Skydiving!!

    On Saturday morning my mom walked into the kitchen and said, "Alright, who want's to go skydiving?" Yes. In honor of turning 50, my mother chose to go skydiving. Awesome! I had to do it. This was by far the coolest experience of my life, up there with giving birth (except the recovery is much more pleasant). Similar to giving birth, I was sick to my stomach all morning long in anticipation of the event. Once we left the beach house I was excited and the nervousness went away... for awhile.

Here we are riding over to our dinky plane. Still not nervous.

    For those of you who have never been skydiving before, I will try to explain it. We drive over to the plane and they load everyone into the plane. There are two benches for people to sit on, but you are straddling the bench. Then your instructor attaches himself to you. Next, the plane goes straight up to reach 14,000 feet. Up and up. During this time sometimes the plane door was open, sometimes it was closed. Just depended on what the hippie instructor sitting on the ground of the plane wanted. Tim said he started to get nervous as we boarded the plane. I still wasn't nervous, although I did want to hit my 18 year old instructor who was strapped to me. Imagine yourself preparing to jump out of plane having comments like, "Man I'm nervous," "Don't mess up!," "You're wearing an XL harness? Oops. I thought I grabbed the small. Oh well," etc. being said to you by the man attached to your back. I told him it wouldn't be so funny when I peed on him (excuse the talk) and then he reminded me that he could let go of me at anytime. I let him continue the talk.     

Suddenly the door opens up at the first guy jumped. Ok. Still not nervous. Then I watch Chris jump out doing a back flip!!! "Oh my! Oh my! Oh my!" I start yelling. Definitely nervous. At the same time I am waddling up closer to the door because I'm attached to the guy. Next my mom jumps out and I remember thinking, "You really just fall! There's nothing to catch you!" And next thing I know the 18 year old refuses to repeat what I'm supposed to do and he says, "Ready? Let's go!" Basically they give you no time to freak out because it all happens so fast. Tim doesn't recall watching me jump and he was after me. I jumped into a bunch of clouds and reminded myself to a) breathe and b) open my eyes as we did the free fall (speeds up to 120 mph). As soon as the big parachute opened up I told the kid that I loved him because he made me live. From then on it was relaxing to be honest. The view was amazing. We were right over the ocean, mountains and green plants. It was beautiful!!! Tim even came close by me.

I love this shot of Chris:

Now this is a real smile!:

TRay getting ready to land:

Did I mention I felt the need to be free like a bird?:

My mom:

Check out my mom's excitement in the background:

  Taylor was also happy. Although he was too young to jump, even with parental permission, he rode in the plane with us. Tim's guy told the pilot how badly Scooter wanted to jump, and to give him a good ride. After we all jumped Taylor apparently did nose dive, barrel twists, turns, whatever... everything crazy that you probably shouldn't do in a plane, right over the ocean. He had just as much fun as the rest of us... but was told not to say anything until he got back into the car :).