How we see them at our house

This is how the morning started...

And why?

Once a year, our city is known for something positive and beautiful and photo worthy..the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. We try and go to the special shapes mass ascension toward the end of the week but try and stay away from the crowds the rest of the time. As you can see from the pictures below, we have a good reason to-some mornings the balloons come to us!! These are views from our front and backyard

That's my mom and Luke...I don't think the kids ate breakfast until nearly 9am since they couldn't tear themselves away from each new balloon that floated over the house. For those of you unfamiliar with the balloon fiesta, Albuquerque is known for something called 'the box'. This is when balloon pilots take off and at one elevation the pilot may go north or south and when he goes up farther to another elevation he can go the opposite direction....hence the term 'the box'. Pilots have been known to take off, fly for quite a while and then be able to come back and land right where they took off from. The box doesn't happen everyday, it just depends if the conditions are right (and I'm sure I really botched the explanation, but hey, I gave it a good shot). On this particular day, the balloons all came to the north so we got to see quite a few of them. Today they took off and went to the south so we didn't see any of them. Another view from our backyard looking north.And these would be our local Canadian Geese. They love the harvested corn field that is south of our house. They land there for months after the corn has been harvested, eating all that's left behind.

For more nifty pictures, even some cool special shapes (including humpty dumpty and darth vader) tune in tomorrow...or Wednesday in case I don't get there tomorrow!