Flyboys

Back in June, as a birthday present to Grandma and Grandpa, we took them on a weekend trip to Ohio.  Though we were only gone overnight, we packed a lot into our time together.  For Grandpa, we visited the Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson Air Base in Dayton, Ohio.  For Grandma, we hit the Cincinnati Zoo.  And for the boy, we of course made a quick detour to the Lego store.

The Air Force Museum is incredibly impressive, on the scale of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington.  It took us two days to see it, and I'm confident that Grandpa would still be in there if we hadn't physically made him leave.  There were planes from the earliest days of flight through modern stealth craft, with everything possible in between.

LOTS of aircraft in giant hangers.

Matt and a Flying Tiger

Apollo 15 command module - SO COOL!

Charles stuffed himself into a demo cockpit.  He is clearly too tall to be a fighter pilot.

Little boy and Little Boy.

The only potentially bad moment came when the boy accidentally knocked over two of the metal security poles, which crashed to the ground, almost taking out the nose of some irreplaceable experimental aircraft.  I thought we might have to make a run for it, but no one came over to investigate the horrifically loud crashing noise of the poles hitting concrete.  Honestly, though, I'm confident that we could have outrun the docents, as they also seemed to be relics from the earliest days of flight.

After the museum we headed for the Cincinnati Zoo.  Grandma enjoyed seeing all the primates, and we all enjoyed watching Matt feed the lorikeets.  Thankfully we had Charles, master of all things feathered, with us.  Matt spent a while trying to entice a lorikeet over to his seed stick with no success.  Finally Charles went over to one and stuck his finger out, and the darn thing hopped right on his hand and crawled up his arm.  Matt was delighted.

Biology Boy at work.

The zoo was wonderful as always, with some new exhibits and some old favorites.

Manatee munching on lettuce.

Please note that Matt has stuck his finger in the gorilla's ear.  Ah, six year old boys.  So classy.

Despite repeated warnings, Matt got too close to this peacock.  Happily, he was not eviscerated.

And since we were in Cincinnati, we of course had to stop at the Lego store for the boy.  He had somehow managed to squirrel away quite a bit of money, which combined with his lemonade stand earnings and a little bit from the grandparents, gave him quite a few options in the store.

Look at all these Legos!

Despite the fast pace of the trip, I think Grandma and Grandpa enjoyed their weekend.  Maybe next time we can drag them to Louisville...