Mission Aviation Fair

Saturday, August 20, was one of the most fun days we've had this summer, in my opinion. It felt more like last summer where we were out and about doing activities as a family. We started the morning by heading to the Mission Aviation Fair at the Smoketown airport. While there was also some event at the Lancaster Airport, we knew the airshow was at noon, and we were invited to a birthday party at that exact time. So, we headed to Smoketown, arriving right around 8:30 and enjoying a delicious pancake breakfast by donation. Shawn put our cash in the jar and then took all the kids to find a seat under the tent. In the meantime, I took four plates and they loaded up the top two FULL of food. A nice woman told everyone that I was feeding a family of four, and I think we had enough for a small army. It was all delicious - pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage and orange juice and coffee.

After we were finished (and the kids all did amazingly well!), we went out to the field to look at the airplanes and walk through the booths of sponsors. One man at a booth let them pick a prize, so they each took a fish pencil sharpener. They took the pencil sharpener out so that their fish had teeth and would grab their fingers - silly boys!

One of the airplanes was "broken" as Caleb would constantly tell us. They offered helicopter rides for $30 each, and Joshua really wanted to go. While $30 doesn't sound like a lot of money, it adds up with four of us (let alone little Ryan)! They also had little Kodiak plane rides for $20 each. We didn't do those rides, but we did enjoy watching the airplanes take off and land.

Then we saw a model/demonstration helicopter that was a rescue helimission or something. Anyway, the older gentleman at that station offered to let the boys into the helicopter for pictures. His buddy that was there also took our kids' pictures. The boys were SO fascinated. I thought it was so nice that they let them in to enjoy looking at the controls, etc.

Finally before we left, we paid for the kids to go on the barrel rides, which they highly enjoyed! The guy driving them whipped them all around like crazy (sort of scaring me) and the boys laughed and laughed and really enjoyed their time. We ran into a couple people from our former church there.

Ryan was great the entire morning! He slept most of it, and then I fed him in the back of the minivan when Daddy stopped at Walmart to buy a few things when we left there. :) It was a fun morning, and we were soon off to enjoy a birthday party...