Yesterday, after going to a sip’n'see for an old friend from college, we headed out with some dear friends to the Plano Balloon Festival.  We met up with Jami and Matt there, who had saved awesome seats for us.  Matt and Chris play soccer every week together, and Jami and I have become friends over the years as well.

The thing is, the balloon festival is not as exciting as the state fair.  There’s not as much to do there.  But it holds a special place in my heart for many reasons.  The first of which is that Chris took me for the first time when we were dating.  Back then, it was a romantic evening that we shared and thanks to it being an annual event, we can continue to revisit the memories we made there and build on them each year.

Two years ago, I was a week away from giving birth to Asher.  I specifically remember having strong contractions while walking around and having to stop during the hardest ones.  It was so windy that year that much of what was planned didn’t happen according to schedule.

And last year we had the pleasure of going with Dan and Stephanie for the first time.  They had just recently moved down to Texas and I became fast friends with Steph when we realized that our oldest kids were in the same Mother’s Day Out class at church and that she would also be in MOPS.  It was fun to go with them again this year, celebrating a year of friendship, and making new memories with Jami and Matt as well.

Here are a few of the pictures- I’ve put the whole album up on our Flickr account.  Enjoy!

Amai and Josiah, so sweet.

Chris and his little man.

Watching the parachute team come in.

Amai said, “Look, Jesus is coming!”

Next year, there’ll be five of us!

Listening carefully to instructions.

She had so much fun, jumping so, so high.

So pretty.

This really captures the emotions of the night.

The annual family “all-burn” pic.

Jami, Matt and Eisley!

All-burn.

Gettin’ their dance moves on.  We had a ball!