As part of Canberra's 98th birthday, the Canberra Festival celebrates Canberra's sense of community spirit and vibrancy through concerts, sporting events, exhibitions, dance, art, culture and heritage, film and music. A regular feature in this festival is the Ballooning Spectacular where giant hot air balloons are launched from the lawns of Old Parliament House. As we are normally woken up by 6ish we thought it was a good opportunity to do something different. So on Thursday morning we were up in the dark piled the kids in their pj's into the car and headed off to Old Parliament House. Meeting up with Cathy, Makhaya and Luca we were treated to watching the kookaburra and strawberry balloons inflate. However due to the low cloud and wind direction there were no actual balloons flying - a real pity. As we walked back to the car, we passed the Royal Australian Air Force who were inviting people to walk inside the their balloon while it was inflating. We ventured inside - Katy wasn't too sure but Ella thought it was cool.

Unfortunately the weather this year has been pretty crappy for flying hot air balloons. Although yesterday we were treated to about 10 balloons flying over our house!!