Petersons Never Give Up: Epic fail at the Balloon Fiesta

So this is our 3rd fall in Albuquerque and we still have not been to an actual event at the balloon fiesta field. We tried to go to the special shapes glodeo when Brandon and Michal visited right after Brett was born but it was too windy and the balloons weren’t up. Each year we admire all the balloons in the sky and either walk, bike, or drive to good places to see them. This year I REALLY wanted to go. I decided that mass ascension wasn’t the best idea since waking up so early would be hard on Brett (also Sean has been rounding at about 5:30 every morning anyway). Sean and I decided last Thursday was the night to go to the special shapes glodeo. Brett had already seen lots of balloons and I seriously couldn’t wait to see his face! Then it was super windy and stormy on Thursday=( We decided to go on Friday instead to insure we would have good weather. Sean came home on Friday, we ate a quick dinner and headed out the door about 6:15. Mistake #1: don’t leave the house at 6:15, leave at 4:30! We saw that traffic was really awful on the interstate so we stayed on the frontage road for quite a while, then tried merging onto the freeway. Mistake #2: if you are a silly enough local to try and take the freeway instead of some other back route, don’t leave the frontage road! Mistake #3: don’t try to drive yourself, just do the park and rides that are located all over town. So after an hour and a half of gridlock traffic where annoying cars were going every which way and Brett had watched 3 episodes of Daniel Tiger, we finally made it to the fiesta parking. I don’t know if we were just out so far or they didn’t want to charge us after the balloons had gone down, but at least we didn’t have to pay the $10 parking fee. Now here is the really sad part, as we were driving up I saw a few balloons in the distance and was so excited! The schedule online said the glodeo started at 5:45 and that fireworks start at 8 and the park closes at 9. As we were driving up we saw fireworks starting at 7:30. Mistake #4: don’t trust the schedule. We started walking toward the entrance and it became pretty clear that there were no balloons up. Once we got to the entrance they weren’t even charging to get in anymore which is bad news. We got there at 7:45 and the park doesn’t even close till 9! How lame =( I was so so disappointed and didn’t enjoy the spectacular firework show as much as I could have because I was just so bummed. Brett however LOVED the fireworks and wasn’t even disappointed about the balloons because the fireworks were so cool and went boom boom! It took us 15 minutes in all to get home after the firework show and we all decided it had still been a fun evening together as a family. We will try again next year!

Here is Brett all excited before we left at 6:15. He was demonstrating his skills at putting his hands in his pockets to keep them warm.

Here is a picture of the traffic:

Brett and Sean thoroughly enjoying the fireworks!

Here is Brett the other morning when I took him out to see some of the balloons. We just found some random parking lots and watched the pretty balloons.