Wayne's Final Flight

Tradition in our flying world is that you get a special treat after landing on your last flight in a unit. My "fini" flight was Monday and here are the pictures...

Lindsay and the kids showed up early and I wound up landing late due to an issue getting refuelled, but it worked out fine. I knew it was late and didn't think many people would stay to see me land, so I wasn't expecting much. I made it out of the helo and then saw the hostile crowd approaching, led by my flight engineer from my last deployment. I tried to fight them off but wound up duct taped and dumped in a bin full of ice water and sea dye anyway. Did I mention it has been cooling off at night lately?

After the dunking they painted my feet green and gave me a ceiling tile to leave as my legacy.

Thankfully, the sea dye did not turn me green (as my flight engineer was hoping) so I wound up relatively unscathed, other than a few bruises.

Happy Halloween!

We had a "pizza picnic" on the floor and then got dressed up and went trick or treating while it was still light out (before it gets scary). The girls did really well this year: both of them said "Trick or Treat" at almost every house (with some prompting) and were very good with their thank-yous. Gracie kept asking "Can we do that house?" so I think she was understanding a little more of what was going on this year. I wore a Spiderman shirt because Gracie wanted me to, and Nanny even dressed up. Gracie decided long ago that she was going to be "Spider-Girl, to the rescue, save the princess" for Halloween and Nanny was the princess. Gracie's friend Ellianna joined us, wearing a fall fairy costume.

Our neighbourhood got mobbed again this year but there were more little kids and less teenagers, which was nice. Lindsay and Katie made 140 treat bags (which made us "the best house ever" in the words of one little boy) and we could have used probably a hundred more. We had a good time although it was pretty warm and muggy (high of 85 yesterday and pushing 100% humidity).

The wagon was a big hit. All the girls took turns riding and pulling.


Here's Nanny "Save the Princess"! What a good sport!


Gracie wasn't the only Spider-girl around


The girls loved handing out treat bags!