It feels like forever since I was ‘home’. This weekend, even though I wasn’t really here, I was very much ‘at home’.

Friday night we had a backyard camping trip with a fire pit and smores.  Someone was having a raging party and had several bands playing and it sounded like we were on the outskirts of a concert.  After the music died down we climbed into the tent and Alyx and I talked for what seemed like hours. Shea was fast asleep doing her adorable little snoring and cuddling.
In the morning I was to drop them off so the girls could spend the traditional 4th of July with their daddy, but convinced them that a quick trip to the dropzone was needed.  The dropzone is almost an hour away when it’s not a holiday weekend, so we had time in the car to sing and talk even more. I heard all about their camping trip with their paw-paw and the week they spent with my mom.  The whole time I was so grateful to have them home and to be giggling again. I didn’t realize how much of a part they play in my everyday being until they came back and I felt whole again.

The fourth of July last year is when I started skydiving school.  Walking in a year later made me nearly cry. In a year I have met some of the most amazing people. Every time I am there, I meet someone new that becomes close to me.  This time I finally got to meet someone I had added on Facebook because we had something like 40 mutual friends and they were all from the DZ so I knew at some point I had met him. I had not yet. He was getting ready for his 70th jump and he was going to be wearing his Captain America suit. It killed me that I wouldn’t be able to be on that load.  How cool would it have been to say I flew with Captain America!?  I’ve missed much, like Reno’s 200th jump and at the rate she’s going it, I might make it on her 500th!  An inverted tandem with a base exit off at 6k is what she wanted to do.  She has come so far since we first met at that BBQ a year ago!  To say she is my hero is an understatement.

We left the DZ and headed back home so we could spend the afternoon with my other friends and enjoy the waterslide, drinking, BBQ and music.  It was a great ride out to where they live and we had a lot of laughs along the way.  My friend, Scott threw me down the inflated waterslide and today my whole body aches.  Rule for next year, be more drunk before I allow him to do that again. I wasn’t ready for the shoulder plant I did at the end of the slide!

It was time to go and Lester could see my heart was still at the dropzone and I was going to miss the fireworks that Tommy was making earlier in the day. He drove me back out there so I could hug my friends again and watch the show. The drive was long and if he was smart, he should have just punched me before we got in the car to go because every time the sky lit up with a random firework I would squeal and point, which as we all know isn’t what any driver behind the wheel wants to hear.  If he didn’t have anxiety before he met me, he does now.

Another long, longer, longest drive home.

Somewhere in the trip I realize how much he must love me.  No one in their right mind would drive through about 16 different counties just so I could have a spectacular fourth of July with land friends and sky family.

I’ve been lucky to have spent many 4ths with people I love and care about with fond memories of many of them, but the last two go down in the top 10 in my life! This exact time last year I was getting ready for a date that the only requirement was ‘wear comfortable clothes and pack a bunch of stuff, who knows where we will end up’  We ended up at the dropzone where I started my first class in my AFF course and met Ed.
This year I was surrounded by people that I love with all my heart and soul.  It’s weird how one year can change your whole life…how one DAY can…how one word can—my word was ‘door!’*. It seems almost fitting.

Hope everyone had an amazing day like I did!

door=what everyone yells at altitude as it is being opened.