Hill Air Force Base

We went to the Hill Air Force Base Open House on Memorial Day Weekend. The weather had been nice all week and so I planned cool clothes for everyone since we were going to be outside all day. We woke up and left the house around 6:30 in the morning. All the kids stayed awake for the drive up and enjoyed eating breakfast in the van. I had the thought to grab everyone's coats in the morning, but wanted to wait until we got the kids up so that I would not wake them earlier than needed to get in the van. Well as soon as we got their and were unloading everyone from the car, the lady unloading next to us turned to Tucker and said "you better grab your coat it is rather cold out here."

Of course I forgot to grab the coats and it was rather cold outside. Fortunately, we brought each child a blanket (in hopes of helping them to sleep on the ride up or the ride home) so we wrapped them each in a blanket and tucked them into the stroller. Then we started the long walk from the parking area to the entrance. As soon as we got there, Bryant realized he had his pocket knife in his pocket, like always. Rather than walk all the way back to the van he opted to throw it away at the check in gate. It seems like he takes after his father in that way. I will probably be buying him a pocket knife every year for our anniversary because he keeps "losing" his.

Once we were inside the gate we went around to all the different aircraft. The children had lots of fun climbing into them. We got there right when it opened so there were no lines at a lot of the helicopters at the beginning. Tucker was so cold that he almost opted to stay wrapped up in his blanket rather than get out and climb in the aircrafts but eventually he got over it enough to have fun.

Brylee was particularly interested in climbing in everything!! Anytime one of the boys, usually Hunter, went to get inside of something, Brylee was right behind him begging to be helped up into the aircraft too.

Everyone was super excited about getting in this jeep! It was really tall!!

They had a great photo opportunity outside of one of the hangers and each child took a turn having a picture taken. If we had planned appropriately we would have stood in the same place to take each picture and stuck them all together.

 The tallest suit was a little tall for me and made me look like I had a really small head. I just couldn't get close enough to the cutout with my pregnant belly so Bryant had me stand next to the middle size one.

 Inside the hanger were a bunch of booths. The boys got balsa wood airplane kits, a poster, a sticker, and a paper space shuttle kit from NASA, a free toy from one of the booths, a safety whistle, candy, and a couple of other stickers from other vendors. Right at the door, there were a bunch of guns on the ground for people to "play" with. Hunter had fun laying down pretending to shoot me! He would not get up until I acknowledged to him that he "got me."

 Bryant really like this airplane so we took a picture in front of it

This was my favorite. I can never remember its name but it is the airplane that can take off and land like a helicopter. They have the side wings in an in between position so that you can get the effect of their rotation. It was really big!

This jet is meant to be an experimental new jet (or something like that) It did not have its engine inside of it so you could see right through from the back out the front of the plane. It is crazy to think that the majority of the planes are the engines and there is only minimal room for the pilot.

After we walked around and saw all the planes we sat down to watch the air show. It promised to be really cool with a lot of stunts and fly over. We started by seeing some people  parachute down. The wind was really gusty so they had to be extra careful. We stayed and watched a couple of airplanes do their "pre-show" but ultimately left after only an hour or less of the show because everyone was freezing and the dark clouds in the sky kept getting closer.

We made it to the van as it started to sprinkle and there was a slight drizzle as we were leaving the base. Once we were on the freeway we were being pounded with rain and despised that all the cars were driving without their lights on. They could be only a few feet in front of us and invisible because they didn't have their lights on, there was so much rain!

My cousin with her family, anticipating rain, and they tried to stick it out and they ended up getting soaked on their way to their vehicle once the rain storm made it to the base. After the storm passed, the air show continued and was likely spectacular but our boys were still a little young to appreciate sitting on the concrete for five hours of entertainment, perhaps next year we will plan better, knowing what to expect. The boys do have memories of one jet's "banana turns" (Tucker's favorite) and fire coming out of the back of another plane, the afterburner (Hunter's favorite) and they talked about them for the first part of our ride home.

Funny enough, Tucker and Hunter both passed out within minutes of getting on the freeway but Brylee stayed awake the whole way home and did not permit me to fall asleep!