J.E.B. and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary this past weekend by deciding to go for a hot air balloon ride Saturday morning. We went to the hot air balloon festival our first Thanksgiving here when my parents were visiting and ever since then, the idea of going for a ride has stuck with us. We tried to get a group of people together last spring, but when I called to make reservations and told them I was 8 months pregnant, they told me no. So we put the idea on hold.

Neither of us remember which of us had the brilliant idea to do it for our anniversary, but we had a great time. We opted for the sunrise ride (we had a choice of either sunrise or sunset) and had to meet the pilot at 0700. I had originally had a babysitter coming from 6-10pm Saturday night and felt a little bad when I called her to see if we could change it to 6-10am Saturday instead. She was great though and showed up at 0600 ready to deal with a somewhat dazed, half-asleep V (she's not exactly a morning person. Must get it from me!)

So at 0700, in the dark, we met up with the other four passengers and the pilot and is ground crew. We had to drive a bit to get to a good take-off spot and actually while we were waiting, the sun rose with us still on the ground. Not a big deal though.

They finally got the balloon set up and off we went. At one point we were zipping along at a whopping 10 miles per hour! We were up for about an hour-ish total and reached 2000 feet I think he said. It was a gorgeous day with almost no clouds and sunny. It was definitely cool in the morning (I had a beanie on my head and my hoodie pulled up plus the jacket zipped up!) but it warmed up once we were in the air.

I thought I was going to feel a little freaked out about the height and not feel secure but it was very smooth and very calming actually. We just moseyed along, going higher then coming back down and taking in the scenery. I did feel a little nervous as we were about to land though. Since the only real steering in the balloon is up or down we were kind of at the whim of the wind where we landed. We ended up landing "close" to the pilots first choice of spots which was nice. However we scared the crap out of some older guy who parked his truck near the canals and was cooking up breakfast on a portable stove. I think he was one of the canal workers. Anyway, we started to descend and ended up being blown right over his truck. So close that I had to look the other direction since I was sure we were going to graze the cab roof! He even started motioning us to the side, as if we could just push a lever and turn left or right. We actually landed just a few yards from him...his breakfast sure did smell delicious!

It was a great anniversary celebration albeit and early one. But we remedied that by taking a nap that afternoon when V was asleep for her afternoon nap! Ahh, what partiers we are!