Kailee saves the day

Jason needed to build some hours in the Cessna 206 that he will be instructing in once the semester starts at Moody, so the family got to go along on one of his flights.

Mirielle was so excited about going flying that she was up first thing in the morning ready to go. We packed up all of our stuff and headed out to the airport. Jason preflighted the airplane and we got Kellan and I strapped into the middle row of seats first.

Things were going really well until we tried strapping Mirielle into the front seat. She was not excited about sitting in the front up by all of the controls. My super cool and calm husband explained how she needed to sit up in front to balance out the plane and that Kellan was too little to sit up in front and how she was just right and could watch him fly, etc. etc. The pep talk didn't seem to help much as she still was convinced that she needed to sit next to mom.

Since our first attempt didn't work so well, Jason took Mirielle back inside the building to get some seat cushions so that she could get a better view out the front window, thinking that might help calm her down. They came back talking about the pictures they saw in the office of the first mission aviation pilot, who happened to be a woman. We thought it would be a go until we tried strapping her in, which resulted in more tears.

On to idea 3. Next we tried putting her in the back row and pushing my seat back so that I was sitting in between her and Kellan. She wasn't too thrilled about that idea either....

So after more than 30 minutes of trying to convince her that she would be okay and have fun once we got in the air, we finally gave up. Defeated, we packed up and put the plane away. In between packing up and getting ready to leave, Jason discovered that one of his coworkers had brought his teenage daughter, Kailee, with him to work. She was more than happy to accompany us along on a flight and was able to sit in the back next to Mirielle. Kailee saves the day as you can see her presence made for all smiles in the back seats!

We enjoyed the ride around town and even got to see our house from the air. The scenery certainly was different than the last airplane ride we took into the tribe. Fields instead of coral reefs! We were so thankful that it turned out to be another fun family adventure (and we discovered a new babysitter that lives close to our house!).