a kiss a day: Primary Flight Family Day

Despite a little mist, (and a minor melt down by a certain little Missa), We really enjoyed Family Day.

The weather lately has been a bit WET....and the chances of stuff in the tropics turning into a hurricane just brought more and more of that wet stuff over the past few days. I'd be lying if I said I haven't somewhat enjoyed it though. It's been incredibly hot here, (not typical August in Alabama hot...so they say) But HOT.... open the door and it smacks you in the face hot....stand still outside and watch your kid ride their bike for 5 minutes, while sweat drips down your back hot...grossly hot! SO, I am enjoying this rain and a bit cooler temps :)
Friends back at home thought I was crazy when I posted a FB comment about burning my fall scented candle..HAHA..They replied with things like "Hey it's still summer!" Look friends, it's been summer for this NH girl since the second I stepped out of the car here back in January!! Im over it!

Anyway...... Family day did not get rained out. WOOHOO! We met here on post at the museum where we then followed "that army guy", as the kids called him, out to the stage field. We parked and watched the (as the kids call them.....) "practice helicopters" ;) HAHA, this is where Ryan yells..."It's a REAL helicopter!!! It's called a TH-67!!!!" To clear the air, and make everyone happy, we will just go with what Bryn calls them.... Helicockers!

Slowly they began to fly in, 2 came in and circled around, then 3 more off in the distance came in, then a few more, and more...until the field was filled with helicockers.

~Ryan is 99C~

It was really cool to watch, kinda gave you the chills. Just knowing they were all our pilots, showing us what they do on a daily flying basis. It was great. Up, down, around, stop to re-fuel, up again. and a lot of hovering. Really neat to watch. The kids were able to check out the control room at the top of the tower. There was a catwalk around the outside too which they loved.

It was really cute to see the kids waiting at the fence for their daddy to land and come see them.

They had a spread of food for us too, of course the kids had all eaten lunch already so they attacked the cupcakes and chips while mom tried to get as many pictures and videos as possible! I know they were so excited to see daddy fly, but secretly I think they came for the cupcakes. ;)

It was a small area to watch from but there were some bleachers where the kids could sit and watch them fly and do their thing. Once situated with their sweets, they were quite content watching all the action.

Then it was time to switch out. Each helicopter has two pilots and the I.P. (Instructor Pilot)...Daddy was landing and his stick buddy was going to have his turn showing off. The kids were eager to greet daddy.

Then it was time to check theses helicockers out! This was by far the kids favorite part. Sure it was fun watching daddy do his thing, but now it was their turn to sit in one of these bad boys!

Family picture time...yep, you guessed it...this is where lil Missa's meltdown came into play. Of course. She did not want to get out of that thing. So we thought we were smart working her into our picture through the window. We did manage to get a shot of her happily peeking through earlier...so we thought she would be game...

Boy were we wrong! She refused to look through the window and smile. We even recruited another pilot (a friend of ours) to hold her up in there....she used to be quite fond of him, i'm not sure now. Eh, she'll get over it! He'll be back to "Unckie Clay" in no time.

Speaking of "Unckie Clay" We couldn't finish the day without getting a shot of the two knuckleheads...ummm I mean Pilots, together.