Well, that was anticlimactic.

As expected, Balloon Boy hoaxsters Richard and Mayumi Heene each pleaded guilty this morning to charges stemming from their mesmerizing and ultimately sick-inducing Oct. 15 media circus.

Richard's arraignment took place first. After careful and deliberate questioning by the judge to ensure his plea was voluntary, Richard pleaded guilty to a felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant.

Mayumi, too, got the third degree over whether she truly understood that with her guilty plea would come all manner of consequences, chief among them financial.

"Do you understand the finality of this?" Judge Stephan Schapanski asked. "You don't get to change your mind, you don't get to come back and say it was a bad decision, you just wanted to get it over with."

Mayumi, a Japanese national who may face deportation if convicted of a felony count, agreed. She entered a guilty plea for her misdemeanor charge of false reporting to authorities, but not before getting a little something in exchange...

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Our long national nightmare punch line is over. Nearly.

Balloon Boy hoaxsters Richard and Mayumi Heene have agreed to plead guilty to charges stemming from the Oct. 15 nation-mesmerizing incident in exchange for probation but no jail time or, in her case, deportation.

Richard will plead guilty to the felony of attempting to influence a public servant, while Mayumi, who already confessed and who could have been shipped back to her native Japan should she have been convicted of a felony, will cop to a misdemeanor of false reporting to authorities.

Richard's lawyer, David Lane, dropped the bombshell in a statement this morning. He says the couple won't formally enter their guilt until tomorrow morning. It's unclear how long the probation will last or what other terms may accompany the sentence, though Lane credited the family's desire to stay together for the duo agreeing to fess up to the charges.

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The Balloongate case appears to be in a holding pattern.

A spokeswoman for the Larimer County, Colo., district attorney tells E! News exclusively that the sheriff's department has not yet submitted enough evidence to formally press criminal charges against Balloon Boy parents Richard and Mayumi Heene for tricking the world into believing their 6-year-old son had been whisked away on a homemade flying saucer.

"They did bring [the report] over a week ago, and we asked for additional reports and information," says D.A. spokeswoman Linda Jensen. "We're waiting for that from the sheriff's office before we make a final charging decision."

Jensen says she expects the new information "by the end of the week."

Apparently the D.A. needs more than Mayumi's apparent confession to bring down the hammer.

Previously, Sheriff Jim Alderden said he expects Richard and Mayumi to face counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, attempting to influence a public servant and conspiracy.

While they're at it, how about adding a count or two for trying to foist Boxter on us?

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The Balloon Boy saga's a whirlwind. Keep up with it here.

ABC; AP Photo/Will Powers

Is the lawman behind the Balloongate probe full of hot air?

With what appears to be slam-dunk evidence against his clients, the Colorado lawyer of Richard and Mayumi Heene has chosen a novel defense approach: blame Larimer County Sheriff James Alderden for bungling the investigation and jeopardizing the Balloon Brood's shot at a fair trial.

Per the county district attorney's office, Heene attorney David Lane has accused Alderden of violating privacy laws by informing the media that the three Heene kids were being scrutinized by Child Protective Services after the notorious balloon flight.

"The defense attorney submitted a letter to us asking that [the sheriff] be investigated because he made a comment about child protective services investigating the Heene children," says D.A. spokeswoman Linda Jensen. "He was saying that by statute the sheriff should not have said that."

And now the D.A. has brought in a special prosecutor to hear out Lane's claims.

Does that mean the case goes pop?

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AP Photo/David Zalubowski

The Heene family's fate is in the hands of a higher power now.

Larimer County Sheriff's investigators presented their Balloon Boy hoax case to the District Attorney's Office Monday, meaning charges against partly admitted masterminds Richard and Mayumi Heene could be filed any day now.

The D.A. "has requested additional information and will be making a charging decision as soon as we have had an opportunity to complete a careful review and analysis of this case," read a statement from the Larimer County office.

While 6-year-old Falcon Heene raised suspicions Oct. 15 with his "for a show" comment that his parents never believed for a second he had crawled into their homemade weather balloon and drifted away, the jig really appeared to be up when a search warrant document released Friday revealed that Mayumi had confessed all to investigators.

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ABC/ADAM LARKEY; Patrick Ecclesine/The CW; AP Photo/David Zalubowski; Kimberley French/Summit Entertainment

The Gosselins finally shut up(ish) long enough for us to really enjoy the delicious randomness that was this past week in celebutainment and current gossip affairs.

Of course, it turns out when one reality-TV dad falls out of favor, there's another shmuck who's desperate to take his place...

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Turns out mom knew it was "for a show," too.

Balloon Boy's mother, Mayumi Heene, has admitted to investigators that the whole "my son flew away" thing was a hoax and that she and her husband, Richard, knew all along that Falcon was asleep at home.

"The motive for the fabricated story was to make the Heene family more marketable for future media interest," states the search warrant served on the family's home last week, which was obtained by the Coloradoan.

Well, no wonder the local sheriff went from being pretty sure it wasn't a hoax to being pretty damn sure it was.

According to the document, Heene told Sheriff's Investigator Robert Heffernan that she and the wishful-thinking Richard had lied to authorities Oct. 15, the day you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing a homemade silver weather balloon run amok.

But what is perhaps the worst thing of all...

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AP Photo/David Zalubowski

But there really oughta be a word for how this whole Balloon Boy quest-for-fame stunt has, er, blown up in his face.

You know the drill: Enter your ideas into the Celebrity Addictionary widget below, and your brainchild just might end up being selected as a Word of the Day. Current fave suggestions include heeneschemer and Fallout Boy.

But we're sure you can come up with a more high-flying answer.

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Richard Heene, you're going to dig this story.

So, the other day we were kicking back, studying the Maya calendar, when we made two shocking discoveries:

• One, the ancient timekeepers totally predicted the movie 2012!

• Two, they totally nailed your family's Balloon Boy saga from start to Wolf Blitzer finish!

Not to brag, but here's how we did it—and, Mr. Heene, feel free to source us in any future reality-TV proposal:

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Before he was allegedly stuffing his 6-year-old in a box, hiding him in the attic and then calling the police to say the boy just floated off in a giant balloon, reality-show dreamer Richard Heene was just a normal guy trying to make a kids show about his apparent love of boxes. (That's what normal guys do, right?)

"Box Time" was shot in 2000 and produced by My You Me Productions (hey! that's how you pronounce his wife Mayumi's name!). In the show, a hyperactive Richard teaches kids how to make cool things out of boxes with the help of a primitively animated box named Boxter who makes bad box jokes. 

Did you know animated boxes often suffer from fits of creepy laughter? Well, they do, and it's worth watching the 30-second clip above to experience such a strange sight, which is only made stranger when you realize Richard is actually the one voicing that floating box.

Now that Richard's all famous, maybe this will get picked up and we will learn new box tricks, like how to build a shield to save us from lizard people or something.

—Reporting by Marcus Mulick

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Get all your Balloon Boy coverage right here.

ABC

William Shatner isn't the only one distancing himself from the taint of Balloongate.

Lifetime has just shelved a rerun of one of the Heene family's Wife Swap episodes.

The episode, one of two the family appeared on that originally aired on ABC, had been set for Oct. 29 at 2 p.m. It was scheduled long before last week's helium-powered hijinks in Colorado.

No word on whether it will be shelved permanently, but a Lifetime rep says the network doesn't have "any plans to air it in the near future."

Local sheriff's investigators are gathering evidence to prove Richard and Mayumi Heene set off the balloon—sans 6-year-old son Falcon—to drum up pub for a proposed reality series. Charges are expected to be filed as early as next week.

So far, no network has admitted to being in cahoots with the clan. But we presume Lifetime is out of the running.

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When Mayumi Heene called 911 last Thursday, it wasn't the first time those three digits were dialed from Balloon Boy's household in 2009.

In February, someone called and hung up. The Larimer County, Colo., Sheriff's Office attempted to call back twice, but only got Richard Heene's answering machine message and hung up.

Listen to the answering machine message

Three months later, the Ft. Collins Police Department Dispatch received another hang-up call from the Heene home. The Sheriff's Office again tried to call back, and again reached a machine—but this time, however, they left a message.

Listen to the Sheriff's Office message to the Heenes

On Aug. 6, 2009, the helium-happy Richard Heene made the call to alert law enforcement of an alleged "threat" made against his family by "a guy that works for another guy that cosigned a loan for me on my vehicle."

Listen to Richard Heene's 911 call

"I'm supposed to talk to somebody about an incident that occurred yesterday," he says. "I was made an indirect threat. We feel like we've been threatened, a guy was running around the house late last night after the threat and then, this morning, there was two suspicious-looking characters doing things that are just not conducive to what I know about construction work in front of the house. They painted a line and they were just looking at the house, measuring with a stupid wheel roller thing, and they had no ID with them."

Perhaps shady characters attract shady characters?

And hear the call that started it all

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Some famous people don't think too highly of Balloon Boy's parents either. Get the scoop right here.