Playing Johnny Quest at the air museum

It was a year ago today that we toured the airplane museum at March Air Force Base near San Bernardino, Calif. The day was terribly hot - in the 90s if I recall - but we still had an incredible amount of fun.

You particularly liked the old World War II Army jeep that was there - we sat in it (you in the drivers seat, of course!) and played Johnny Quest together! You were Race Bannon, and I was Dr. Benton Quest!

You also liked one of the airplanes, an old World War II bomber, and made up a story about how it was the plane you flew during the war! You've always been quite imaginative, no doubt from all the creative playing we did together and the books we read while you were a toddler and a preschooler.

While there were lots of planes to look at, we were both a little disappointed that we couldn't go into more of them - I think we got spoiled in San Diego because the planes they had on the aircraft carrier and the Marine base museum allowed us to!

Here are pictures of our big adventure!

Remember our paper doll characters on blocks?

While writing my new book, "Hikes with Tykes: Games and Activities for, before and after the Trail," I suggested an activity that I quickly realized was something I'd pulled from our time together, "Paper Doll Friends": "For preschoolers, create a hiking family as well as animals seen along the way that they can use to relive their adventures or to make up new ones, getting them excited about the next hike. Paper dolls and cartoon animals easily can be found through a search engine for images, printed and cut out. Have your kids help select the paper dolls to print. To get the paper dolls to stand, glue or tape them to blocks that your kids easily can hold in their small hands."

Do you remember when I used to do that with you? Whenever you came to like a new television show, and we couldn't find action figures to buy, I'd locate pictures of the characters online, print them out, and tape them to blocks. I did it at least for "Johnny Quest," "Fireman Sam," "Scooby Doo" (the villains anyway), and "Caillou." Since the ink on the paper always had to dry, and I'd always glue the paper to cardboard so it would hold up longer, there was this terribly long wait for you, and you'd always ask me if the pieces were ready yet!

One day after I'd taught you to use a scissors and glue, you started cutting out Peanuts characters from the Sunday comics and taping them yourself to blocks! I was so proud of you, and so moved that you loved these paper dolls so much that you would make them yourself, just like daddy did.