It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...

We had an awesome opportunity this morning...Ryan and I got to go on a hot air balloon ride! Ryan's company sponsored the Frederick In Flight event in the nearby town of Frederick. Since ballooning is one of the major types of flight, they had a balloon rally as part of the event.

The whole thing was incredibly interesting. I had no idea ballooning was so technical. There are so many things the pilot and the crew have to consider when taking off. AND I didn't realize that there is really no way to steer a balloon...you just go where the wind takes you (obviously the pilots know what they're doing so you don't end up in the middle of the highway or anything like that, but still!).

This was our balloon, Windspiration.

This was the crew "laying down" the basket in preparation for the flight.

Ryan got to help with the launch, he was in charge of the fan. This was when the pilot was giving him the lowdown on how to work it. Apparently it's pretty dangerous and can really hurt someone if one of the propellers breaks or something like that. I made sure to steer clear of that thing!

Here's the crew getting the balloon inflated. You can see that the sun was just rising. We had to be there at 5:00am! For those of you who know me, that is EARLY!

All the other balloons were getting inflated too, there were probably 20 or so balloons that launched with us.

Look at that cute guy operating the fan. Boy is he doing a good job. ;)

Here are some of the other balloons taking off.

This is an inside shot of the envelope (that's ballooning lingo for the top part of the balloon).

And here we go... up, up and away.

This is a shot towards the mountains. You can hardly see them because of all the smokey haze from the fires. We need some rain to help them put those things out!

Ryan enjoying the view.

That's our shadow on the ground as we started our decent.

The landing was interesting, we bounced a bit and then they walked the balloon over to a smoother area of the field (while we were still in it). Then we got to help with deflating the balloon.

And Ryan helped "milk the envelope" to get all the air out.

Here's Ryan with the Volk & Bell sponsored balloon basket.

So, apparently there are a lot of traditions in ballooning. After a flight they have a ceremony for first timers. I won't divulge all the details in case you haven't experienced it for yourself, but basically it involved a history lesson on ballooning (very interesting) and champagne.

When we finished the ceremony, the crew chief turned the cork of the champagne bottle into a little balloon for us.

Seriously, the ride was so neat! Definitely something on my bucket list and I'm so glad that we had a chance to go.

As you probably noticed, the girls were no where to be found in these pictures. Since we had to get up so early, we decided to leave them at my mom and dad's overnight. It worked out great. Ryan and I got to go out for dinner last night after we dropped them off and our 4:00am wake up this morning was a little less grueling since we didn't have to worry about getting them up and ready to go. I was a little nervous because this is the first time that we've left Sydney overnight, but she did great and slept through without any problems. Thank you Superpop and Granne for helping out!  


 

Flash Back

I love looking at old pictures! It's completely addicting. Baby pictures are especially fun. It's so crazy to think of ourselves being at the same stage that our girls are at right now. How is that possible?

Ryan was asked to do this volunteer thingy recently and as part of it they wanted him to give them a baby picture. I ended up looking through a whole bunch of his baby pictures and then, of course, decided to dig up some of mine.

I can definitely see both of us in our girls, especially Ryan. What do you think?

---- RYAN EUGENE VOLK ----

 ---- RACHEL ANNE SCHWARZ ----

 ---- CAMERON BRIANNE VOLK ----

---- SYDNEY KATE VOLK ----

Vegas Baby

My Vegas work-cation was a stellar success! Cameron, Sydney and I flew into Vegas on Tuesday (my first flight with both of them by myself). I was a little nervous because we were flying on Spirit for the first time and I've heard some questionable things about that airline recently, but everything went very smoothly. My parents were already in Vegas, so they picked the girls and I up from the airport. Then Ryan flew in on Wednesday.

The trade show that I was there for, InfoComm, was all day Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at the Las Vegas Convention Center. My mom and Ryan were able to watch the girls while my dad and I worked, so everything worked out really well. They had a ton of fun swimming at the pool and playing fun games at "Granne's preschool"!

Our company threw a big party on Wednesday night at Comme Ça, an awesome French restaurant at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The party turned out great! The food was wonderful and the view was fantastic. Everyone seemed to have a good time and we had a lot of people complement us on the event. So all in all I would say it was a success.

Friday morning Ryan went over to the trade show with me so he could check it out. I thought it would be fun for him to see some of the fun technology, and also insightful for him to know what the heck I'm talking about when I talk about this thing. We ran into Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader on the way. :)

On Friday afternoon, Nick and Annie flew into town. They were in Vegas for a kid-free weekend so we got to hang out with them. We went to lunch with them on Friday afternoon and then went to a fun dinner at LAVO on Friday night (Mackenzie, it was awesome!) After dinner we walked through the shopping center at The Venetian and we found this great hat shop. We literally tried on every hat there. It was really fun.

While we were walking around we passed by one of the big clubs, TAO. There were a ton of people lined up waiting for it to open. I think I must be getting old because all I could think about is how unappealing that looked! I was much more excited about trying on hats and going home to go to bed! Yep, I'm a nerd.

Friday evening before we headed out for dinner, we took the girls out to ride the "choo choo train" a.k.a. the Monorail. Cameron thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Although she did fall down as the train was slowing down at one of the stops so if you ask her she'll say, "the choo choo train scares me", but not enough to keep her away. Saturday she begged us to go on it again, so Ryan took her on a loop around the Strip.

Saturday morning Ryan and I decided to walk around with the girls a little bit. We went to breakfast at Serendipity, which was AWESOME, I totally recommend that place to those of you heading to Vegas in the near future. We ate on the patio (it was still early so it wasn't hot yet) and we sampled a Frozen Hot Chocolate, a Serendipity signature item. Cameron thought it was pretty yummy, although she ended up getting a whole bunch of it on her shirt.

After breakfast we walked by the Bellagio hoping to see the fountains go off, but we discovered that they don't start going off until noon. Whoever decided on that rule did NOT have kids. :) We did get to walk through the Bellagio conservatory and see all the flowers so that was pretty neat.

By the time we were walking back to the hotel Sydney was pretty tuckered out. She fell asleep in the Baby Bjorn.

When we got back to our hotel, we decided to take one last dip in the pool before we left for our flight at 5pm. Annie and Nick came by to swim with us for awhile and Cameron went on the slide about 500 times!

The girls were pretty pooped by the time we got home. I don't think I've ever seen Cameron go to bed so easily. All in all it was a fun trip. I wish we would have had a few more days to play, but it's nice to get home too.

Side note: One of the nights we were there Ryan was in charge of getting the girls to bed since the rest of us were out. He did a great job and had them both asleep by 7:30pm. Good job daddy! However, I was laughing when I woke up and found Cameron in these jammies...they're Sydney's! HAHA

Another side note: Every time my dad or I left the hotel we told Cameron that we were going to work. And at home whenever Ryan leaves we tell her Daddy is going to work. One day she decided she was going to go to work too. She put "her" business card in her pocket and grabbed a pen and a notebook and kept saying, "Bye Mommy, I go to work now". Very cute. :)