Balloon Fiesta 2016

Hi everyone! It's good to be back bloggin'. I received the assignment to blog about our trip to the Balloon Fiesta this year, so let's get it started!

Not wanting to pay for (or fight for) parking, we decided to bike to the Balloon Fiesta park. But that's a bit far for a family like ours, so we decided to park at the LDS Church Office Building (off of Jefferson) and bike to the Balloon Fiesta Museum, where they were providing complimentary bicycle valet parking. Pretty awesome! We could even leave our things in our little bike trailer so we weren't hauling around all of our biking stuff. That's definitely the way to go the park!

We arrived at the Balloon Fiesta around 6:30am, and knowing that the Health Science Center at UNM was offering free breakfast for students and employees, we scouted it out. I was expecting something small, but they had it all! Pastries, breakfast burritos, muffins, hot chocolate, and the works. Kiley was especially excited for the hot chocolate - we wanted to bring some to the park but forgot all about it before we left. Thank you, UNM!

We then set out to find Kiley's sisters, who were all going to the Balloon Fiesta on the same day (since it was a holiday for APS and a "special shapes" day).

The national anthem started as the first couple balloons rise

More balloons started to go up. We managed to get a photo of the family before the kiddos got too distracted.

Eli was mesmerized by the balloons and fire! What a great kid. Meanwhile...

...Joey found his cousins and became mesmerized by the iPhone.

It was a beautiful morning. However, we were worried that the balloons wouldn't be able to lift off and that the special shapes would be cancelled because a little wind picked up and started taking the balloons away from the landing site. Thankfully, that didn't happen!

The last smile that we got out of this little guy before he passed out. 

Joey was having a blast! The special shapes started to come up, and Joey ran around like a crazy man playing with his cousins. They found this giant butterfly balloon and ran circles around it while they began to inflate it. Little did we know what would soon happen...

The balloon started to inflate faster than any of us had thought would happen, and the cousins were all trapped underneath! 

As you can see, Mason fell victim to the butterfly's wing and was not able to escape until, finally, the balloon was standing upright. We're glad he pulled through.

Like Kiley has mentioned previously, this was the first time for me going to the Balloon Fiesta since I was really little. We have watched it from a distance and all, but it is nothing like being there in person! I took almost 300 photos with our camera, blown away by the amazing balloon designs and variety of things that we saw. Here is a little sampling of the photos I took:

Joey was particularly excited about this one, who he called "Peso" (after his favorite character on the show Octonauts) and "George" (after, you guessed it, Curious George)

My beautiful wife Kiley and her sleepy little boy. He didn't sleep too long before waking to the sound of roaring fire keeping the balloons upright.

It was fitting that the day we were enjoying the Balloon Fiesta together with our little baby, the doctor who delivered Kiley was there (Dr. Komadina) enjoying the Fiesta with his baby (the Stork balloon!).

More fun with the special shapes:

I was a big fan of the Star Wars balloons! (obviously)

Okay, one more family photo so we could get Yoda in the background! Sadly Darth Vader is cut out... But don't blame me. Blame the random person who we got to take our family photo. Plus, this is the only shot they took. Lame... Still, I'm grateful that they got Yoda in there.

Finally, it was time to head back to our bikes. Overall, this was a very nice way to spend our morning during one of my days off. I'm very grateful for Kiley in making our last year in Albuquerque a "tourist year," taking advantage of all the wonderful things that this magical place has to offer. We're going to miss Albuquerque when we leave in the summer!

The Halloweeners

I assigned Sam the task of blogging about the Balloon Fiesta, but I'm going to jump ahead a little bit while it's still relevant and blog about Halloween 2016.

Joey is OBSESSED with Curious George right now. He's also obsessed about Halloween. I dubbed it our official Curious George Halloween since we watched the movie almost every day, carved our pumpkins with Curious George, and had Joey and Sam dress up as George and the Man with the Yellow Hat. We attended our ward's Trunk or Treat and went around our apartment complex on the actual day. Here are some pictures!

Our little scuba diver

Joey in heaven.

Aren't they so adorable?

Matching Eli with my mermaid getup.

 Joey got a good bag of candy at the Trunk or Treat, but we weren't done with the festivities. The kids painted their pumpkins while Sam and I carved. Joey loved painting maybe a little too much!

Joey in his element.

Eli never really painted, but somehow
he still got paint on himself!

Meet Charlie, our new cat.

My carving, the Man with the Yellow Hat and George.
This was actually the best face I made so excuse the wild look in my eye!

Sam managed to carve George out of his little pumpkin!

Mine's a little hard to tell what it is but I'm proud of it!

On actual Halloween we went around our complex. Sam was too busy to take the kids so I grabbed my mermaid leggings and the yellow hat and tried to make some rounds. However, Joey found a tricycle and it was game over. He was done and just wanted to ride the tricycle in the dark. We got enough candy anyway so it wasn't too big of a deal I guess. We might do costume repeats next year because costumes get so pricy! At least we had a good time with it.

Pumpkin Patches

Another long post from the Hobbs family! As part of my tour Albuquerque (and surrounding areas) plan, we had the pleasure to attend not one, but two awesome pumpkin patches this fall. I took the boys to McCall's Pumpkin patch in Moriarty, then a couple weeks later Sam got a day off and we headed to Galloping Grace's pumpkin patch in Rio Rancho.

McCall's: If I was more prepared, it would have been really fun. I thought it would last until noon, then we would drive home and have lunch. Since I was with a group, we had to wait for the last person to arrive, which was almost an hour late! Meanwhile, Joey enjoyed the rocking chairs, sandbox, and wandering away from the group.

What was fun about McCall's versus Galloping Grace was the tractor ride out into the actual patch and the picking of any pumpkin. Joey naturally went for the small, rotting ones, so I picked his for him (not pictured).

While my group was so prepared with their lunches, I scavenged for food for my kiddies then walked around for other fun stuff to do. There were farm animals, a corn pit, a corn maze, a goat feeding area, slides, and other fun stuff.

This kind of chicken should be added to my mom's collection.

Enjoying the animals.

The Lord is Our Shepherd.

What Joey went straight to.

As good as we could get it.

Big Pig.

My favorite goat.

Conclusion: worth the $7 per person if we brought food to last us the whole day. It also got us a pumpkin for that price.

Galloping Grace: This pumpkin patch used to be free, but they amped it up this year, and as a consequence it was $3 per person plus more for a pumpkin. They did have a free military day, so Sam got in for free! They were really friendly here and offered to take our picture the moment we got in.

We didn't get a tractor hayride, buy Joey probably liked riding the little tractors just as much. We threw Eli on one for kicks and giggles too. Eli really did kick and giggle, though.

Joey HATED the corn pits when he was younger and more sensitive to different textures. Now he was rolling around in it. Eli had more joy in eating the corn (we tried to stop him, don't worry).

Burying Daddy in corn.

The happy guy we know and love.

Getting the hay out of his monkey was a task!

There was a petting zoo, but of course it was extra.

Something they had here was duck racing, and we all had fun with the pumping water and rubber ducks.

Guess where we spent the most time. Again.

Let's go tire racing!

*Picks up tire* Where did he go? Joey? Joey!

Ah, the hay tower.

Mah boyz.

Joey is obsessed with pumpkins!

 Conclusion: It was really fun having Sam and being able to leave when I wanted to. I think they were both worth the prices they put out. We'll see what happens next fall when we move!