Great Texas Balloon Race

Yesterday was the second day of the Great Texas Balloon Race, in Longview,Texas.  Our whole family has wanted to go every year for the last five years or so, but for one reason or another we haven't been able to go.  Yesterday, we finally gathered the family into one car,  and drove over to see the balloon glow.  When we got to the airport, where the race was held, there were only 5 hot-air balloons set up.  I'm pretty sure we were all pretty dissapointed to see that's all that was there.  Haha after we all had armbands saying we'd paid the entry fee, my dad aka Papa, headed straight to the boat display, where the Great Wolf Lodge was trying to sell memberships, and was giving away a boat.  The rest of us went to check out the balloons. 

There was a huge Cheshire Cat hot-air balloon.



The World's Largest Hot-air balloon was there

We were out looking at the five balloons when we heard the announcer say over the PA - pilots, all glow in 10 minutes, and out of nowhere balloon pilots from everywhere ... starting inflating,blowing huge amounts of butane into their balloons

We were in between all of these balloons

 then the announcer said they'd go full glow now, all the balloons lit up! It was so AWESOME!

The clown was kinda creepy..

Once we'd seen all of the balloons - Payton just had to go ride all of the carnival rides! I did some things with him too!!!

First on the TO-DO list was the Carousel



The operator of this ride made the ride go sooo fast!



 These was the next ride... Payton had sooo much fun spinning himself around in these as fast as he could go.

He went from here to to a train ride, then Payton and I got on a little maze house,called

 where you go up and down stairs, through punching bags, over a sliding floor, then out through a barrel... which a little girl of about 3, before we went in, almost seriously hurt herself... she panicked, and grabbed on to the sides.. the barrel was turning, and in about 3 seconds, she was hanging from it, about 6-7 ft in the air...super scary!

The last thing we did together was called the Sizzler...we had a blast!

We got home from this adventure around 1am last night.. but it was worth it, Payton had a ball!!