five men and a lady: Doug's Fini-flight

Doug had his fini-flight on Wednesday last week. He was worried that he wasn't going to get to fly at all b/c of the bad weather they were expecting. They had forecasted heavy fog all day. But by the grace of God there was no fog in the morning so he was able to take off. He flew over to France and flew around at 500 feet and loved it. He says you can't beat it! Unfortonatly his transmitter went out when he was tanking and had to head home. He says people couldn't hear him that well, it was really scratchy. That's just not that great when flying around, you want other people to hear you, so he had to turn around and head home. This presented a problem, b/c I wasn't going to pick up the kids until they got out of school but he was landing an hour earlier than that. I happened to be dropping off food for after the flight when some guys from the squadron let me know that Doug was about to land. So I left the twins with the guys and flew accross the base to get the older boys out of school early. I was wearing high heels and at one point they got stuck in the mud and I ran right out of them. We rushed back across base (the school and squadron are on opposite ends of the base) and were able to jump into the van that took us to the flight line. They had told Doug to hold at the end of the runway and to not drive up until we got there. So once we got there they let him come up and the boys got to see him taxi in and get out of the jet. They had to check the radios before he shut down, so we stood there for a while waiting with him in the jet, but eventually they let him out. The boys were so excited to get to spray their Daddy down with water, they were all ready to tell the older boys who usually do it that they wouldn't get to b/c it was thier dad! It turned out to be just the boys and I along with a handful of other pilots, but the important people made it. Doug was so worried that his boys were going to miss it, it was just a God-thing that it word out the way it did. It's tradition to spray down the pilot with water and then the wife sprays him down with Champagne. With little kids pointing the water hoses even I got a little wet, but Doug got SOAKED!!