Monday, February 12, 2007

Happy Birthday Peter!

   Hangzhou 050
Today our eldest son Peter turned 12 years old.  He received his first cell phone for his birthday, but his real desire was a remote control helicopter he had been eyeing at the store.  Sue went 2 days ago to the store and saw they had only one left, so she secretly bought it for him.

Yesterday, the day before his birthday, Peter wanted badly to go to the store and buy the helicopter.  Diabolical parents that we are, we took him back to the store to buy it, even though we knew they were out of stock.  After the disappointment registered on his face, we told him they would be getting more in stock soon, but not in time for his birthday.

At dinner last night, he said, "Hey, I bet you already bought one, and just took me back to the store to trick me!"


We said, "Hey, that would be a good idea, but do you think we would think of that?" 

"No" he replied with great disappointment. Ha!  We had fooled Mr. Smarty-pants.  This morning, Sue put together a treasure hunt for him and he was SO SUPRISED.
Hangzhou 052 Hangzhou 056

Next it was off to the field next to the university next door.  We had to get past the security guards (3 of them!).  I explained in my broken Chinese that it was my son's birthday and we would only be there for 15 minutes and could we PLEASE use their field.  At first they said they didn't have a field, but then I said I could SEE it from our apartment window.  Oh.  The guards looked at the helicopter and the boys.  They smiled and let us through  :)


The take off...
Hangzhou 040

Airborne!

A perfect windless day for the maiden flight!

Hangzhou 034

Don't cut the power now!  Avoid crash and burn on the birthday! Hangzhou 029

The battery ran down with no major ground collisions.  It was a good day.  

Hangzhou 035

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy birthday Peter ! Glad the snow melted for your helicopter flying. It looked like a lot of fun.

weaties said...

Happy Birthday Peter! That Helicopter looks REALY cool! I'm looking forward to flying it with you when I see you next.

Bob & Amy said...

JuliaHappy Birthday Peter! So glad your parents had your back with the copter. What a relief!! Have a blast!
Love,
The Maher's