Plano Balloon Festival

This is the Annual Plano Balloon Festival. It lasts for three days, beginning on a Friday. I took these pictures from our backyard. The balloons took off in shifts so there were plenty of balloons in the sky. There were balloons in all different shapes and colors. We saw one balloon that was shaped like a bull with horns protruding from the front of the balloon and one balloon was shaped like a sunflower with a face on the front.

Several balloons went right over our house but this guy came so close we could wave to him and talk to him. I didn't even have to zoom in the camera to get so close. The kids were going nuts. They were convinced he was going to hit our roof. He cleared it, no problem.

This is the same guy landing his balloon in a field not far from us. We would have gone to take pictures but we were having a party for the young men in the ward that Kyle was teaching at the time.

This balloon had trouble and ended up landing on our street. It was too bad because they were only in the air for about a mile before they had to land. They couldn't fix what was wrong and they didn't have enough room to take off again, anyway, so they had to pack up the balloon and go home. Bummer.

Every Saturday of the Festival, our bishop hosts an early morning breakfast to watch the balloons take off. The take off site is perfectly viewed from his backyard and the flight path goes directly over his house. This year, however, the wind was in short supply. As we ate pancakes and sausage, we watched the balloons rise into the air, hang there for about 15 minutes and then go back down. The breakfast wasn't without some excitement, though. Sam got into a fight with a kid who bit his finger so Sam started choking him to make him let go. We left shortly after that.