As the Dad, I don’t have the opportunity to post on here very often. However, with Heidi out of the house being a taxi service for our oldest attending Science Olympiad, I have the blog writing cornered for the afternoon.
Yes, Ruth’s birthday was yesterday, the 27th, and yes we have plenty of pictures of the token blowing-out-the-candles ritual and all that stuff, all which will eventually be posted after Heidi parks the cab. Today, more important business was performed: the traditional birthday flight with Dad!
This, of course, piqued the curiosity of all the boys, who asked in unison where their so-called “traditional” birthday flights went. Ever since going full-time in ministry, raising personal support to fly them around on their birthday went way of the Dodo. My flying hours have diminished significantly, and that’s ok.
But today we splurged. We offered Ruth her first opportunity to fly with Dad at the ripe age of two years to…Schaumburg! (a whopping 20 miles away for you out-of-towners). Schaumburg has perhaps one of the best fly-in restaurants in the country, Pilot Pete’s. So, Heidi packed up the kids sans Ruth in the car and drove to Schaumburg while Dad took Ruthie to the airport and flew to Shaumburg. (Jeremy pleaded ad nauseam to go with me and Ruth until we eventually caved).
Here are the two of them posing for the obligatory picture in front of the plane shot.
To be honest, Ruthie was not all that sure about this. When the hanger doors opened to reveal the airplane, she bolted off in the opposite direction. Here’s where having Jeremy with us proved quite valuable, as she dutifully followed her older brother into the airplane.
Now as you can clearly see from this video, Ruth just loved it!
We saw our house from the air.
Ruthie arrived at the airport and quickly found Mom, who was taking pictures from outside the gate.
After a good lunch, we headed back up in the air (this time Derek and Peter argued their case for inclusion)
During lunch, Ruth was a total chatterbox. “Airpane, airpane up in da skyeee” was all she said. On the way home Ruthie was much more relaxed and excited as you can see. Healthy fear, then food, followed by non-stop talking, equals…
After landing, another obligatory shot…
…and Ruthie explaining to Peter that what he sees is an “airpane”.
For a Dad, all of this is priceless. Happy Birthday little girl.
P.S. For the aviation fans out there, here’s our landing on the grass runway at Naper Aero. Ruth slept through the whole thing.
