The letter L

I skipped Lion. Boring. Well, maybe just not in the mood.

Our L game went like this, Weil ich Lukas liebe, schenke ich ihm einen Lego und einen Lutscher. Basically we try to use as many L words as possible at the end. "Because I love Lukas, I'm giving him a... (in this case a Lego and a Lollipop).

Our plan for an L snack was to actually eat lollipops - just a dum dum each, but after our L activity, I decided we (as in my children, not myself - still on my no sugar thing) had eaten plenty of sugar to last as a good long while. I introduced the L activity with a book a good friend gave us (and of which I forgot to take a picture) called "Kleiner Eisbaer, hilf mir fliegen" about a little polar bear who helps a puffin fly and get back home. Puffin in German is Papageientaucher. Nice that it fit in with our bird theme as well. In it the polar bear and puffin climb into a hot air ballon - Heissluftballoon. That was our activity, not to get into a Heissluftballoon, but to go to the Balloonfest as part of Springville Art City Days. (We focused on the Luftballoon part of Heissluftballoon, seeing as it starts with L.) Here are a gazillion pictures. It was soooo fun!

There were way more people there than I expected. It was 6:30 in the morning! And freezing!

One of the attractions: Free balloons for the kids

I think there were 8 or 9 balloons all together

Once a balloon took off, the people in the basket would throw out candy to the scrambling children below. One balloon threw out balls, some of which had numbers that corresponded to prizes at the prize table. We just enjoyed watching.

Besides being freezing, it was an absolutely beautiful morning. We started out in the shade of the mountains and eventually the sun crested over and warmed us up. It was so awesome.

 I like this photo because - even though I'm sure you can't see it on the blog - there are two tiny little balloons that some children had lost floating up their with the big one

Another attraction: Free donuts and hot chocolate. Abigail was finished with her donut before Joshua had even really begun - And then she dumped out all her hot chocolate. We did have to stand in a long line for the donuts, but the kids didn't mind.

And since it was so fun, Derek came with us this morning on an early morning walk to see the balloons again. We didn't think we'd actually get to see them this close though. (And since Derek missed out on the donuts from the day before, he took the liberty of heading to Reams early that morning and picking out, no, not 1 donut per person, but 8 huge sugary deliciously tempting donuts, some with sprinkles, some with chocolate, some glazed with raspberry filling, a bear claw, one with chocolate and a pecan coconut dollop on the top, just like a German chocolate cake. I did resist, although my mouth is watering now just thinking about them, but it didn't take long for all 8 to disappear. Really, people. (Derek said he would have bought 12, but he knew I wasn't going to have any. Yeah, we're that bad. It's kind of like all or nothing at our house.) Ok, a gazillion more photos.

It really wasn't as cold as the morning before, but I figure its better to be prepared.

We weren't quite sure this little piggy was going to clear the houses!

I'm glad the pig flew over to us because it was the kids' favorite. Abigail calls it her pink pig.

Ever heard of storm chasers? Yeah, we're like balloon chasers. We followed this one and another to a little side street where they landed right next to each other. One was giving the kids tethered rides, but we figured our kids were too little for that. Joshua was a little frightened by the loud flame every time it went off. I told them maybe next year (mostly because I want to do it!)