Standard-Examiner Davis Bureau?conan@standard.net?

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NTELOPE ISLAND — Red kites, white kites, orange, blue and green kites.?

Kites with hearts, fish, birds and skulls.?Kites floating on the wind, others dipping down and soaring up again.?Kites of every shape and size stole the day after a steady wind descended on the 2009 Antelope Island Balloon & Kite Stampede on Saturday, providing a lively backdrop for other events. ?Hot air balloons also graced the event with their towering presence, but windy turbulence above the balloons Saturday morning didn’t allow them to launch.?Then a lack of wind delayed the 9 a.m. kite show until 11 a.m. when kites began filling the sky.?Kites flapped above children as they competed in the Antelope Island Quiz Show, answering correctly that coyotes call Antelope Island home and that a bison is a mammal, not a reptile.?Noisy kites zoomed round and round as food vendors scurried to prepare barbecue and Philly steak sandwiches, kettle corn and cotton candy.?Kids in a nearby field flew smaller kites they brought from home, and toddlers ran around tented tables pulling small white kites with crayon pictures they’d drawn.?A.J. Brooks, of Cedar City, helped children build kites with butcher block paper and curling ribbon.?”Building kites is a way to get kids away from video games and television and interested in something they can do outside,” Brooks said. “It’s something the whole family can do together — make some kites and take a picnic lunch and go out to an open area and fly them.”?Joani Goss and her husband, Dave, of Costa Mesa, Calif., said they became interested in kite flying about nine years ago, after they both retired. Now they design and make their own kites and fly them at kite festivals in California, Oregon, Washington and Utah.?”We went to a kite festival on the beach in Washington,” Joani Goss recalled of their first kiting inspiration. “It looked like so much fun, so we bought a kite and took it home. We took it to a park to learn to fly it and met some others who enjoyed kites.”?Scott Hampton, of Sandy, also brought his custom designed and hand-painted kites to Antelope Island. The special education teacher said, however, he spends more time drawing kite designs than he does building kites.?”I fill a book with sketches, and when I draw one that really stands out, I build that one,” he said, noting that his wife is now a “kite widow.”?Michelle Pruitt, of Denver, Colo., said she and her family are visiting her father, Dwain Holmes, in West Valley City, and Holmes suggested they get kites and visit Antelope Island.?She said, her husband, Bryan Pruitt, got so excited about the kites, he began helping everyone with theirs, even people at Antelope Island that he didn’t know.?”He’s the expert now,” Michelle Pruitt said. “He’s the kite whisperer.”