Balloon Festival

Reid loves watching planes, the moon, lots of stuff in the sky.  So we figured he'd enjoy the Celina Balloon Festival.  The "big" one around here is the Plano Balloon Fest, but from what I've heard you have to park a mile or two away and it's soooo crowded.  No thanks...not with little people or a pregger lady.  Our neighbors said something about a Groupon for the Celina one, so I checked it out.  Fortunately, I didn't get the Groupon--someone at work gave me a group of free tickets, so we just had to pay $5 for parking and buy tickets for rides, slides, bouncy houses, and food.  We got there at four that day.  It felt great in the shade, but was pretty darn hot in the sun.  Reid immediately wanted to do a HUGE slide.  I think he may have barely been tall enough, but it still scared me.  We found a big field of bouncy houses/slides, and he was in preschooler heaven.  The only part he hated was waiting in line to get tickets.  We didn't realize how big a few of them were, so Daddy had the privilege of escorting our three year old crazy boy through them.  I think he was more tired than Reid on a few ;)  There was a big tree stump monster thingee that Reid insisted was a "tiki"...

 Thankfully Reid could do this one on his own.

This one nearly killed Daddy, I think...

...so naturally, Reid wanted to do it again!

One of the events was a bunch of trampolines and harnesses.  We saw a kid younger than Reid harnessed up and he did fine, so I figured this was right up his alley.  It kind of surprised me that he was so underwhelmed by it.  I figured it'd be his favorite thing.  Just goes to show that you never know what they'll like.

 By about six o'clock, someone was all tuckered out.  We had slowed things down a bit and hit the midway.  He won a blue stuffed gorilla, which we thought he'd love since he sleeps with nine or ten stuffed "friends" each night, now, but he could've cared less!    There was an a/c company with the fantastic idea of offering free iced washcloths and had cool misting fans around their tent (conveniently set up next to the bathroom).  Reid enjoyed the cold cloth and we parked it on the sidewalk to wait while Daddy ran back to the car to get the umbrella stroller.  All Reid could do was people watch and beg to do the huge slide he'd seen at the beginning.

We finally waited in line for foot long corn dogs and fresh squeezed lemonade...took forever.  I think Reid could've eaten an entire corn dog himself, but we weren't about to wait in the line again!  Unfortunately, it was too windy for the balloon launch, so we waited around for awhile while they attempted one.  But this little guy was hyped up and overtired, so we had to head back to the car.  I tried to get a picture to show how tired his eyes looked, but he kept cheesing it up with poses like this:

It was a fun experience and I hope we can make the balloon festival an annual thing.  I know Reid was still a little young to fully enjoy everything, and he didn't even get to see the balloon launch or balloon glow, but I'm pretty sure he had a blast.