I love living in St Louis :)

These are pictures from the annual Forest Park Balloon Race last weekend. It is an invitation-only balloon race as it is (according to the announcer) the largest balloon race held in a metropolitan area. Apparently most balloon races are held outside of cities, and this one is in the heart of St. Louis. It is free, as are many activities in StL. :) Friday night they have a balloon glow where the balloons are lit up at night, and then Saturday is the race. The first balloon to go up is the Energizer bunny (the hot "hare" balloon) and then the "hounds" follow. The balloon to drop a bag of birdseed closest to the "hare" balloon wins. I took over 100 pictures on Saturday, but I'm pretty sure you don't want to scroll through 100 balloon pictures, so I just shared a few. We were right next to the balloons as they were filling up and lifting off so I got a lot of pics of that as well as all of the balloons as they floated overhead. The last picture is from the Children's Hospital parking garage, and gives you a pretty good idea of how many balloons were there (70!). It was a beautiful day for a balloon race and we had a great time.

So I know we're supposed to be planning to travel, but we haven't had much time to sit down and discuss what we need to get done. I think the first order of business is to get plane tickets, and right now we're leaning towards one-way tickets (no, we're not moving to Ukraine). Two sets of one-way tickets are about the same cost as a roundtrip ticket plus one change fee. The chances of us choosing the correct return date are pretty slim. :) Plus, if you buy roundtrip tickets you're tied into one airline. So even if you need to change your return date, if they don't have 4 seats available until 2 weeks later than you want to return you're kind of stuck. Some people have had to throw away the return portion of their roundtrip tickets and buy new one-way tickets anyway, and we'd certainly prefer not to have to do that. Regardless, we haven't completely decided yet. It's looking like the flights will be about $500 each for one-way, and roundtrip is running about $900. So...

We also need to start making a packing list, but every time I start thinking about it I get so excited I can't sit still long enough to make a list. LOL And I've decided I'm absolutely terrified of becoming a parent. :) :) But also VERY ready!!! :) :)