I saw strange red lights tonight!

It was 8.30pm when my supervisor rang to say that we will be working on Saturdays and Sundays instead of Fridays and Saturdays. I got interrupted by my other half who wanted to know what those red lights were. When I first looked there were two pulsating red lights, one above the tree tops and another much higher in the sky in an Easterly position. By the time I went to get the telescope one had vanished !!!!! Then the other one vanished while I was squinting at it, but they came back much in the same positions. I got the sliding door open and was lining up the scope on the lower one, as the top one had disappeared again, when it vanished too ..... and the sky was back to normal ... clear with the milky way very distinctive. I'm glad that other half saw them as well.
I've spent many nights and many hours outdoors working the telescope around the night sky and I've never seen anything like this before. We see planes all of the time here with the airport near us, but these were not planes .... and there was no noise. Two red lights pulsated/flashed on each of these objects. Darn wish I could have seen them in the scope. Ok that's all as I just wanted to record this while it is fresh in my minds eye.

Did they hover Ev, or did they rise very slowly? We saw some lights last Saturday that were red and flashing. They were very far away, so we couldn't see what they were with the binoculars. They were in a line vertically, and rose very slowly. We watched for ages, then when we thought they were gone, 2 more appeared at the lower point where we first saw them. We have decided that they were the red LED flying lanterns http://www.grabone.co.nz/nelson-marlborough/10-flying-lanterns-8?

I might check out those flying lanterns to see if the behave in the same way. Yes the two we saw were in a vertical line and we were expecting them to be moving towards us as the planes do, but I don't think they were moving at all ????