Wagner Farm

Alex, Logan and I went to Wagner Farm with some of our friends. We started out at the corn maze. It was quite a bumpy ride for Logan, but he managed to fall asleep. Alex was walking behind me with some of her friends and their moms. At one point I looked back, and no Alex. I quickly ran back and found her. The rest of the time she helped me push the stroller so she wouldn't get lost. At the end of the maze was the pumpkin patch. Alex had a great time finding the perfect pumpkin. We then went and saw some pigs, horses, goats and llamas. Alex wouldn't get within 5 feet of the cages. Alex picked us out some yummy apples and then we took a hay ride back to the car. We had a fun time and Alex enjoyed her apple for lunch when we got home.

Flight to the San Juan River

On Saturday morning, a friend from work and I flew in a little Cessna plane from Albuquerque up to the San Juan river to fish. My friend is ex-Air Force, and he's working on his commercial pilot's license (so he knows what he's doing). He belongs to the air club out at the Air Force base, so he can check out planes when he needs them.

The flight up was awesome. It was smooth and only lasted 1 hour, vs. the 3 hour drive that I normally take. We fished all day, and caught a few. The best part of the day was the flight home. My friend actually let me fly the plane for 15-20 minutes. He had me make a series of banking turns, and then climb and descent a few hundred feet at a time. It was one of the most stressful things that I've ever done in my life, but I had a blast! At first, I was only willing to turn the plane a tiny bit because I was so intimidated by the experience. Finally, my friend taunted me into making some pretty bold turns (at least they seemed bold to me!) After 15 minutes at the stick, I was exhausted. It was the first time in my life that I'd done anything close to that - what an experience!

Balloon Fiesta Part 3

This morning at work, I climbed up on top of our 8-story bulkhouse to watch the balloons come by the plant. The plant is located just 1/2 mile south of the launching area, and the lower air currents push everything right over us. It was amazing. I had balloons flying by that couldn't have been more that 100 feet away. People in the gondolas were waving and saying hi (we were that close, that we could actually say good morning to the people!).

It was incredible. I took some pictures with my phone, and I'm going to try to get back up there for Sunday morning with our big camera to take some real pictures.

This just affirmed for me how lucky we are to be here in Albuquerque, and to be able to experience the amazing things that happen in New Mexico.

Tomorrow, I'm flying with one of our employees up to the San Juan River in his trainer plane (he's studying to get his commercial pilot's license, and needs the air time). I'm going to teach him how to fish the river. It should be really fun for both of us.

Balloon Fiesta Part 2

After feeding Logan yesterday morning, I looked out his window and saw the coolest thing. These balloons are part of the "dawn patrol." They go up in the dark and it lets the other balloonists gauge the wind speeds. It was just an amazing site to see these balloons highlighted in the distance with the sliver of moon in the sky.

This morning we got up early and went to see the "Mass Ascension." This is where all the participating balloons launch. When we got there, the Dawn Patrol was getting ready to take off. Here they are in the distance. In case you can't tell, the last one on the left is a flying pink pig!

We walked around and watched all the balloons go up. After one wave goes up, the other sets up and gets their balloons up. It was incredible to see all those balloons at one time. Alex had a blast! I bet she said "balloon" 500 times. She even let her balloon go up with all the big ones (on accident).


There were quite a few special shaped balloons. One was a cow, and it was the biggest balloon I've ever seen, I bet it was almost 3 times as big as the normal balloons. They have gotten very creative with some of the balloons. The bees you see below started out holding hands, then when they were up in the air, the one bee turned and gave the other bee a kiss and then they realeased their hands.



Ty's plant sponsered a balloon and we found it after it had launched, but we got a pretty good picture.

We had lots of fun watching the balloons take off, if you would like to see more pictures, I'll post them on the winkflash site. If you don't have access to our pictures on winkflash, and would like to see them, email me and I'll add you to my list.

Balloon Fiesta Part 1

So today marked the first day of Balloon Fiesta. We didn't partake in any of the festivities, but we could see the balloons in the distance. We also had some balloons fly over our house. I don't think they came from the Fiesta grounds though. We watched some of the festivities on tv and learned that some of the balloons do a "dunk and dash" I think they called it. They dunk the bottom part of their baskets in the Rio Grande and then go back up in the air, it was fun to watch. We will post more pictures after we go to the launch later in the week.