Walla Walla Balloon Stampede

The annual Walla Walla Balloon Stampede was this past weekend, it always is the same weekend as Mother's Day and is a pretty fun event. The best part is the balloons that take off every morning Friday-Sunday at 6am. On Friday morning it was just Jax and I since Dave and Colt had gone to Kennewick the night before. I run most mornings before work and its not unusual that one or both of the kids end up going with me. So Jax and I set off on our run, the weather was fabulous for 5:30 and as I am making the loop I happen to look up and see hot air balloons going up all around us, I had completely forgot that they would be going up that morning. I probably saw around 20 balloons and it made the rest of the run go very quickly. 

The balloon stampede has been at the fairgrounds for the past couple years so on Saturday after a relaxing morning of doing nothing but trying to rest and catch up on sleep we met Dave's good friend from high school Dustin, his wife Melissa and their three girls at the fairgrounds. They had an area set up with lots of kid activities, bouncy houses, miniature golf, an obstacle course, a huge slide, etc. Colt loved it, we bought him some tickets and he spent the next hour running from one thing to the next. He went down the big slide with me, then did the obstacle course a couple times and miniature golf twice. He really really liked the golfing and wanted to keep doing that over and over. He also had fun playing with Dustin and Melissa's girls, they were all pretty cute together.

We left around 5:30 and then later that evening about 8:30 we went back to the fairgrounds to watch the Night-glow and fireworks display (no pictures of this I left my camera in the car). Colt really enjoyed seeing all the balloons being lit up and of course loved the fireworks display as well. Dave had never been to the Balloon Stampede and I had not been since high school but it was a fun afternoon and it was nice to get out of the house and enjoy the nice weather too. Jax was as easygoing as usual, just going with the flow and watching and laughing at Colt.