Many months ago, when the tickets were very cheap, I got our family round-trip flights to Albuquerque for their annual balloon festival. This was all done without our kid’s knowledge, so I told them that we were taking dad to the airport. When we got there, they all finally asked him where he was going, and he told them the balloon festival. I put up an act, that we should all get to go, and the kids chimed in. Then I brought out their very own backpacks that were filled with airplane snacks, sweatshirts, beanies, and games.
They were all pretty shocked and excited!
I love this scene, where the kids are all pumped up to write their names and information for each of their own backpacks!
I also love Pippi’s mini backpack.
(Thanks Bella.)
We boarded…and so our trip began.
After very little sleep, and a very late arrival the night before, our trip started off with a few timeouts. But everything got turned around pretty quickly, and our kids were very good the rest of the trip — especially considering that they were getting basically no sleep!
(Actually — Scout had one storm off that was a little out of control, but other than that — they were perfect.)
Our first day consisted of a marathon walk to Old Town.
We think we walked about 3.5 miles, so I insisted on an Uber for our way back.
That night we hit up the “Glowdeo”, where these mammoth sized balloons, of very cool shapes are blown up and illuminated. They were awesome, and HUGE. And the best part was that each balloon handed out trading cards, which our kids loved collecting. The one bad thing about this was how pitch black it was when the balloons went down. It was frighteningly dark, so we held onto our little kids like we were glued to them.
Unfortunately, we didn’t hang onto Scout as well, and he turned up at the police trailer.
The police man was very impressed with him, because he said that Scout did everything right.
The police man was very impressed with him, because he said that Scout did everything right.
He immediately found a policeman, and he knew both parent’s phone numbers memorized.
Good thing, because as I was writing my kid’s phone numbers on their arms, Scout insisted he didn’t need them written.
Meanwhile, Navy had asked Micah to go on a hunt after the crowd left for money.
He thought it was a ridiculous quest, but when she turned up finding $5, he retracted his thinking!
Of course our little treasure hunter would be successful.
The next day, we headed to the zoo/aquarium/bio park for a great afternoon. Who knew that Albuquerque would have such great places. Our kids especially loved the butterfly encasement, the fountain (I didn’t know about), and the hippos. We could have spent many more hours here, because it was really cool.
We made it back, just in time to make the bus back to the balloons.
Our little Pips was pooped, and took a little catnap each evening to get her through the long days.
Good thing too, because we got home from this night’s Glowdeo at around 11 pm, and the next morning we were up for the mass ascension by 5am.
This morning was chilly!
Micah brought our inflatable couch, and all of the kids cuddled with Micah to keep warm.
But then they started seeing the balloons fill up, and they up and raring to go.
While the balloons were getting prepared, the kids ran from car to car to get trading cards.
And then we all laid back to watch the balloons ascend.
Some people “dabbed” to pay their respects!
Dash was really excited to get a picture with Yoda and Darth.
We finally made it back to the hotel with trading cards in hand, and a nap in our sights.
And about 10 hours later, we were waiting for our luggage at LAX.
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It was a very quick trip, that was stuffed full of activities. But how can you go wrong with two full days of family time and hot air balloons. The answer is…you can’t.
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