A Father's Day Tradition, Modified

I've mentioned before that on Mother's Day and Father's Day, the girls write notes to their unknown Chinese birth parents. We customarily burn the notes so the smoke will carry their good wishes to wherever their birthparents might be. We added my dad to the Father's Day tradition after he died last year. But this year, with a burn ban and high winds, we modified the tradition. We wrote the usual notes, but instead of burning them, we sent them aloft attached to balloons (I know some of you do the same -- I stole the idea from you!).

Now, this was MUCH harder than burning.  First, when we stopped at our neighborhood Walgreens for balloons, they had sold out of Father's Day balloons and had no other kinds already blown up.  But when the girls did their "OH NO" routine, and I explained why we needed them, the clerk called the manager over and he agreed to blow up birthday balloons!

Next problem -- putting two notes on each balloon really weighted them down, so I had to cut out all the unused paper portions to lighten the load (I didn't have the heart to ask the girls to re-write the notes, especially the birth father notes, since they both worked laboriously to write them in Chinese). Here's Zoe's note:

Finally, we took our balloons outside and set them free.  Given their weighty loads, it's a miracle they cleared the trees and power lines!
 

Next year, we go back to burning!  And if there's another burn ban, we get multiple balloons, use tissue paper instead of regular paper to write the notes on, and/or write front-and-back!