Q. What do my Mom and Peter Pan have in common?

A. They Both Fly.

Growing up My mom was a house mom. She did typical mom things like force her children to play the piano and shuttle kids to karate and dance lessons. She made wonderful dinners with broccoli which we refused to eat. She volunteered in our school classrooms and was the girl scouts leader for our troupe. She played the piano for our elementary school plays. Then around my 21st birthday my mother added another notch to her belt and became not only a house mom but also a pilot.

My Mothers transition from the kitchen to the cock pit was a gradual one. But within a few years my mom was entertaining the family by flying circles over the house in her little Cessna and waving to my younger brothers and sisters as they played in the back yard. She earned all of the pilot license and ratings. I remember her pouring over charts and long discussions about log books and instrument ratings. My little sister Jani and her husband were also pilots so pilot lingo became a standard at the dinner table. She toyed with the idea of flying the bigger jets professionally but eventually settled down as a chief flight instructor. The job suits her well.

I am used to the idea that my mom is a pilot but I still think it is really cool. So now in addition to all her mom chores she hangs out at 2,000 feet above the ground teaching her students how to do turns and Zero G's. When I call her cell phone it says. "Hi, I'm either out flying or I'm at home. So leave a message or call me at home." Sometimes our conversations go like this. "Hi Mom how was your day?"

"It was good my students needed a long cross country flight so we flew to California had breakfast and then came back."

Recently she has been pictured in the paper talking to two Utah celebrities Gov. Jon M. Huntsmann and Dieter F. Uckdorf. I like to tease her about her glamorous job but she is very modest. In fact she doesn't really tell people she is a pilot. But I'm not so modest. And since she's appeared not once but twise in the paper lately I thought it was high time I paid tribute to her on my blog.