mommyofthree

I'm noticing that my blogging has suffered some since the kids are on summer break. I love complete silence and concentration when I'm writing. Well......that doesn't happen with kiddos around. That's OK. I'm going to do my best. This has become a very important outlet for me and I'm determined.

I'm not going to give a play-by-play, but several things have happened around the Smith home.

First of all...baseball season has officially started. Ryan has been playing for a few weeks. They are doing well. We aren't traveling quite so far this summer (which has me stoked). All the other teams are within a hour from us. They are also traveling here. That didn't happen last summer. Tonight we are playing a home game.

Gracie is also starting her softball career with her very FIRST season. She has been to a couple practices. Their first game was rained out last night. :( I went to the city yesterday and bought her PINK batting gloves, shorts to match her team shirt and new shoes. We are official now.

Rick's dad had his shoulder surgery the day before our Colorado vacation. He says that it is going to be a painful recovery. We are hoping that it was worth it. They kept him in the hospital since he had his heart attacks last November. The latest in the saga is....he now has a hernia. He will have yet ANOTHER surgery on the 10th. This will be, by far, the least invasive of the 3. They predict that he will be coming home within the day. (sigh)

I finally finished the Twilight books in Colorado. It's probably a good thing that there aren't anymore. My love of the books were bordering on UNHEALTHY. Is it weird to read them again? I did that with Harry Potter. I'm so weird. No need to tell me. I already know.

On to the pictures. I must ask a very serious question. I made a bucket list not long ago. I mentioned bungee jumping or parasailing as one thing I must do before I die. Do the pictures below count as bungee jumping? I sure hope so. Otherwise I'm revising the list. Because I am not bungee jumping!!!! This was up there with the scariest things I've ever done.

Actually BLOGGER loaded these pictures backwards. Ryan and I were almost done at this point.

So...here's the story.

We went to Royal Gorge. Rick and I had been there before. It wasn't the highlight of my day because I'm a little nervous around heights (ironically). But in all the pamphlets we read that they expanded the park. There was a old, faux western city where you could buy collectibles. (We later found that it was all junk), there was a sky box to ride over the gorge. It almost looked like a single cable car suspended over the gorge. It started pouring, so we couldn't do that. So you get the point, several different things to look at.

When we got there, Ryan saw THIS thing called "sky coaster" and that is all we heard about. We walked up to check it out. It wasn't quite open yet. They were still "testing" it. The ribbing began. "Are you going Mom?" "Mom is chicken", "I bet you can't do that". Normally teasing like that gets the teaser nowhere. I'm not caving. I guess that they caught me in a moment of weakness. Before I knew it Ryan and I were paying the $42.00 and strapping ourselves in. The fear didn't hit me until they were cranking us up to the top of the contraption. I knew then that I had made a very bad mistake. Ryan was trying to comfort me. It wasn't working.

One of us had to pull a rip cord. I knew that if I pulled it, we would never fly. So, I gave it to Ryan. Once we were at the top, they said 3, 2, 1, fly. You pulled the cord on fly. I was hoping in the back of my head that he wouldn't pull it. I was suffering from a moment of insanity though. This is Ryan we are talking about. King of "I'm not afraid of ANYTHING". He pulled it and we were sailing.

I was so afraid that I couldn't shut my eyes. It wasn't the strangest feeling. I wanted to, but I couldn't. I remember feeling relieved when we were flying over the landing of the ride. Then being scared out of my mind when we flew over the gorge. I guess I never calculated how this dude would work. To most of you, this would be a no-brainer. But I thought the initial fall would be the worst. It didn't occur to me that the natural pendulum movement would make me do this again, and again, and again, and again. After the first time, I wanted down. After the tenth time, I was frantic. Ryan was trying to calm down his mother. Saying, "It's almost over, We are almost done". Poor guy. You have heard the saying "scared stiff". I always thought that stiff meant dead. I have a new theory now. It means your scared stiff. Can't move, can't talk, can't function!!!!