For those of you not from the Tri-Cities, every year at the end of July there is a weekend of boat racing and air shows called Water Follies. Now forking over a bunch of money to watch boats race all day doesn't make sense to us, but you can see the planes from outside the event area, so for the past three years I've taken the kids (and whoever I can drag with me) down to the Columbia River levee to watch the air show.
This year I could only wrangle Asher and Madeleine, which actually meant we could stay there longer. I brought a back pack full of water and a picnic lunch. We climbed down the levee to dangle our feet in the cool water, kicked back and watched the show.
This year they moved the boat track so we actually got to see them up close.
Mostly we (I) went for the air show (which really just consists of a couple planes flying around, but I love it and the kids tolerate it. This year there was a Russian World War II plane that the kids liked because it put out smoke.
Then there was a jet trainer that caught us off guard because its first approach brought it right over the levee from behind us. We had no idea it was coming until it went screaming over our head. It also flew the lowest of any of the planes, right through the smoke hovering over the river.
They also liked the C-17. It was a hulking cargo plane that flow low and slow, so slow it seemed like it must have been suspended by cables. It allowed us to get great pictures.
I got a pretty good video of it flying by, pulling its landing gear up.
Then we went home for a couple hours until the later air show. This time we had to bring Lydia with us, because Vanessa was at a birthday lunch for her mom. But the afternoon air show was a Navy F-18, by far the fastest (and noisiest) plane. It was so fast it was tough to get pictures of and the video was all super shaky as I would try to track it from one side to the other at 600 mph. I got this video which captured my favorite part of the experience: the sound it makes as it rips by.
Well I had great time and I think the kids did too. This was a picture of Asher and Madeleine during our first stint.
Lydia got her first set of pigtails this morning! Madeleine thought it was awesome that someone else was getting tortured besides her. Lydia is growing up so fast! She will be eleven months old in a few days.
