gotta go girl: April 2009

Okay, I promised I would blog this great day and it has taken me awhile to get the pictures all figured out. To start off, Zach was asked by Make a Wish if he would like to participate in the "Pilot for a Day" program. Since he got to miss school, of course he said "Yes". Well, we had no idea how amazing this program really was! We almost missed it as Zach became concerned about absences just the night before the event then I decided to throw caution to the wind, sent an e-mail to his principal and affected teachers and decided this was more important! Boy are we glad we didn't miss this! Katie really didn't care about it so she went to school but Seth and Hannah came with us.

We had to be there by 7:30 a.m. A bus was waiting for us at the entrance to Hill Air Force Base and tool us inside the facility.

We started out by eating breakfast in a hangar with F-16s and real pilots from the "Black Widow squadron". The immediate thing we noticed was that the "Top Gun pilot swagger" is real. Such impressive young men. I don't think I realized before what it really takes to become a pilot. These young men are very disciplined, very educated, very smart, and very amazing in every way. Our man pilot that showed us everything was "Bobby" and we all quickly fell in love with him. He later shared his personal story about becoming a pilot and that was also truly amazing.

At this point the kids were given all kinds of gifts from their own pilot helmet bags, complete with custom-made flight suits for them and lots of "Black Widow" items such as ski hats, ball caps, special coins that they use, stationary, etc. The flight suits were really cool!

After breakfast we did all kinds of touring through the facility and the kids go to go through all of the real pilot training that the real pilots do, such as using the real flight simulators, real parachute simulators, wear a special suit so they could feel like it feels to "pull g's", etc. It was really amazing. I took lots of pictures and have put together a little slideshow of what I am able to share....but I will say that we went into "top secret" areas that I cannot share.....like the flight helmets that cost $110,000 each!!! (Cool Huh?)

After touring we had lunch and then we were able to have our own personal flight show with an F-16 pilot complete with all the fancy stunts, etc. It was pretty amazing! Afterward the kids got to go into the actual F-16 fighters and see all the controls, etc.

After the show and the media (Zach declined any media...silly boy) we went back in for a ceremony of sorts where they kids were given real "wings", and lots of really nice gifts, like a huge framed lithograph picture of an F-16 signed by ALL the Black Widow pilot squadron. They got a really nice plaque with their picture, and a wooden model of an F-16. Really generous and impressive gifts.

All in all it was an amazing experience, one we will never forget!

Here is the news footage and photos:

http://v2.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=5962660.

If you paste it into your browser it should work.....