding the thumbprint art wrapper she designed for our first "Flowers of Blessing" jar can.

Day 142. And with summer, we have returned to the library. Yes, Matthew is very excited. Especially we're going to "the leetle library." He much prefers our regular stomping grounds over the larger one downtown.

Oh the wonderful blessing of bags filled to the brim with new reading material! :)

Day 143. And grocery shopping ... still not totally certain where this trip will be regularly plugged in during the summer. I suspect it may vary from week to week a bit, with me taking the munchkins sometimes in the mornings and sometimes letting them have Daddy time in the afternoons while I make a solo trip like I did during the school year. We'll see. :)

 Day 144. Had a blast meeting a bunch of friends at a local park! (These were just a few of the many who were there throughout the morning.) Both moms and kids enjoyed fellowshipping. :)

 

And then that evening we attended a local fair for the purpose of seeing hot air balloons.

The kids (and Daddy) enjoyed climbing in an army vehicle. :)

But impromptu games of tag and blustery wind were the only activity on the balloon field. Sigh. This Mommy who loves hot air balloons was sorely disappointed.

 However. As we were leaving the park (and hordes of people were arriving for a concert later that evening) I decided to speak with a ticket clerk and ask about the possibility of having our tickets honored for just the 7-9am balloon launch the following morning. We had come Friday evening for the express purpose of seeing the balloons launch, but they were grounded due to the wind. The lady was so gracious. She kindly explained that they couldn't honor Friday's tickets on Saturday, but she then proceeded to dig through an envelope and handed me two free tickets for the following morning! What an unexpected blessing!

Day 145. So rise and shine early we did! We were at the park grounds by 7am, and the day was perfect for ballooning!!! WHAT FUN!!! I promise, I've shared only a fraction of the multitude of pictures I took ...

 

As we were watching all of the balloons flying in, we also enjoyed watching this getting ready to launch ...

 The balloons actually started about a mile away with the goal of getting close enough to throw a ring over the pole and flags within the circle and square. Maybe a dozen or so (of a hundred???) balloons got close enough to make a shot ...

But I must admit, that our interest in the contest severely diminished when we learned that the balloon we'd been watching was going to be giving tethered rides for only $10 per person!!! I've priced balloon rides ... often. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $300-$350 per person is the going rate. Tethered or not, an opportunity to take our whole family up for just $50 was not to be missed! :D And the blessing was even greater when we learned that the under-5 crowd was free ... and the gentleman taking our money kindly ignored us when we informed him that Hannah and Peter were 6 and 8 ... he just said they were close enough and gave us five tickets for just $20!!!!! Blessing upon blessing!!!

Hannah and Mommy were v.e.r.y. excited. (Giddy!!!)

Matthew really wasn't too sure about it though. Seriously. He did. not. want. to. go. up. At. all. He didn't get a choice in the matter, however, and has since talked about it daily. :)

 

In. The. Air.

Ahhhh!!!

I have had a life-long dream of going up in a hot air balloon. I would still absolutely love to do an untethered flight someday, but this was the next best thing! So. much. fun!

Our pilot commented that it's very unusual to see so many balloons still up so long after sunrise--it was already 9:00 by this time.

 The balloon field ...

 The mountains ...

Our balloon's shadow... :) We were about 70-80 feet up.

And the underside of our balloon :)

And our very happy crew after our "flight." :D

We were home just after 10, and launched into house projects with vigor. The same beautiful day that allowed for the amazing ballooning morning, also allowed us to paint lots and lots and lots of door trim and doors. In fact, enough doors and trim to outfit the entire basement.

It was definitely a family project with Daddy manning the spray gun and the rest of us armed with sandpaper, cleaning rags, and the like. :)

So thankful for a beautiful day, a spray gun, lots of plastic, and a long driveway. :) Had we not had this day, I would have been attacking all of that trim with a brush ... one door at a time.

Day 146. And then we rested on Sunday. But here's a picture of my vine ...

I promise that the next few weeks were much more "normal" ... and we will be returning to something in the neighborhood of seven pictures a week once again. :)

P.S. - Happy Birthday, Grandma! We love you! ♥