Balloon Fiesta 2010 in Albuquerque

Our first balloons for Balloon Fiesta.

Eating dinner on the lawn

The live band Emma danced to in the video below.

Making a silly face at Daddy... something she's very good at. Sitting on the grass in front of a big stage with a live band.

Go American pride!!

Emma and Daddy in front of the huge Rooster. I think she was a little nervous, he was moving around quite a bit and we were very close.

Same picture as below but you can actually see the balloons. Beautiful sunset and a glowing balloon. Emma really liked the heart shaped balloon.

Watching a chase crew pull out a huge balloon from a small bag.

Some of the beautiful colors on display.

One of the few balloons we got to see "glow" due to the scary thunder storm that took over the sky.

Our cute little Emma bug

Nice lady offered to take our picture, thank you nice lady!

One of my favorite balloons because it's so colorful and fun.

The beautiful night sky before turning into a nasty storm cloud.

This family of bees consisting of Mommy, baby, and Daddy Bee are balloon fiesta favorites. They show up every year, and when they finally went up the entire crowd cheered. We're talking hundreds of thousands of people, folks. I teared up a bit...yes, I'm a softy.

One of many fireworks of the evening. We decided to tough out the little rainstorm to see the fireworks. Lucky for us it stopped raining and most of the people had already left. We got to see fireworks and missed the mass exodus... perfect!

Emma dancing at Balloon Fiesta

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus

Sitting with Papa and Grandma Hofmann, waiting for the circus to start.

My little clown!

Just goes to show, great minds think alike! We weren't the only Oakdaleans to go to the circus. The Nunns and several other Oakdale school faculty were in attendance. It made the experience even that much more enjoyable to watch it with friends! Mrs. Nunn just happened to be my Kindergarten teacher, I just loved her!

Some clowns at the circus.

These trampoline acrobats were so fun! They looked like flames bouncing all over the place.

The real reason we went to the circus.... cotton candy!!! Like Grandma, like daughter, like granddaughter... we all love it! It was really good!

Emma found a clown nose so of course we got Uncle Jarom to model it for us! What a good sport!

One of the body strength groups. We couldn't believe some of the things they were doing.

These brothers from Ukraine were unreal! They're body strength was unbelievable! I think they might have been my favorite act.

The elephants on parade. Emma loved watching them hold each other's tales.

There were seven bikers buzzing around like angry hornets in that sphere of death. They started with three, and that made me nervous! I wonder how many times they crash? Never seen anything quite like it, or heard anything like it either.

Yes, there are three girls in there! One for each color. They were amazingly limber. Amazing, but slightly disturbing to watch them escape from that cube.

Lots of beautiful tigers doing tricks. None of them seem very pleased by it though.