Success! ...and Failure.

On Saturday, I crossed two (two!) things off my 30x30 list. On Tuesday, it became official - the list is an epic fail.  Happily, the successes were very well documented, like over 400 shots well documented. I have been editing them down for two hours, and I'm still not finished. So...here's part one.

Watch the sun rise with Tom. Check.

Thanks to a Groupon offered back in June, I was able to snag a great deal on a morning hot air balloon ride in San Diego's version of wine country. Since this particular bargain required that we rise at the unnatural hour of four o'clock in the morning, it seemed only fair that this little adventure count for two list items - riding in a hot air balloon (duh) and watching the sun rise.. While checking out the sunrise closer to home would have allowed for more shut eye, dawn in Temecula was lovely.

We met the crew and our fellow balloon enthusiasts at a vineyard.

Next we piled into a giant van and drove to a big, empty field where the crew unhitched the baskets, unrolled the balloons, and started filling them up...with fans.

{giant van}

{big, empty field}

{basket}

{balloon fan at work}

It was freezing (that's about 53 degrees in my world), but the brightly colored balloons and the quickly lightening sky were beautiful.

And just to prove that my night owl, sleep-loving husband did in fact rise before the sun to join my little adventure...

Now the bad news - on Monday, I forgot to take a picture. After 245 consecutive days of taking a picture, I forgot. I can't believe that I forgot. There have been several nights where I have jumped out of bed  just before sleep because I realized that I hadn't yet taken the photo of the day. For some reason, that alarm wasn't triggered on Monday night, and thus the streak was broken. Fail. Boo.

Oh well, moving on and starting over. On day one, take two of my photo-a-day challenge, I documented my very colorful homemade pesto pizza...

More fun with hot air balloons tomorrow...