Brotherly Love

Matthew hates this pic. I threatened him with this photo earlier but he kept pestering me, so now its available to the entire world-wide web!

Brother / Sister Flying Adventure

Ahhh working with family... It's always interesting, that's for sure! Luckily, my brother and I have a really great relationship... We've always been really close and and have pretty good flow when running the flying service.

However, with Matthew's airplane STILL being out of commission he has been a bit cantankerous lately... to say the least. I believe he currently has a temporary case of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), running around like a chicken with his head cut off. Between trying to tell Cupcake, Brandon, and Lonnie what and where to fly, finding out information about his prop, talking to the engine mechanics, and doing fix er' uppers around the shop, I think he doesn't know which way to go. He has shuffled and reorganized my schedule cards about 10 different times and if he does it once more he may have to get a knuckle sandwich. He's just all over the map! For instance: Just a little bit ago Matthew said he was going to the parts store; then he said he wasn't; then he decided he would; then he forgot what he was going to get, so he just gave up and went to talk to Robert.... Oh wait, never mind, he just left again.

Luckily, along with this cantankerous side, he also has a great sense of humor... Yesterday morning I walked in and he just started smiling at me like a Cheshire cat. He said he just liked to smile in the morning (yeah, right) and then we got into a ridiculous discussion about what a "Cheshire cat" actually was... But just to make sure he wasn't up to something I made him take the first drink of coffee in case there were any crushed up laxatives in the pot. (My dad actually did this to someone once) He then followed the morning up by singing partial lyrics to "Indian Outlaw" over and over and over. This morning he threatened that if I tried to get a real job in Little Rock before the end of June he would lock me in the airport to live and my only chance of escaping would be to grow my hair out like Rapunzel. (What in the world?!?!?!) Oh, and when I got back from lunch today... He booty bumped me!

My brother and I have always made a pretty good team. When we were about 4 & 6 we decided we would put on an entertainment show for my KK .(Cal's wife for her birthday) We both dressed as punk rockers, lip sang, and pretended we were the band Heart. (2 girls) Our old neighborhood was on a dead end street and I was the only girl amongst probably 10 boys that played together. Matthew almost almost always included me and pretended like I was one of the guys. He taught me how to shoot a BB Gun, how to get muddy, how to build some pretty sweet forts!

Even through raging teen hormones in college and high school, we got along pretty well. Matthew took me and my girlfriends for our first cruising of the square. He drove me to high school and let me stand with the cool kids before the bell. My freshman year in college he was the pledge trainer for the Kappa Alpha fraternity. When one of my pledge dates didn't treat me the way I thought I should have been treated on a football game date, Matthew made him come to the all girls dorm, strip down to his skivvy's, and sing some KA song to me as loud as he could while on bended knee! Hahaha

We also lived together, along with our good buddy Kane McPherson, in a trailer park for his last two years of college! It was kinda like "Threes Company", only backwards & white trash style... I got to do the majority of the cleaning, washing, and cooking (although they did their share of frying things) and in return got two big body guards that would threaten to "whoop" any guy that did me wrong. We took classes together (hence my ag business major), I set them up with my girlfriends, and we had lots of very intellectual conversations. We also threw really great trailer trash parties! To this day I still have a few friends that wish we still had the ol' trailer park every now and then...

..Needless to say, our brother/sister banter is very entertaining. Shawn and G.W look at us in amazement and/or confusion almost every day! Bless Shawn's heart, we sometimes just leave him speechless!

While I never thought in a million years that I would end up back at the flying service I think it's kind of a blessing in a way. Matthew and I are able to hangout together everyday and I think we're making a lot of great changes. We know we want to continue the legacy of great customer service, hard work and performance that my Papa created and that my father left; while continuing to educate ourselves on new technologies and make necessary adjustment to improve our overall operation! I think we make a pretty darn good team!