We are official aeronauts!

Apparently the official term for hot air balloon passengers is “aeronauts.” Andy received a gift certificate last year from one of his vendors for a hot air balloon ride for two with breakfast afterward at South Coast Winery. We thought we would save it for our anniversary which is this Wednesday. My mom was here for a couple of days this weekend, so we decided that as long as she was here to watch the kiddos, we should take the opportunity to use the gift certificate. So, at 6:30 am yesterday morning, we headed out for our first hot air balloon adventure.

I, of course, was a bit nervous for no reason. It was actually really fun. I didn't get scared once we were in the sky. It was really beautiful. It was very quiet while the burners were off. The pilot had to turn them on every couple of minutes. I jumped almost every time he turned them on because it was soooo loud. Our neighbors were so excited that we were going that they, along with 5 of the neighborhood kids, hopped into their mini van and drove out to wine country to see if they could find us. (I had to call them on my cell to tell them what color our balloon was.) They said that they saw us and were waving out of the sun roof. Unfortunately we didn't see them.

This is right before we took off. There were actually 11 of us in that tiny little basket.

Our balloon was called Fantasia. It was blue with yellow stars and a moon and had a picture of Mickey Mouse's wizard hat on the very top.

This is a photo I took of the other balloons while we were flying (or floating I should say!)

Here is Andy just after we landed. The red balloon in the background was another one that took off when we did. It was in the shape of a strawberry.

Now I can cross off one more thing on my bucket list. LOL!