Skydiving

For the past four weeks I have been booked in to go skydiving. But each time I call them up they tell me that the weather is no good and we have to postpone it til the next weekend. It has been hard trying to plan our weekends around it, and I had been getting excited and then disappointed when it didn't happen.

This weekend the weather man was telling us it was going to be 23 and sunny. I was excited, and trying not to get my hopes up. I called him before we left and he said it was good to go and to call him an hour before we left! lol I told him that since it took us two hours to get there that we were going to be leaving straight away!

The skydiving centre is at Lilydale. Heading out east there was a sky full of cloud. Doubts were starting to creep in and we were already thinking of back up plans of heading to Healville Santuary. But we turned up on time and found out that they were a couple of hours behind schedule. We headed to a park for a nice picnic lunch.

I got some practice at skydiving by being very daring and going down the slide!

After lunch we headed back and I got my lesson on what I need to do when we jump. So much to remember!Left foot out first, then right, then drop down. Head back, arms crossed across chest, hips forward and legs back trying to hit the tandem guy in the butt!
Then when he taps me on the shoulder I hold my arms out and it is time to pull the cord!
We got geared up - some sexy parachute pants (which funnily enough matched my tshirt!) and the very important harness. The next step was to try and fit in that tiny plane! There were three jumpers, so six people squished in the back of the plane. There aren't any seats back there... basically I was sitting on my partner's lap and the guy in front of me was sitting on my feet!
The plane ride up took ages. I was sitting right at the door, so we had the best view. We could see the city, and the bay.

I was the first out of the plane, jumping at 6,000 feet. The others were jumping at 10,000. I wonder what it was like for them to see me jump first!

I got my feet out, then all of a sudden we were falling. I don't really remember much about that except we did a lot of tumbling and turning before we got face down. That was pretty scary, I thought maybe I didn't have my feet back enough or something. Turns out there were 8 twists in the parachute so we were twisting as it was untwisting!

Then we had the moment when the parachute opened. That was the worst bit. All of a sudden there is a huge jerk and you get pulled upwards. The harness felt like it was strangling me around the chest. Once that settled down it was actually quite relaxing. It felt like we were just flying like a bird.

All too soon we were making our way downwards and heading toward a little golf buggy which had Kel videoing me from.

I kept my legs up while we landed, and we had a nice skid down on our bums onto the grass with the parachute falling behind us.

It was awesome, but over so quickly. And it was well worth the wait to have that beautiful weather!

Fireworks

We kept up our tradition of going to see the fireworks on Saturday night. A couple of years ago we went, with Sam only a few months old and lying in a sling. Josh can still remember last year when Hayley came with us and she stayed the night. This year it was just us. We went to our usual spot - away from the crowds. I set up the tripod and managed to get a few good photos, even though I had forgotten the proper attachment. Basically I was holding the camera onto the tripod. Not ideal, but it did ok.
We were all wearing glow stick necklaces and bracelets and our hairy beanies that we got from Phillip Island. We got a few looks and comments!!!
And a tip - those glow sticks last for ages! We now have them hanging around the bedrooms and they are still glowing.

Snakes Alive

As part of the Djerriwarrah festival they had a snake handler. A little boy was holding a snake and he just handed it over to Josh. He didn't quite know how to hold it properly, but it was a pretty friendly snake. When I held it, it tried to warm up in my jacket.

Kel loved holding the snake, though Sam was not really impressed!

Melton Waves Fun Run

I entered the Melton Waves Fun Run on Saturday. It was a 7.5km event. We ran three laps around Hannah Watts park and the golf course, then the finish was down High Street.
I tried to pace myself at the start and even then my legs felt so heavy. I really had to push myself to keep going. There were some kids along the bike track who were giving high fives and cheering on the runners.

After the first lap Kel told me that I was the fifth female. That pushed me on and every time I passed another female I knew I was that much closer to getting a good result. I still stopped to get water each time I passed the water table, and the gap increased a little bit, but in the end I think it paid off, because I overtook two other girls so I was running in third place. I stuck to the number two girl closely, but didn't overtake her. We did a whole lap like that, then once we were on High Street and I could see the finish line and made a sprint and overtook her.

There was only one problem... that wasn't the finish line! I ran to the line and the marshalls told me to turn down the other side of the street until the finish line banner (which was hidden in the trees!). So I had another 100m sprint to the finish line, but I still managed to stay in front!
I was a bit delirious at the end, I thought I could almost pass out. But I was so excited that I came second! That is my best result so far!
My time was about 36:25.

Halloween

After Kel's Horror themed 30th birthday party, he has been collecting lots of horror / halloween stuff. He keeps talking about having another party... even bigger and better than the last one. He didn't quite get around to it this year, but I did come home to a different site when I got home from work on the 31st October.

There were huge cobwebs around the carport with gigantic, black, hairy spiders, complete with glowing red eyes. There was a scary looking black cat in my garden, and a raw, red hand sticking out of the door. I opened the front door and was greeted by a life size skeleton hanging in the door frame, then my two little ghosts jumped out at me from behind a black sheet!

This photo is very freaky, Sam wasn't too happy with the costume and I think he was shaking his head. Causes a great halloween photo effect though!

The boys had even carved out mini pumpkins with tea light candles in them, and we had some pumpkin soup for dinner.

We got a few trick or treaters this year... mostly young teens rather than kids. Some of the girls were funny, they were freaking out at all the decorations.

Mary Mary Quite Contrary...

How does your garden grow?

In toilet rolls

So far we have (from left to right) sunflowers, Kent pumpkin, spring onion and lettuce.

The hard part now is stopping the bugs from eating them.

The inaugral Caroline Springs fun run

On Sunday I entered a 10km fun run at Caroline Springs (to celebrate their 10 year anniversary - I can't believe it has been that long!).

I was envisioning a fun run with about 30 people in it... but it was actually really well run, and there were around 100 runners.

I hadn't run at all since the half marathon (unless you counted a couple of times I had to run for the train). But it was funny how the mind works... because I could tell myself "it's ONLY 10km!... when prior to June that was the furtherest I had ever run at all in my life!

It was a very hot and windy morning, and I was so tempted to stop at the 5km mark. I really had to push myself to keep going.

I finished with a personal best of 52:45 (my previous time was 55 min).

It was a really good day. They had Bob the Builder there. Sam was so excited... but he ended up bursting into tears when Bob got too close. In the end we did get a photo.