Airplane Education

Every since I can remember my brother Mike has been obsessed with airplanes and flying. When he was little, he played with his Little People airport all the time (I think he still might have it in a box someplace) and his small metal "matchbox like" planes (it seemed like he had hundreds of them and it sure did hurt when you stepped on one accidentally. Grammie just told me that she found a whole box of them in her storage area...funny the things we keep). My parents would take him to the airport to watch the planes land and take off. When I was in high school, my boyfriend had his pilot's license and got Mike books from him to start learning more about flying - I remember seeing him reading them and they still are on his bookshelf. Mike even studied aviation in college. To this day, he loves airplanes and I am amazed at all the knowledge he has and now he is passing that knowledge onto Arabella. She loves airplanes and gets so excited when we get to fly someplace. She is great at spying them in the sky and yelling "airplane" as soon as she sees one. In the summer, the traffic pattern of the planes taking off and landing at the airport here in Montreal has them flying over our house - some of the planes are huge and Arabella loves it. It is the funniest thing when they fly over at night as I am putting her to sleep, as soon as she hears the noise, she makes you know what there is a plane flying over. When we flew home from Florida, we were lucky enough to have Uncle Mike and Grammie come to the gate with us. I got to spend a little more time with Grammie and Uncle Mike took Arabella all around the terminal. They stopped to look at all the different planes at the gates and he would tell her about each one - what type of plane it was, what they were doing to the planes, the watched them load and unload baggage - she was loving it and so was Uncle Mike! I dreamed that Uncle Mike and Arabella would have as close of a bond as they do, but I am so thankful for it...and I love that he wants to teach her so many things, most of all about aviation. Who knows, maybe one day she will turn out to be a pilot...now wouldn't that make Uncle Mike (and the rest of us proud)!