I tell you what.

There is NOTHING more satisfying than to take your child for their very first flight, and to watch their eyes positively pop wide open when the wheels depart the ground.

Such as it was for me and my daughter tonight.

Lexie, who's only 3, adopted her daddy's love of aviation while I was studying for my instrument rating.  She would curl up with me in my recliner and watch my Sporty's Instrument Pilot DVDs.  She even knows her phonetic alphabet better than she does the regular one!  Boy, won't that be a trip when she enters kindergarten and says "... X-Ray, Yankee, ZULU!" 

At any rate, I had planned to go out tonight to get some Night Stop and Goes before TKI shuts down for the fall for surface rehabilitation (the runway will be closed for about 2 months, and the Texins fleet will be relocated to Sherman, TX, which is about an hour away from me.)

She looked at me with big brown eyes and said, "Daddy, I want to go flying, too!!!"  I thought about it for a while, and decided that if one of her uncles (who are 12) would sit in the back with her, I could manage.

I half anticipated she'd freak out as we began to roll out, and was fully prepared to abort the takeoff.  But when I glanced over my shoulder after rotating and stabilzed climb, and saw her nose pressed to the rear window, and a big grin reflecting with each strobe flash, I knew we were golden. 

I did two stop and goes, then departed the pattern toward the city lights.  She was bedazzled.  I could hear her squealing "Look at that!!!" at just about every possible thing she saw.  We flew around Plano and Murphy for about 10 minutes, then headed back in for our final full stop.

When I turned off on the taxiway, she asked, "Daddy, can we take off again??"

She's hooked.  Just like her dad.