On Saturday morning we got up at a quarter-to-five, made some STRONG coffee, dressed in layers, and then woke Kate up so we could go to The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. This is a seriously cool event, but it's not without its drawbacks, specifically the fact that the main event for the day is the Mass Ascension, in which hundreds of hot air balloons take off from the field -- starting at sunrise. "Sunrise" as in "when the sun comes up." That one. It's pretty brutal. I mean, I get to get up pretty close to that time every day thanks to having a toddler, but I spend a good half hour after that just sitting around drinking coffee and trying to wake up. Of course, at the balloon fiesta, you can buy a funnel cake to reward yourself for being conscious at that time in the morning.

We actually haven't gotten up in time to go to one of the ascensions in years, opting instead for the evening events. But as I mentioned in a previous post, Kate has become completely fascinated by hot air balloons in recent months. When she gets to see TWO hot air balloons fly over our house at the same time, she talks about it for hours. So the opportunity to let her see 500-something balloons at once was just too good to pass up.

The city actually operates a pretty efficient Park and Ride service from various points around Albuquerque directly to the field, and since trying to drive in and out in your own vehicle is a nightmare, we almost always use that service. Thus, Kate got to ride on a Big! Yellow! Bus! in the Dark!, a fact she told us repeatedly as we waited in line to board one of the school buses used for shuttles. She could not get over it about the Bus! It was Yellow! When we went over bumps, she squealed like we were on a carnival ride and this was the fun part. I started to worry that she would cry when we had to get off. Here's a picture from the ride back to our car, when it was actually light outside. You know. Several hours later.

We really hadn't given a lot of thought to how Kate would react to a balloon close up. She always sees them from a distance, but one of the coolest things about the fiesta is that spectators are not restricted to one area of the field. You can walk right up and touch the balloons if you want to, and it makes you realize how huge they are. While we were milling around on the field (having a breakfast burrito with green chile, like good New Mexicans) I started to wonder what Kate would think about that, and we didn't have to wait long to find out. The first time one went up in the air, as part of the Dawn Patrol balloons that take off to test the conditions for other pilots, Kate clapped. But when turned in our direction, flying really low, she started hollering "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" and ran to hide behind Dan's legs. He had to hold her for the next half hour or so until she learned that the balloons were not going to hit us. Then we had to deploy the Monkey Backpack/Hidden Leash to make sure she didn't go jump in a basket and stow away for takeoff. Here's a shot of the balloon that took the flag up for the national anthem at the start of the ascension.

Once the ascension starts, the field gets pretty crazy, and there are points in time when you're basically just stuck in a big crowd until the balloon next to you takes off and you can move again. It's kind of a claustrophobic experience if you lean that way, and I do, but this year we got caught next to the Creamland Dairy Cow balloon, and that actually gave us the funniest moment of the day.

The cow balloon is huge and complex because it's shaped, well, like a cow. I think almost every year I've gone, they've had trouble getting it launched, and this year was no exception. Three times they got it all blown up, and then something would happen and it would collapse again. Kate's interpretation of that was that the cow must be having trouble waking up. So when the cow would start to inflate, she would shout encouragement to it: Wake up cow! Except that "wake" sounds like "yake" when she says it. So she sat on Dan's shoulders, screaming "Yake up, cow! Yake up!" and when it would fall over again she would say "Uh oh. Cow sleepy." She was a big hit with all the people standing around us.

After the cow fell down for the third time, we managed to break out of the little people-knot we were stuck in and go find our friends Cody and Erika, who were there with Kate's friend Lily. They were both in a state of near-narcotic happiness over the morning's events. They hugged each other about six times.

The cow finally took off, which just made the girls even happier.

I got to see the bees, which made me happy.

And then we went home, where we fully expected to pay a heavy price for waking Kate up so early. But she was actually in a marvelous mood for the rest of the day. She talked about the balloons non-stop. And the first thing she said this morning when she got out of bed was "Cow? Cow flying? Yake up, Cow!"

Totally worth it.