Ian's Christmas Present

First, I want to apologize for being off the map for so long. My photography business was crazy busy for the holiday season and to top it off Ian and I and the boys were traveling and living out of suitcases for a month during Christmas and the New Year. I didn't touch the Internet except to check my email a few times via my iPhone. So, needless to say, the blog got put on the back burner. However, that leaves us a lot of fun stuff to catch up on!

I got Ian the best Christmas present ever, skydiving tickets for two, and guess who got to go with him! :) It has been something we have both wanted to do forever, but just never got around to it. So, as a surprise to Ian, I booked us two skydiving tickets for Jan 2nd at 9am. The early morning probably wasn't as good of an idea as I originally thought. I just planned it around the boys naps, actually, so that mom wouldn't have too much trouble watching them. However, I completely forgot how much colder it is in the morning than in the afternoon. So, needless to say, it was about 30 degrees on land and just got colder and colder the higher we flew! I had on 3 shirts and a sweatshirt, stockings and jeans under my skydiving suit and I still needed to defrost when we landed!

It was such an amazing experience though! One I will never forget! We both decided to jump tandem since it was our first time and I loved the people we got paired up with. My guy, they called him Chief, was huge and I was like his 4,000 and something tandem jumper to go with him! I felt completely safe. Ian's guy, Johnny was totally chill and so much fun. Ian and he hit it off automatically.

I want to get to some of the pictures quickly and I will narrate through them, instead of telling you all the details first. We did get awesome video footage of our jumps, but Ian has to show me how to convert them to files that can be put on here or YouTube or something. Until then, I figured the stills would do.

Here is Ian getting geared up to go in the plane. You can see the shadow of the camera man. The camera and video were attached to some sort of hardhat he wore. It was crazy!

The plane is tiny! Just enough room to kneel down and jump out!

There they are crawling out of the hatch door.

Ian and Johnny, his tandem coach, did a back flip out of the plane! Crazy, I know, but Ian was like "go for it!"

There is a picture of them heading out upside down!

Right side up now and just dropping out of the sky!

It was crazy to see your videographer just fly up in front of you during your free fall. You are like "wow, someone else is out here flying around!"

Things are beautiful from up there!

Thumbs up!

That is I-35 underneath them

Ian had this crazy perfect landing! It was like they just floated down and stood up perfectly together!

Ian seriously was a pro! Everyone loved him, of course, and kept saying he had an amazing jump! Within minutes he was ready to do it again!

Here we are leaving the training area and heading out to the plane. I actually went first and Ian got to watch from down on land. :)

Chief was explaining to me how we are going to climb out on to that little pedestal on the top of the wheel and jump from there! Crazy! Actually, a side note, our plane didn't start at first because it was so freaking cold outside! We had to have it jumped! :) ha!

This was amazing! The most thrilling part for me was getting to open the door of the plane! He was just like, "ok, we're gonna open that door, climb out on the wing and jump for it!" It was awesome to open the door and feel the wind flying past you! All those times looking out plane window, you never imagined you could just open a little hatch and jump out if you wanted! :)

Here we are climbing out on the wing. This is one of my favorite shots! To me THIS was the crazy, death-defying act, walking out on the plank. Once we jumped it was just beautiful and almost a stress release.

And, there is the jump, my friends! Free falling for about 1 min! It feels like forever though!

I believe we were at about 10,500 feet at this point, just dropping out of the sky!

Still free falling here, there is a tiny round shoot that lets out and stabilizes you but doesn't slow down your free fall at all at this point.

I was trying to blow kisses to the Ian and the world far below. :)

Here the parachute starts to deploy and we get to float around and world-watch from a bird's eye view.

I held my feet up for the landing, since he was so much taller than me anyway. So, once he established the first contact to the ground, he told me to stand up and that was that. It was so much easier than I thought. You feel like you are some sort of self-controlled puppet, pulling this string to make you go left and the other to fly to the right, etc.

My tandem coach was awesome! I would do it again in a heartbeat. Although, for some reason, Ian and I were crazy sore for the next few days. I think it was the wind resistance or something. It didn't feel like we were using any major muscles, but apparently we were.