Patrick's Turn to Plan. [The Daring Dive]

This year, for the first time since our first anniversary, Patrick had enough time to plan our anniversary trip.  We made a deal after our first anniversary that while he was in school, I would plan our trips since he had so little free time.  But now he's done, and I waited in anticipation for the day's events.

A few months prior he told me he had something planned that was a little daring.  Daring, is definitely not my cup of chocolate.  So I teasingly told him that if it was sky diving, he should just ask my dad to go on the trip instead of me, since I would rather die before I would go skydiving.  He just smiled his secretive little smile and didn't say a word.

Well, on the drive there to the "daring activity", as we got close I was instructed to close my eyes.  When I opened them, I still didn't know where we were or what we were doing.  But after hiking a few flights of indoor stairs in an unfamiliar building, we entered a door that said "iFly."  We walked up to the counter and the girl asked, "Are you flying today?"

Patrick responded, "Yep!"

"Okay, you just need to sign this waiver sheet."

I thought, "Waiver sheet?!  Flying?!  What are we doing here?!"

I looked at Patrick and he smiled.  "We're going skydiving!"

I felt my stomach plummet with sick, churning feelings knotting up inside.  "Skydiving?  Real skydiving?"  I was just about ready to ask if we could have a refund.

"Yes! Well, indoor skydiving," he so generously reassured me.

So my visions of falling out of an airplane 3000 feet above ground and literally passing out, changed to a vision of falling from an airplane about 500 feet off the ground in a huge gymnasium and still passing out.  Needless to say, the "indoor" part did little to comfort my racing heart.

In a daze, I shakily signed my death sentence and handed it to the girl, but what I really wanted to do was rip it from her hands and tear it up.  My nerves just couldn't handle this.  We don't even have a written will yet!  What about the boys?  What about Maylie?

And while all these thoughts were circling through my head Patrick escorted me to a bench where we watched some skydiving students.  And I began to relax.  Because it was not dropping from a plane, but just falling through a doorway into a wind tunnel.  And the best part was that there was a bouncy metal/mesh grate only a couple feet below the divers.  Just a couple.

And so began one of the most daring experiences of my entire life....and I loved every minute of it!  So much, in fact, that we might go back someday.  (I still need to learn how to do a flip!)

The rest of the day was splendid with a concert in the park, dinner at The Garden, and ice cream from Baskin Robbins.  We even found time to watch a little from the Food Network...which really was a vacation, since we don't have any channels on our TV.  The next morning we went to the temple, picked up Maylie from the Johnsons, and ended our day with a photoshoot of our dear friends in our old ward. (I will be posting those soon).

Thank you, Sweetie, for planning such a fun and *daring* trip!!!

{Note: you can easily tell who has the squishiest nose :)}