balloon glow II

Last year was so rushed, crazy and chaotic that I wasn't sure we'd attempt the big Balloon Glow in Forest Park again this year.
But we did. And we had a ton of fun!

We still didn't get out there as early as would be ideal... we momentarily had visions of going out early early afternoon and hanging out at the park all day before the balloons arrived. That moment only lasted until we remembered we now actually had a kid in school all day, not to mention the fact that I had the baby all afternoon. So in reality we didn't head out the door until 5 o'clock or so and after stopping for a quick bite to eat, that put us at the park at about 6pm. It was already on the verge of scarily packed, but we found a decent parking spot with a good escape exit route (which is equally important at events like this!!!) and made our way to the field of balloons.

We found the Malones there and spread a blanket and parked it for awhile with them and the (br)other Malones and some other friends. The kids ran around for awhile with the soccer ball and rolling down hills while we waiting for the sun to go down for the rising of the balloons....
Soon they started lighting them up!....































[it'd be fair to warn you of the copious amounts of pictures in this post. more time with the balloons this year meant many more pictures... something I'd still love to go do to just to play around with the camera sometime. it's so hard to take pictures in the midst of the balloons; they all light their fires at different times, unpredictably, sporadically lighting up a whole area for just a few seconds... tricky with a camera on manual! it's fun to see what different shots on different settings at different times will get you though!!]




















































































































Ryan's valiant attempt at a picture... this was his best shot with the camera still switched on manual shooting.














Ah... back to auto for him!