First Night Out

For those not on facebook, I thought I should post our pictures from our hot air balloon ride we wnt on this past Saturday.  Gary and I had our first date night since Natalie was born.  Mom and Dad came to visit for the weekend.  We went to the Arts Festival at Mount Gretna in the afternoon and then they offered to babysit Natalie for us for the evening.  Gary and I took advantage and scheduled our hot air balloon ride that his parents had got us for Christmas.  When we got there we didn't realize that there was a hot air balloon festival schedule for this Saturday so there was a rather large crowd gathered to watch us take off and other balloons in the air as well.  Our flight was over beautiful Lancaster County.  We saw horse drawn hay balers, tons of farm animals, fields and beautiful landscape.  We had a great evening which ended with a late dinner at TJ Rockwells in Elizabethtown, one of our favorite places during the summer.  It was so nice to get out but we certainly missed Natalie, we found we just kept talking about how awesome being parents is as well as how blessed we are with our perfect daughter!

Massive basket- 800 pounds, held 11 of us

Everyone in except us, we had to climb in 

once the basket was upright!

Huge balloon, the little black dot in the balloon is our pilot

Just before take-off

Beautiful Lancaster County

Another balloon getting ready to take off from festival

Looking down on the balloon now airborne

My wonderful husband and I

The view looking up

If you look hard you can see the three other balloons in the sky

Note the size in comparison to the people around

Again massive balloon, approx 250,000 basketballs would fill the balloon

All the Mennonite children that came to watch as we landed

Thanks to Mom and Dad for babysitting Natalie and Val and Steve for the hot air balloon ride!  It was a great date night for the two of us, though we realized we got old since becoming parents.  11 o'clock is too late to go to bed!!