Bring Your Kid to Work Day, Sort Of

Earlier this week, we had a really fun day. Todd goes up to Sacramento about once a week to gather up flight hours to keep his helicopter pilot license. Usually on those days, he leaves before Hazel wakes up and gets home hours after she's gone to bed. This time we made a rendezvous plan.

Todd sent me a text when he was about to leave Sacramento to start his flight, and I threw Hazel in the car to head up to Half Moon Bay. It was about a 50 minute drive for me, and about an hour flight for Todd, so Hazel and I arrived just in time to park outside the small-town airport, parallel to the runway, and stand outside the car to watch Daddy come flying in. Hazel always hears and points out airplanes and helicopters in the sky ("chh, chh, chh"), but she had never seen one flying so low before. It was so fun for me to be able to tell her Daddy was flying it and help her to wave at him as he landed.
We went to lunch at a delicious Italian restaurant, Mezza Luna, with the instructional pilot and the medic that Todd was flying with. The food was fabulous; very authentic, I thought. It tasted just like what we dined on when we vacationed in Italy last year. The owner or manager (not sure which) was Italian and very friendly, especially to our "bambina." He even brought her a complimentary vanilla gelato at the end of our meal. After that, Hazel couldn't stop beaming at him.

After lunch, we all walked back to the Blackhawk and we let Hazel climb in the back and check it all out. She immediately sat herself down on one of the cargo seats in the back and did her "let's go" hum. She wanted to go for a ride!
We took a couple of pictures, but then the guys really had to get back in and fly back to Sacramento, and Hazel would not get out. I tried to get her, and she scrambled away from me. I had to take her out of the helicopter by force, and she thrashed her body around and cried the biggest, saddest tears I've seen in a long time. She was extremely disappointed that she wasn't going to get to fly in the helicopter. Poor girl. (I wish so bad I had a picture of her in that moment!)

I walked her a short ways away, and we sat on the runway and watched as the guys flew away. Then we walked down to the beach to play a little bit, but Hazel was really tired from only napping a little bit on the drive up, and she asked to just go home, so we did.