Up, Up and Away!

John's 26th Birthday Celebration!

July 10, 2011

Home-made Too Much Chocolate Cake!

For John's 26th birthday I wanted to try and surprise him with a little something exciting. However, this was a little hard due to the changes in our work schedules and all. I knew John had been itching to go parasailing so I knew that is what the exciting something would be! So I wanted to surprise him Sunday morning with this. I ended up telling him a few days before because of all the work scheduling changes. After me calling my heart doctor to get cleared to partake in parasailing it was on. Sunday morning we had an appointment at 11:00 AM.

Upon arriving and getting all the paper work out of the way, we grabbed our life jackets and headed down to the shore to wait on the banana boat. We had never rode a banana boat behind a jet ski before...it was lots of fun! We shared the experience with 3 young people vacationing from Illinois and Texas. Once we arrived on the boat we began to get harnessed in as we made our way further out in the ocean. The other group of 3 went before us. We were so glad the waves weren't rough because both of us were scared to get sea sick. As we watched the other group go I started to get extremely nervous and of course John was as calm as could be. Once they were lowered down we made our way to the back of the boat to get into position to be attached to the rope. I was in front and John was right behind me. As we began to ascend my nervousness grew and John was loving it! Once we were at the peak of 400 feet the view was breath taking. We could see for miles and miles. We could spot the Tanger outlet, the part of the Gulf State Park that was damaged by the forest fire, and the peninsula of Gulf Shores. Even though we were gliding through the air the wind around us was calm and peaceful. I at times had to pretend that I was in a plane to keep my nerves under control. I was gripping my harness for dear life. On the descent they dunked us in the water a few times! Once we were back on the boat I wanted to do it again. The experience for me was nerve-rackingly breath taking. I am glad I was able to experience this with John. I believe he had an amazing time!

Getting ready to take off!

Up, Up and Away!

Dunk!

* I love celebrating birthdays with the ones I love. I am so very thankful for the life God has provided through John. He is an amazing man and I nothing but excited to share many many more birthdays with him. I can't wait to see where this journey takes us!*

A few days before John's birthday we made home-made salsa! We are growing..well attempting to tomatoes and 3 different types of peppers! We had about 5 serrano peppers that we needed to do something with so we made salsa! We used 3 large tomatoes (not from our garden), 5 serrano peppers, half of a white onion, parsley and spices!

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me." ~Erma Bombeck

Megan Koonce