So after much encouragement to write a book etc. about the adventures of my two terrors, I decided to start a blog. WTH!?
Not something I ever thought I’d do, but I loved the idea of entertaining (horrifying) a wider audience with their adventures. A few things fell into place over the last couple of days that suddenly made me realise that part of our adventures and stories are closely tied to our lifestyle as the family of an airline pilot.
The other day I was out of milk and hubby (poor guy needs a better pseudonym!) was away on a three day trip. I really didn’t fancy having to face the shop with 3 kids (I was minding a friend’s child for the night) and was wondering if I should call a friend to help me out! I have a great network of friends who live near me and I’m sure there were plenty who would have been happy to, but I decided toast would do just fine for breakfast.
However, hubby had recently told me about a guy he was working with, whose family had moved here from interstate. As far as I knew, they had no family or friends in the area. I realised how tough it can be for families when they move to build a new network – something especially important I believe when you have small children and it can be harder to get out and about. So I started searching for support pages for pilot’s wives/partners and found there were none in our area.
I know there are a lot of FIFO (Fly In Fly Out for those of the uninitiated) pages and support groups out there and I have often felt that maybe I should join some. After all, the life of a pilot is technically FIFO, however it has its own unique idiosyncrasies which made me refrain from doing so. I wanted to support this family and reached out to the wife via Facebook. But at the same time, I realised there would be many more in the same situation and decided to create a support page. I added a few friends of mine who fit the bill and overnight the membership doubled with them adding their friends. I figured we could be onto something.
While I don’t believe our partner’s occupation defines who we are, there are definitely challenges we face which we can either embrace or complain about. For the most part I choose to love it and make the most of whatever comes our way and wanted to share some of that lifestyle with you. Whether you are also a flying family and can empathise, someone who’d love to know more about what the lifestyle is like (and why we can’t always RSVP to your wedding invitation by the due date – it’s not that we don’t want to!), or you just want to be entertained by the adventures of our dynamic duo, I’d love to share this journey with you.
