LUKE DAYS
I didn't know I was brave for doing this, but my mother-in-law commends me for even attempting to take the boys to Luke Days on my own. We drove out to Luke Air Force Base, which isn't all that far from our house. They had aerobatic shows and working military aircraft on display.
We got to the big dirt parking lot and got stuck in a traffic jam. The parking attendant said "Aw forget it" and told me to park where I was. It was right next to the exit! But that was after we got to drive through a mud-puddle and get a little mud on the tires.
I packed our lunches and other kid supplies into the double stroller and headed in the direction everyone else was going. It wasn't too far to the base, but man, that base is big! There was a lot of walking involved, and my boys aren't exactly small. Without any gear they probably add up to 60 pounds. We didn't even walk all the way to the runway where the air and ground shows were. We could see them pretty well from afar. But Jared refused to watch the air shows. I think the sky was too bright, and he had lost both his baseball hat AND his sunglasses a few days previous, so he was up a creek. And bored out of his mind to sit in the stroller in the middle of a big field. Zach, too. I got frustrated and decided it wasn't worth it. I almost left, but then they brought out the Mig. Wow, that's a cool plane. It had 12 foot flames shooting out of the afterburner, and it screamed past the crowd very close to the ground.
I was heading for the gates, past the parked military aircraft when Jared suddenly caught the vision. He headed for a medium-sized bomber and his face lit up. He ran around, pointing out the huge tires, the bomb hatches, and the engines. He hypothesized about how the pilot gets in, and thought it very interesting that they get strapped in just like he does in his car-seat. He really liked the Osprey, especially after I explained that it's half-helicopter, half-airplane. Then we asked around and found the planes that Uncle Ken flies at Sheppard AFB in Texas. One of the T-38's was actually FROM Sheppard. I held Jared up and he got to see inside the cockpit, to which he responded, "Whoa!" It was hard to hear him, though, because an F-16 was roaring around doing very cool maneuvers.
As we were heading for the gates to leave, I looked up and saw a big black triangle in the air. It was a Stealth fighter! So, so very cool. When it turned its wings horizontal, we could hardly see it anymore. Jared calls it a flat flying triangle .
On the way out of the parking lot we got another good splash in the mud (instead of driving around it like all the other wooses), then the boys sawed logs all the way home.
While trying to watch the air shows, I thought I was an idiot for coming. It was a cool outing, but backfired. I'm so glad things got better, because all in all, it turned out to be a very cool day.