Air Power Day

I guess since the computer's been tied up lately feeding my TV addiction (now that we can watch Netflix on demand and Hulu) I'm behind in the blogging!

Today there was an air show here at Osan. I took the kids, and Dan was working at the first aid station there, and then had to go into work unexpectedly when his shift was done, and all of us melted down at some point or another, and, and, and...

It was a pretty good day, but taking a 4 year old, 3 year old, and 8 month old to an air show that you really want to see and they only partly want to see is not exactly fun. I'm glad we got to see what we did, and Luke enjoyed a lot of it. Rayna enjoyed whining and screaming. Tessa actually watched the Thunderbirds a little bit! But I was stressing out about her ears (those planes are loud!).

Here's how I tried to protect her ears... a little cotton ball and the hat over it to keep it in. I think it worked pretty well. I should have done something similar for Rayna (the noise was the root of her fit) but you know, she has full control of her hands to cover her ears like all the rest of us were doing (and she was doing that, too. Just very un-happily).

And later when she fell asleep I tried to drown out some of the noise. There was less flying going on at this time.

The Thunderbirds

Luke watching

Again

and Again

The Thunderbirds again

and Again

I thought this picture was kind of cool even though you can barely see the plane (you can better see the line of smoke in the sky if you look really, really close), but the tall building on the right is our housing tower.

The Thunderbirds on the ground

The Pilots

I decided to be kind to Rayna and post a happy picture of her, instead of the other ones I took earlier in the day. I'm nice like that. This is her "rock star outfit" and she loves it.

A-10s

Our neighbor Charlie was flying one of these planes! They did this really cool thing where they simulated a rescue/recovery situation. They had someone on the ground who had landed in "enemy territory" and the A-10's, F-16's and a couple different kinds of helicopters all did what they do to show how they would cover the area and land and rescue the guy. It was neat to see all the aircraft flying at once and seeing how they work together to do things like that in real life.
And a disclaimer about any explanations I attempt to give about military things: I know that I probably use all the wrong terms and mis-name airplanes and such. Sorry to those who know better than me and cringe.

A-10

This helicopter lands really fast, all the guys jump out and run to recover the other guy, run back to the helicopter and are out of there in a flash (with the other planes and things flying overhead providing air cover... or something like that).

Luke now knows all the names of the planes way better than I do after Dan showed him, and since it's somehow in his genetic code to know/remember these things.

I think this was a C-something... a big fat plane doing all kinds of crazy manuevers and looking like it will fall out of the sky at any moment. It's like watching the beluga whales at Sea World... they're doing all the tricks (well, not all), but it looks way more awkward and difficult than when the killer whales do it.

My first attempt at ear protection... earplugs. As you can imagine, they didn't last long.

And to end with the beginning... to start the air show the ROKAF (Republic of Korea Air Force) did this thing with a bunch of guys jumping out of a helicopter and parachuting down. These two are flying with the American flag and the Korean flag.