Help! The Sky Is Falling!

About ten minutes after I let the dogs out into the backyard this afternoon, I heard such a frantic outburst of barking that I hurried out there to see what was going on. Gimpy met me at the door, so excited he was practically doing backflips. The source of their agitation wasn't too hard to spot:

My big yellow boys, Levi and Gimpy, turned four years old last Friday. Unless they saw a hot-air balloon before I got them, this was their first. Saying it gave them pause would be an understatement.

That's Levi in the photos. I would have liked to have had Gimpy in the picture, too, but he wouldn't move more than three feet away from my side.

Kim's little Oliver, on the other hand, wasn't impressed. He saw balloons a couple of years ago--lots of them--and had better things to do this time around. Ollie is the dark spot near the bottom center of these photos, shown having his daily tête-à-tête with Buddy, the Maltese next door.

Lucy isn't in the photos, either. She was asleep in her favorite place behind the toilet and missed the whole darn thing.

Sure am glad I didn't. I love the big balloons!