Skydiving!

First off, and most importantly, we survived! :)

For Dad's 50th birthday (which was back in January but skydiving in ice and snow is not recommended - I assume) Court's and I gave him "one skydiving jump".

From January to June I tried to forget about the jump and made sure to not bring it up with Courts in hopes of her forgetting all about it. The thought of jumping out of a working plane was terrifying. It's insane! I was the one expressing the most fear and anxiety about the jump, so much so that mom said to me very seriously that I did not have to jump if I didn't want to haha

We finally set the date for our jump once my quick trip to Minnesota was confirmed for the end of July. I flew in at 6am, took a nap and we were off to Wisconsin by 1pm.

This sign is not a joke. Skydiving is dangerous for both jumpers and spectators ;)

Right about the time this was taken I started to go to my "zen place"..... From the beginning Courts was cool as a cucumber about the whole thing, expressing only excitement about the big day. To everyone's SHOCK, however, I was a zen master the whole time and Courts started to lose it in the classroom where they teach you how to jump. She was teetering on the edge of hysterics - laughing, crying, laughing, crying. Poor girl. Luckily she had her rock steady dad and sister there! haha

Our fan section included G'ma, Mom and Grandpa.

After a surprisingly short lesson on how to jump and incredibly long consent form (we only had to sign or initial 44 times each - seriously!) they strapped us in. Dad was feeling good about the whole thing and ready to go.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier.....I may or may not have forgotten to bring my drivers license with us....... so our jump was slightly delayed while my awesome cousin Sheri ran over to our house to take a picture of it and sent the photo to Court's iphone. Ooops.

Finally, it was time to jump! We said our goodbyes and our prayers ;)

Dad's tandem partner was also the owner of the operation. He has over 12,000 jumps under his belt and was great at preparing Dad for what to expect. I was nervous about jumping with my guy - he didn't seem very trustworthy. I don't know if it was the camouflage cargo shorts he was wearing, his nonchalance or the fact that he made more jokes about malfunctioning equipment than anyone else's partner. I must have drawn the invisible short straw.....great......

The pilot seemed great. I was okay with him :) We climbed into the plane and sat straddling a bench with our tandem partner behind us. We decided Dad would jump first, then me and finally Courts. We took off with ease and started what turned out to be a VERY long climb to 13,000ft. Courts continued to freak out with tears and fear in her eyes. I tried to comfort her as did her partner who casually asked her what she liked to do for fun (as a way to distract her). She launched into a 7 minute rant about politics and he didn't ask her any more questions after that hahaha

I looked over at Court's partner's watch which displayed the current altitude. I felt like we were getting pretty high - I looked over and saw in horror that we were only 5,000ft up. We had a long ways to go......I managed to maintain my zen state while Courts was thinking about how she didn't want to die and was just going to go back down with the pilot.......at 13,000ft the door opened up and the moment of truth was finally upon us. In a matter of second we watched Dad drop out of the plane (oh my gosh!), then we waddled up to the door (oh my gosh!!!) and before I could even think, we jumped. Court's wasn't far behind.

I would try to explain the jump to you but it is totally indescribable - you just have to do it for yourself! I can tell you a few things though: (1) it doesn't hurt but your mouth gets really dry, (2) the free fall lasts about 1 minute, which we couldn't decide if it felt like no time at all or a really long time, (3) your brain and body just overload (in an exciting and good way) which is what makes the whole thing indescribable, (4) once the parachute opens up it is a really nice 10 min float down to the ground, (5) unless, your partner does crazy tricks with the parachute like ours did (spinning, dipping, etc) and (6) Courts and I stuck our landings and Dad landed on his butt HAHAHA

Courts landing.

Me coming in for landing.

The birthday boy.

Dad LOVED it! I don't remember the last time Dad had a smile plastered on his face and excitement in his voice for so long. It was a total success!

Courts ended up really liking it too, and I loved it. What a surprise! I know! Both Dad and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

With our feet safely planted back on the ground, we recounted the experience to our fans and tried to regain complete control of our limbs (we all had noodle legs and shaky arms for a bit - it was a lot for our bodies to take in; generally plummeting towards earth is not something your instincts are too happy about).

The moral of the story - go skydiving if you get the chance! It's one more thing checked off the bucket list ;)