Anniversary

On Monday, March 14th, Marty and I celebrated our 8th Anniversary! We would have loved to have gone on a cruise, but the funds weren't available. I saw a Groupon deal a month or so for a good deal to try IFly, Flowrider and Rock climbing in Ogden. We both thought it would be a fun thing to do to celebrate.
Marty's parents came down to watch the girls for the day and we headed off to Ogden.
After a short video instruction, we were all dressed up and ready to fly! Our instructor was Kia and he was awesome!
Marty during his first flight.
Me during my first flight. This was probably the best picture we have. It's not very flattering when your checks are shaking, but that's what happens when you have 300+ mph winds blowing you off the ground.
We asked a random girl to take pictures for us and she did a great job, it's just that our camera isn't that fancy and we were inside a plastic container so the pictures are what they are. It was a pretty intense feeling. The first thing I remember feeling was it felt like water up my nose. Marty didn't feel the same at all. I'm sure it's different for everyone. It was definitely an adrenaline rush!
Marty's second flight. We each got two 1 minute flights, but that's about all you need with that much wind.
And the end of the second flight, our instructor grabbed a hold of us and spun us up into the air with him. It was incredible!
Me going in for my 2nd flight. The instructor stays in with you the whole time. It's good because it's really hard to control and he helps guide and direct you the whole time. You communicate by hand signals while inside. He tells you things like bend your legs, straighten your legs, chin up, or relax.
It's pretty fun to fly! I felt just like Tinkerbell!
My turn to go up with the instructor. It helped that I knew he was going to do it after watching him take Marty up, but wow! He took me up about as high as you can go and kept spinning me. I was starting to feel a little dizzy. It was awesome though! Our instructor competes in real sky diving. He is amazing. He was doing flips and all sorts of tricks in that wind.
Here are our certificates for completing the first training course. The groupon itself was worth this experience. I loved it! It doesn't seem like much time, but I felt it was worth the experience. I've always thought it would be cool to try skydiving, but never did. Now our life insurance would be ruined if we tried it. Marty still has interest in skydiving, but I don't know if he will ever get a chance to go.
We even scored a DVD of our experience. We were getting ready to leave and they handed us the DVD and said that they recorded us and were just going to throw it away so we might as well keep it. They didn't even know it was our anniversary so we considered it a gift!
Next we had an appointment at Flowrider, which was just downstairs. I really wasn't looking forward to this experience, but I knew Marty had always wanted to try surfing. It's not exactly like surfing because of how the water flows up, but I'm sure it's a similar feeling.
You first work with an instructor and he helps you get used to the board and how to get your balance by yourself. The instructor would eventually let go and off you would go by yourself.
Here is Marty falling. When you fall the water pressure is pretty intense and pushes you up to the top so you can walk back down. I should have asked how much pressure there was, but it was very intense. Every time I would go up, my board shorts would be unbuttoned and unzipped and almost falling off. So yeah, very intense!
Marty tried boogie boarding a few times, but preferred the surfing experience.
After about 30 minutes, he had it down and could surf all by himself! He was really good! There were a bunch of guys there that must go there all the time because they were really good and Marty was trying to be as good as them.
I didn't really love this experience. I attempted to surf and didn't even get all the way out in the water. It's harder than it looks. I changed my mind and asked the instructor to pull me back in. Well, he let go of the rope and down I went and flew up to the top. That was my surfing experience. I boogie boarded a few times, but got really tired of all the guys there telling me everything I was doing wrong. I wasn't very good at it either, but I was seriously getting bruised and broken. We had a hour here and I spent most of the time just watching and I was completely fine with that. I was exhausted from what little I did. I'm completely bruised up too and the bruises were showing almost immediately. It was really hard on our bodies. We are still really sore.
We were supposed to then go rock climbing for as long as we wanted. Well, we decided we were so worn out that it would be ok to stop there. We wouldn't of had enough strength to get to the top. We have both tried rock climbing before so we weren't sad about not doing it. We felt we got our money's worth. We had a great time!
Then we spent a few hours looking at cars. Yes, we are looking at buying a new car. Our SUV is starting to have a few problems and we are planning for our future (no, I am not pregnant), so we are looking at purchasing a bigger SUV. It will be new to us, but not new. We are not made of money. We found a few nice possibilities, but didn't buy anything.
We ended the evening eating at my favorite restaurant, The Cheesecake Factory. Yum! We eat here a lot for our anniversary. We would always search out this restaurant when we went somewhere for our anniversary. I absolutely love that we now have one in Utah! We both tired something new this time. I had the Herb crusted Filet of Salmon and Marty had the Crispy Chicken Costoletta. Both were yummy! We also spoiled ourselves with an appetizer and cheesecake. I had the Brownie Sundae Cheesecake (they were all out of the one I really wanted) and Marty got the Caramel Pecan Turtle Cheesecake. We took them home for later because we were already so full. We had a perfect day together! I love that Marty and I always have so much fun together!
Here is my delicious cheesecake. It was incredibly yummy, but very rich.
I was happy to share it with this cutie!