Carnation Festival

The carnation is my least favorite flower.

Now you all know.

I know most people don't have a least favorite flower, 'They are all beautiful' and yes I will agree that when compared to less beautiful things the carnation is beautiful.  

That being said- it is STILL my least favorite flower.

The reason I bring this up is because Alliance celebrates the carnation once a year with the Carnation Festival.

You can read all about it here.

In fact Alliance is considered the birthplace of the 'Lamborn red carnation'.

If you aren't bored of external link reading yet, you can read about it here.

So for all intents and purposes I am living in 'The Carnation City'.

I just think it is quite the coincidence.

And no- even after attending many activities to do with the carnation festival, the carnation has not risen in the ranks of favorite flowers.  It is still on the bottom.

But really, does it matter?  No.

And I am pretty sure none of you actually care- in fact the only one that might is the one person in my life who might actually give me flowers- and he already knows.

So just consider this a little bit of a 'get to know you' session.

Now you know me that much better.

Anyway- on to the festivities of the Carnation festival.

They really go all out.  

We were sure to head to the rib fest and enjoy some mighty delicious bbq beef sandwiches- and the cover bands dressed in metallic pleather.

I think our favorite activity was the air balloon lift off.

We love balloons in this house.  Noni especially- he is obsessed.  

When I heard that there was going to be a hot air balloon lift off I knew that we needed to get there- just to see his face!

The balloons didn't actually lift off- something to do with a supposed thunder storm coming with strong winds and a desire NOT to get hit by lightning when being carried in a wicker basket by nothing more than hot air.  I say- have a little guts people, we showed up here to be entertained by you- what's a little lightning in the grand scheme of things?

They didn't listen.

They did however give us the pleasure of blowing up the balloons so we could at least see them.  And they were pretty breath taking.  We still loved it.

A picture for scale- They were all about the size of Justin's head.  hahaha. 

This was the first one we saw- we were able to weasel our way into front row seats so we could get a better look.

They may or may not have had more fun just playing with the helium balloons they got from the sponsors of this event. (who happened to be a funeral home in the area)

Ok- here is one for actual scale.  They were crazy HUGE.  I had never seen one up close before- it was awesome!  Just FYI the girl on the right is the Carnation Queen this year- we were in the presence of ROYALTY...

Noni admiring the balloons.

Ruby NOT admiring the balloons.

Here we are with what may or may not be the worst family picture we have ever taken.  Ok- it is.

All blown up- this one was my favorite.  If I had my choice I would fly in that one.  Lightning or no lightning.

It was really fun!  The night was beautiful and it was great to spend the time together as a family.  We had fun.

The next activity that we attended was the parade!  It was hot and we weren't in the shade so we all got a mild case of heat stroke- but it was worth it.  Ok- it wasn't really- but they threw candy.... 

Sitting in the hot hot sun.  (and yes, those would be friends!!!)

This was them- in anticipation of the parade!  They had high hopes...

Myers was in awe.

But soon the heat and boredom overtook him....

It was fun, but hot and REALLY long.  We left before it was over- we had to go pick up our new HP tablets anyway...  That was Justin's favorite part of that day!

The carnation festival was great.  They even ended in fireworks! (which we didn't get to see because Ruby fell asleep in the car on our way there and it was insanely busy- we would have had to walk atleast 2 miles with two very crabby grumpy kids in order to get there- so we skipped it.)