BLUE ANGELS

Yesterday, I pulled the Dad card and a gal at church got me free tickets to go sit in the Patriot Chalet at the Miramar Air Show. Me, my 3 boys, and Aaron from my high school small group went to the show to eat, laugh, meet the pilots, climb around on machinery from all the armed forces,and be amazed by the crazy things America's pilots can do. We had tons of fun. Here's my observations on the day.

DAD DUTY: As a dad, I need to take my kids out of school to stuff like this again... it was tons of fun and a great memory.

FACTS OF LIFE: No matter how cool the tricks you can do in the air in a plane, it can't expand the attention span of a 4 year old. Also there is a law when parenting young children I have discovered: if there is something good about to happen you don't want to miss, someone will have to pee.

HERITAGE: There are men there who flew fighter planes in WWII and every war/military event since then. It's pretty amazing to see how much mutual respect they have and how much they support one another.

PERSPECTIVE: You get a very different feel there on freedom in America than you get in most of the news today. It is good to spend some time pondering all sides of the coin. I wondered how I'd feel if my 3 boys followed these men and women in their careers with the military. I think I'd be proud. I'm not sure how you can walk around that base and not be.

CONCRETE: there is a lot of concrete on those runways. I didn't know there was that much concrete in the world. I think I noticed cuz I put like a thousand bucks worth of concrete in my front yard recently.. and I think there is like 10 million bucks worth on the ground there. Not in the buildings, just the stinkin flight path.

TECHNOLOGY: we have fighter jets that can take off, fly a route, hit a target, return and land all by computer with the pilot there as an accessory and while breaking the sound barrier if they want to. Craziness.