37 Pictures!

I thought that might lure some lookers. :-) Blogger was just slapping 'em right up there tonight so I just kept a-clickin'. We'll start with the Balloon Fiesta pictures that I took last Sunday. You know, Sunday. The day I lost my cell phone. (Still hasn't shown up. I'm fearing that perhaps it was in my lap one time when I jumped out of the van to take pictures... We may never know!)

Anyway, the first slew of pictures I got weren't very good because it was pretty cloudy to begin with that morning. The balloons aren't really pretty until the sun hits them straight on and really lights them up and sometimes all you can get is a silhouette. But after looking at the pictures I decided the clouds and mountains were pretty cool, too. :-)

There are LOTS of shaped balloons that come to the Fiesta. There was a beer mug, a Pepsi can, Nemo, and a whole bunch of others that I didn't get pictures of, but here's... hhmmm. Who is this??? I almost said Sylvester, but that ain't right!

I really like the cow pasture shots. Cows and balloons--who would've thunk it? And the clouds are great. These were taken while driving past the pasture.


We found a place to park not too far from where the balloons lifted and they were all going right over the top of us with all of the lunatic people inside of them leaning over the already too perilously insecure baskets, waving to us. Crazy.




Here are some random pictures from this past week.

We thought we had bamboo growing in our yard... but does bamboo bloom???

And here's a picture of James' office. You can't really see the sides that he painted (!), but you can see the green door and trim. And if you look close you can see the little "Regional Outpost" sign he made for the window. Ha! Cute.
And here's the big jerk. Soda jerk, that is. We took this picture for him to put on his Facebook page (yes, JAMES does Facebook--what is this world coming to?!), but I don't think he's posted it yet.
Here is little Sambo READING to his Dad! Wa-Hoo!!!! :-)
Let's see... our revival has been great. We haven't had any visitors yet, but I know a whole lot of people have been invited--even though we JUST got a place to finally invite them to. Our pastor even stepped out in the middle of song service tonight because he felt led to go find somebody else to invite to come and join us! Ha! He walked down the alley and spoke with several people. None of them came tonight, but who knows--maybe they'll show up tomorrow. :-) And they did give him a steak and a cheese filled chili they'd just roasted. (He was good enough to wait until after church to eat it--he would've been in big trouble if we would have caught him outside gnawing on a chili! HA!) Anyway, there's been such a good spirit in our revival and I've been so blessed by the messages. Brother Ammons has preached the past two nights on sanctification and it's just been sooooo good. I feel like I have a deeper scriptural understanding of it than ever before. The compilation of scriptures has just amazed me--things that illustrate sanctification so beautifully that I never even knew related to the subject! Ha! Brother Ammons confessed that he's never been forgiven of Adam's sin. We are saved from our own SINS (plural) in salvation, and then we are CLEANSED (not forgiven) of SIN (singular) in sanctification. It's so interesting when you look at the difference between SIN and SINS in, say, 1 John chapter one. (You'll have to go look it up now.) He talked about Paul writing and saying "My little children" implying they were already saved, then said, "of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you." He said we ought to travail over seeing our people sanctified with the same urgency we should travail over seeing souls saved. And he talked about the Greek word for "formed" in that verse and how it is not a slow process, but an instantaneous work--'til Christ be FORMED (in a definite, instantaneous work) in you. How cool is that?! Tonight he preached from John 15 about the abiding in the vine. If you're a branch, you're already saved and bearing fruit and if you don't bear the fruit you'll be cut off. But then Jesus talked about being PURGED--also means cleansed, purified, clean, to make pure and lots of other redundant terms :-)--that we might bring forth MORE fruit. And that he's spoken these things to us that our joy might be full, as can only happen in sanctification! Wow!!! So many good things to keep feasting on and learning from.

This morning we all got up early and took Brother Ammons to see the balloons. Tomorrow is the last day of the Balloon Fiesta, so it worked out great and he really seemed to enjoy himself. And I think it was a better day for pictures, too. :-)

This is what it looks like as you're nearing the field where the balloons launch. Is that cool or what?! I can imagine how crazy it must seem to people who might not know anything about the Fiesta and just happen to be driving through town! Ha! This was taken before all of the balloons had lifted. I think we heard there were over 600 of them here this year. They come from all over the world and people come from all over the world to see them. Not something I would do... but since we live here I wouldn't miss it! And I think it's just pretty sad that the Washburns missed it. Tsk, tsk, tsk. We thought of you, Sister Tammy... sitting in a dirty, musty, half-fixed basement. ;-)

I'm not sure how this balloon works. How do the legs stay inflated???
Here's Brother Ammons with the kids at the great location we found to park at and watch the balloons waft over us. The one in the field behind them must've landed just before we got there.
I think these pictures are so cool because of the great blue sky and the bright half moon up there. :-)

The ladybug. I didn't get any good pictures of them, but there are two bumble bee balloons that are pretty popular. When they take off they try to keep them as close as they can to each other so it looks like they're holding hands.
The shaped balloons are fun, but my favorites are always the really bright colored traditional looking ones.
The guys enjoying the show... while the children sat in the van waiting on us! Ha! It was COLD out there this morning!
This is one of my very favorite pictures. So bright and cheery and colorful!
James was so excited to finally see the Darth Vader balloon since we missed it last week. I wasn't sure we'd be in position to see the front of it the way it was passing us, but this one seems to illustrate the whole "dark side" thing. ;-)
This balloon landed in the field right next to us. That was cool to watch. It was AMAZING to see how they use the different wind currents. There's no real way to steer a balloon, you know, so they're at the mercy of the wind. They would lift off and catch the higher current and sail west, then some of them would drop down lower and ride a different current back toward the lift site before raising and heading west again. Amazing!
We were able to see the front of Vader, so I was sure to get a picture for James. I'm not a fan (he isn't either really), but still... it's COOL! James says the folks who own this one come all the way from Belgium for this. Wild.
This seems to be the only view of Humpty Dumpty I got. Hhmmm.
And somehow I posted it twice! Ha! Wonder which picture was SUPPOSED to be here... ?
This one was COOL with the whole globe thing going on and the flags hanging down from it. Brother Ammons wanted to know if there's some way we can photo shop it to put Brother Ard's face there where the basket is... We'll have to see about that. ;-)
The pirate balloon...
The scarecrow balloon...
And the Smokey the Bear balloon.
There were lots more, but I didn't get good pictures of all of them. You get the general idea anyway. It was lots of fun and I'm really glad we were able to go see the balloons twice this year.

We had planned to stop by Dunkin Donuts afterward, but apparently every other balloon chaser in town had the same idea (the line was all the way out the door--and Dunkin Donuts is just NOT worth that kind of a wait!), so we ended up at McDonalds for breakfast. We headed back up the mountain and decided to take Brother Ammons up to the crest before going home. Here he is with the city of Albuquerque behind him. It was SOOOOOO COLD up on top! It's always windy up there and it just seems to cut right through you.
Brother Ammons got a little chilled, too. :-) When we got in the van he grabbed his coffee cup and held it up to his ear, cupping his hand around it to try to warm his ear up! Ha! I'd never seen that particular approach to warming up and he said he'd never tried it before today. ;-)

And that's about it. Not a whole lot of new news. Just a great revival and a whole lot of balloons!