No fear

"Ya only live once" - I've heard Laura say that more times than I can count. She has a long (and very adventurous looking) bucket list that she's been chiseling away at. One of the many things on her bucket list is skydiving - but unfortunately she had to be 18 to do it. She'd been telling all of us for over a year now that as soon as she turned 18, she's going skydiving. And well, she turned 18 recently, and the day after her birthday she had an appointment to go skydiving with Ryan and some friends. To the disappointment of them all, however, the weather turned rainy and windy that day and so it was cancelled and rescheduled for another day. That day finally came and it was a glorious day, perfect in every way, clear blue skies and very warm temps and beautiful autumn colors all around.

We were all up early that morning, packed a picnic lunch and headed south with the gang. Everything that happens around here is pretty much made into a family affair and this was no exception and so everyone went to watch, with the exception of Ceara, who had to work that day. Shasta & Jon and their kids also tagged along.

The four jumpers --- Laura & Ryan and James & Catherine...

After signing in they had to watch a video, sign waivers and read several pages worth of various info, meet with an instructor and do some training, wait around for a while till it was their turn, get harnessed up, and then climb into the little plane and take off....

After taking off in the little plane, it was a good fifteen minutes before they were high enough to jump out - we all stood around gazing up into the sky and shielding our eyes from the bright sun for several more minutes before we finally spotted two little dots waay up in the sky --- if you look closely at the first pic below you'll see two small dots, whom are Laura and Ryan. Once they had landed and everyone chatted for a few minutes, it was James and Catherine’s turn to do the same. (These pics are of Laura & Ryan --- Laura with the turquoise parachute and Ryan with the red, white & blue chute.)

Ryan landed first and a few minutes later Laura landed. The first pic below she and her jumping buddy are high-fiving....and the other two pics are of she and Ryan --- they were both all smiles and definitely pretty thrilled over their jump. Ryan's chute didn't open quite as smoothly as it should have - seems the ropes were tangled ("major tangling" is what the instructor said) and it didn't open immediately when pulled --- but all turned out well and it makes for a much more interesting and thrilling story to tell....ha!

All of us were able to walk over to the landing field so we could watch them land. Everyone at the small airport was great and all the staff super friendly and it was definitely a family-friendly place. These bottom pics were taken shortly after James & Catherine's landing - most of the gang was together and they were all walking back to the hanger, very animated and talking about their jumps...

I think the status James wrote on his facebook page the next day sums it up best:

"...there is just something about jumping out of a perfectly good airplane at 10,000 feet and plummeting toward the earth at 120 mph for 7,000 feet in a matter of seconds that makes your adrenaline have adrenaline, then feeling the jerk of the parachute pulling you out of a terminal velocity free-fall, totally worth it!"

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The four of them again...

**Laura and Ryan and James and Catherine. These kids are pretty cool. Although, I really don't know Catherine, we've just met her a few times at our house - she's quiet and seems like a very nice girl. James and Laura have been good friends since last winter. The two of them had initially met a few years back through church functions - but since James was so much older than Laura, they were only acquaintances. But then Laura started seeing James' younger brother and spending a lot of time at their family's house - and sometimes James was also around and so they kinda got to know each other a little better because of that. And then there's James and Ryan - they're best friends and have been for years. Laura met Ryan for the first time one evening when she and James' brother, and James and Ryan got together and were hanging out. At the time, she was head over heels for James' brother and the two of them were spending lots of time together --- but in the end the two of them decided that a good friendship was a better fit for them. She and James continued to hang out from time to time and a few of those times Ryan was along to hang out with them also -- and eventually she and Ryan started hanging out more and more alone and then eventually began dating. We've gotten to know James fairly well - and he's a cool guy. And Ryan is definitely a good guy and we all love that boy. So anyway, these kids have a cool relationship/friendship and it's cool that they were able to skydive together. And yes, in case you're wondering, most of my daughters have a tendency to hang out with older kids - Laura can't handle the drama and the (mostly) immature ways of many girls her own age and so her closest friends are (of course) her sisters and her guy friends, who mainly are all older than she is. Lisa is proving to be the same way - she has more girlfriends than Laura does, and some guy friends as well, but most of them are older than she is. And so yeah, I guess I just took a little rabbit trail with all that info. Ha! I just really love relationships and the stories behind how relationships come to be - it's always amazing to me how God works things out in a person's life.