25 | September | 2011 | Earful of Cider

Friday’s balloon parade would have been enough sky wonder to last me for days, but Saturday, we went to the annual kite festival by the river.

See that middle one? It started out like this:

But eventually . . .

With a good tailwind and enough line (and one expert wrangler whose forearms must be like Popeye’s) . . .

Anything is possible:

Scores of amateur flyers brought out their own gorgeous windpets:

The Wesson kites were, of course, made of the finest materials . . .

. . . But it didn’t matter. That homely paper sucker stayed up for the better part of an hour—a testimony to the dedication of an eight-year old and the tenacity of paint-tape.

Meanwhile, Sunny learned a new skill in the play area . . .

She’s tenacious, too!

The way this weekend went, I thought we’d learn to fly today without benefit of airplane, but it rained instead. That’s okay—I’m grateful it held back long enough to give us two days of color. And a couple of pretty good kite analogies, too.

I drove home Friday, tired and cranky from catching up on a week’s worth of backlogged research, correspondence, and newspapers. I started to turn down our street, hoping my husband or MIL had started dinner so I could take a short nap. Or a long nap. Maybe I could have my share of dinner for breakfast . . .

And then I looked up:

I drove home, parked the car any old how, ran inside and yelled for the kids. They looked out the window and immediately jammed on flip-flops—ignoring my MIL’s claims that they would freeze to death—grabbed jackets and followed me out. the entire neighborhood was outside, looking at the sky and running down the sidewalks.

A great flock of hot air balloons rose over the hill and sailed right over our heads. they were on their way to a nearby field for the weekend’s Balloon Festival.