Days out with Kids - A visit to Birmingham airport.

My husband flew back to Dubai from Birmingham the last day of the Easter holidays. Our 6 year old niece knows we live a long way away and have to go on an aeroplane to get home and that it takes all night for us to travel. We've shown her our home in Dubai on google earth, plotted the journey on a map, shown her pictures and videos of us taking off and landing in planes, but she had no idea of what getting on a plane involves, so we decided to take her along for a visit to Birmingham airport.

After an hour of ispy and 'this is boring' (it was a 90 minute car journey), we neared the airport and asked O to help us navigate. This involved finding the picture of the plane, the junction number and knowing our left and rights. This is a trip we make on a regular basis and know the route like the back of our hands, but we let O believe she was in charge.

My sister had already warned me not to use the sat nav as O will argue with the woman on there.

We had to return the car hire in Peter's name and made the short walk to the airport terminal.

Stopping to look at the aeroplanes and holding Uncle Peter's hand really tightly as she didn't want him to leave.

After checking the departure board, O declared where we needed to be to get the ticket from.

 O watched with interest and asked questions until she was satisfied the check in staff would get Uncle Peter's case on the aeroplane.

 As we were early, we took a walk around the terminal and took a trip or 3 on the monorail, purely for entertainment.

 O was really sad she didn't have a ticket, but asked Uncle Peter if she could come next time and saw this picture of Dubai and recognised it from our face book photos.

 After saying goodbye to Uncle Peter and a few tears and way too many questions as to why O couldn't go on the plane to say further goodbyes, we wandered off to find the viewing platform as we had 2 hours before the next car hire was ready. (I was carrying the car seat the entire time).

The viewing area is no longer available, which is a shame and the only place to see the aircraft is now the tiny gap at arrivals, which was crammed with people awaiting their loved ones. So it was back on the monorail, we explored the NEC, ate our pack lunch, bought a cup of tea in a cafe and sat in the car rental office for 30 minutes doing some colouring in.

After an uneventful journey back to South Wales and more ispy, O finally fell asleep and when we got back we checked the app to see where Uncle Peter was.

We paid a visit to the park, to let off some energy after the car journey home and then there were tears at bedtime because she really hadn't wanted Uncle Peter to go home.

This was a whole new experience for O , she sees us only once or twice a year and was actually born the month after we moved from the UK, but she is a big part of our lives and us of hers. O is happy just to spend time with us, she doesn't need entertaining by throwing expensive gifts at her (that's our need, not hers) she just wants to be with us, doing the normal day to day stuff. We'd love to give her the ill experience and surprise her with a trip to Dubai, but sadly she is epileptic and my sister's health currently prevents her from travelling out to Dubai.