Skydiving

July has been pretty busy. I finished my job at Tesco and got to spend some time at home in between. The weather wasn't as hoped but we managed to head out to the river and for lunch and a few walks. One of the main reasons for going home was Dad's 70th birthday. And instead of doing something normal, he wanted to go skydiving. So we all went.

Signing in.

Mom was not going to go up in a plane, let alone jump out of one! So jumping, it was myself, my dad, my sister, brother-in-law and one of dad's friends who was also 70th year. We were split in runs, so Dad and I went first, Craig and Uncle Jim second, and Kerry was on the third flight. We all decided to have the video packages (who knew if we were going to do this again?).

On the way up.

Dad jumped first

He's off.

Then my turn.

It was an experience.

Oddly I wasn't nervous jumping (my fitbit says my heart rate got up to a massive 90 bpm) - maybe because I was firmly attached to someone who knew what they were doing. We did free-fall for about 45 seconds and were falling at about 120 mph, hence the wonderful face lift photos. :)

When he pulled the shoot, that hurt. I had straps around the top of my legs, my shoulders and across the chest, and damn the legs straps hurt. It was very pretty coming down but I totally screwed the landing. You are supposed to lift your legs up and land on your butt. But thanks to the straps my legs were numb and didn't go up. So I landed on my knees. I had some impressive bruises for the next few weeks. Though not as bad as my brother-in-law who go a huge bruise on his thigh from the straps.

Dad was glad he did it, but like me, not over-keen on doing it again.

After the skydiving, we all went back to Kerry and Craig's house for dinner. She had done some decorating and got a cake for dad. He was very happy with it all.

Happy with the giant balloons.

The awesome cake.

Dad was very happy with his cake and apparently it was a very good red velvet. He had a great time. So did I, though it took quite some time to get over the bruises and aches. 

Dudmaston

One of the days we went to Dudmaston Hall and had a walk around the grounds. (I'll have to go back another time to see the house.)

The woods are amazing and worth a visit. The trees are huge.

We walked the long way round and stopped and had a picnic at the side of the river furthest from the house. It was beautifully quiet and we sat and watched the ducks and dragon flies. 

Picnic! 

Chestnuts and mulled wine

We did manage to have some fun over Christmas and New Year (I know I am really behind in updating this). By New Years Eve mom and dad were feeling a bit better so we enjoyed our meal and a sparkling wine comparison.

I love roasted chestnuts but last year and this year we shouldn't find any so decided to make them ourselves. You can just roast them int he oven but where is the fun in that? Dad had an old washing machine drum which has been converted to a fire barrel and he made a grill out of car engine oil dip sticks. (It worked fine until the plastic ends melted off onto the grass.)

Grill

 We had a little trouble get it to light. Who knew Christmas paper was not flammable? So dad decided to help it along. With I believe it was a bottle of break fluid something. Anyway very flammable.

Considering 

Having fun

A little too much

 It was all going well until he squirted it in for a little too long and the fire travelled up the stream to the mouth of the bottle. This happened 3 times. Luckily each time we managed to put it out before it got into the bottle of highly flammable liquid and create us a Molotov cocktail. Though we did set the lawn on fire each time while putting it out. Mom didn't care. It just burnt the mss anyway.
We got a good fire going.

And mom made some great mulled wine while dad and I were causing chaos in the back garden.

Chestnuts on.

Note the burnt plastic the floor.

Enjoying our efforts.

Kinver edge

A few pics from a walk over Kinver edge