Maine Wildlife Park & The Balloon Festival!

well, on saturday we had a very busy day. last sunday my sister got head butted by a little boy in cubbies and couldn't open her mouth more than an inch all week. she could barely eat anything and was in alot of pain. since my parents are in n.c. visiting my other sister and their new grandson (and jess doesn't have her license), i ended up bringing her to the dr.s for 9 am on saturday morning. they said that when she got head butted, she must have jerked her head back and pulled a muscle on the left side of her neck and jaw. she is feeling much better now, but the pain lasted a week!

anyway, right after that we headed to the maine wildlife park. this farm is basically like a small zoo, they take animals that have been found injured and bring them here to recuporate and then they set most of them free. we met with my old highschool friend, miranda, and her two kids. miranda's sister dani and her two boys met us there as well. i thought we had a great tim, it was nice for jordan to actually have some boys his age to hang out with too. while we were there, they had a dog demenstration. to be honest, i think all of the kids enjoyed the dog demenstration more than walking around and seeing the other animals. for the demenstration, they were showing how they train bird hunting dogs (or atleast that's what we think they were teaching), they had a bird tied to a string (i know it sounds mean and that is what we thought too), and the dogs are supposed to be trained not to attack the bird, but instead point their nose and tail towards it and stay still till their owner gets there. all of the dogs, except one, tried to eat the bird (none of them were successful though). one dog sat still and let them put the bird on his back and never tried to eat it, that was pretty cool. after they were done, the kids were allowed to go and see the dogs and play with them. first they all ran to where the bird was to see that it was ok. :) as you will see in one of the pics, they liked playing on the ramp used for the demenstration, they would go up one side and slide down the other. they also enjoyed the dogs! so, here is the slideshow (i didn't label the pictures as it would take too long):

after the farm, we went back home for about 2 hours and then headed back downtown. we went to pick up "aunt" sue and then went to mcdonalds for supper. after supper, we went to the great falls balloon festival. we were quit dissapinted (but understood) when they did not let any balloons up because of the wind. they were supposed to have a moon glow at 8 pm (the launching was supposed to be at 6pm, so we had two hours to kill), so we decided to wait and watch that. the moonglow usually involves a couple of balloons setting up and blowing their balloons up at dark so they light up (they don't take off). while we were waiting, we went to a nearby park to let the kids play. we weren't impressed with the park as it wasn't in the best part of town, but the kids enjoyed it. after, we headed to go see great grammy keene as she lives right around the corner. she was happy to see the kids and the kids were happy to eat all of her cucumbers....lol. they do like visinting her though and miss her now that she goes to a different church and they don't get to see her every sunday. we stayed there for about 30 min. and headed back to see the moonglow. we were once again dissapointed when they couldn't even blow the balloon up because of the wind. their idea of a moonglow this year was to have all the guys set up their baskets and just light the pilot lights off. i was cool for about a minute or two, but we still went home dissapointed. here are some pics from the park and the "moonglow". this is what kaylee and kelsey thought of the experience:

kaylee hiding her eyes

kelsey looking less than impressed here are a couple more pics:

going down the slide (notice the grafiti)
jordan (notice the hair)
moonglow

on saturday night, my sister kept all the kids for the night even though my mom was out of town. everything went fine. i went over a little early to help get them dressed for church. the girls wore their sailor dresses that we got from laura, on ebay. here are a couple of pics that i took before we left (aren't they ADORABLE):

kaylee (L) & kelsey (R)

because of the dissapointing time on saturday, we decided to try to see the balloons launch on sunday night. "aunt" sue met us at grammy's house and we headed down. the weather was better and the wind was not so strong, so we were pretty hopeful that it would happen. the launch was supposed to take place at 6pm again, so we got there at around 5:45. we met aunt susie and cousin katie down there too. it got to be aroung 6:20 and no one had even started to unpack their balloons. we got a little worried and sue and toya went to ask if they were going to take off. we were told all the balloon owners were having a meeting and going to decide. we were VERY happy when a few minutes later, they all started unpacking their balloons!!!! it was an AWESOME site as you will see from the pics (yes, the kids went in their pj's cause i knew we would be getting home late):

kelsey and kaylee were fooling aroung while they were blowing up the balloons and kelsey ran into kaylees head and got her first nose bleed! she also got her first fat lip:


this was our favorite baloon, a beagle named maximus! this balloon was HUGE! they were not able to launch it as the conditions for a ballon that size were not favorable, but they did blow it up. the kids loved this balloon (we have a beagle almost like it). here are some pics of maximus:




well, that concludes my post for today. i hope you enjoy all the pics and slideshows. i am still planning on startng potty training today and will let everyone know how it goes. cross your fingers for me :)