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Author Archives: Jen

Hoppy Easter 2017

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So, once again this year I convinced Owen to leave the Easter Bunny a note requesting something other than candy—I told him it went so well before that it might work again. So, Owen wrote this note:

And the Easter Bunny left this note:

And gifts!! Along with a very few hidden eggs with gummy candies, Owen got a Nexo Knights costume, Katie got a Lego birthday cake, and they got a Pokémon Magikarp hat to share!

A great day and night with great friends!

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Nancy was helping me with a Jamberry manicure and Ken decided he wanted a few nails done as well.

Nancy and I tried to recruit two friends to the wonderful LipSense world today…and I introduced them to my infamous (?!) stairwell shooting location. 😊

Tammy and Amy helping me roll bread balls for garlic bread bites.

The whole group!

Uncle Eddy!

We need a bigger table!

The dessert table! Eddy helped me make a cheese flan (with a caramelized top) in the instant pot (far right) and it turned out great! And Amy brought three cakes from Juniors Cheesecakes!

This is why we need better outdoor space! This is where everyone always wants to congregate and we only have eight chairs with barely enough space to hold them!

The party mostly died out by about 11 and just a handful of us stayed talking to about midnight. It was a great night with great friends…

Lunch and Pokemon in Occoquan with friends!

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Trying out each other’s lipsticks before heading out to lunch! Neither of us liked the colors on us but liked the colors on the other!

In Occoquan! Nancy and Eddy gave us grief over the name and called it something different every time they said it which was hilarious. I think Khakakan was our favorite.

Our lunch that took forever and a day. Excellent food, awful timing.

Uncle Eddy showing off the awesome portrait camera setting on the iPhone 7+ (blurred background). I want it badly but the phone is just TOO big.

  

Where are my iFly pictures and videos?! (Part 2)

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This is a combined post with four days of waiting and replies.

April 10—4:34pm

The next day they replied that they had found them and emailed them all to me free of charge. Except they were all of Katie! (Looking on the bright side, I now had like eight free photos of Katie instead of paying $5 a piece.) Soooo I emailed back and asked about them again, saying I hated to be such a pain about this but this was my bucket list experience and I had really wanted the photo. They replied with links to pictures…but they were the same photos of Katie they had already sent! So I fired off another email thanking them for all the pictures but explaining AGAIN that they were not pictures of ME.

April 12—1:51pm

Two days go by with no response so I email them again, casually asking if there was any update. 

April 14—12:54pm

TWO DAYS LATER I get an email apologizing for the delayed response (she had been off work) and saying “Unfortunately I was unable to find your photos, but we would be happy to send you a voucher for you to come back and fly for free so that we may find your photos.”

April 14—2:05pm

I receive the email voucher for two free flights.

And then I proceeded to write this strongly-worded feedback for their survey—which I also emailed to their corporate office.

Our instructor was awesome and we all had an amazing time and I was thrilled to check something off my bucket list. I do, however, have two HUGE suggestions (I will also be writing corporate as I believe it would be beneficial company-wide).

One, kids under a certain age should be required to do a practice run on the bench in the classroom to get the feel of it. While there isn’t much to remember, even I (as a 42yo) kind of forgot everything the first moment I stepped into the chamber. So you can imagine what happens to an 8yo and 4yo! They did well and had fun, but my son had spaghetti legs one whole flight and the instructor spent an inordinate amount of time wrangling him. I think had he practiced on the table first, he may have had a better idea on what to do.

Two, guests with long hair should be strongly recommended or even required to have their hair braided, in a cap, or at the very least tucked up inside their helmet. You could even provide a cap (like you provide earplugs). I have long hair (to the middle of my back). I did ask the best way to deal with it and was briefly told a braid or a low ponytail. So I opted for the easy solution of a low ponytail. BIG MISTAKE. I didn’t realize until after we were done that my hair was a huge knotted mess. When I tried to deal with it the following morning, it was a nightmare trying to get 8″ of thick hair untangled. Granted I should have thought more about it and realized that wind was obviously going to mess up my hair and taken my own precautions—but with the excitement of the day and having asked and received a quick answer, I thought I’d be okay. I literally spent HOURS painstakingly trying to comb out all the mats and knots with a head full of conditioner, leave-in conditioner, detangling spray, coconut oil, olive oil, etc.—anything to help the process along. And eventually just gave up and used brute force and pulled out a ton of hair. This was a very disappointing end to an awesome experience which I believe could all have been easily prevented with a simple cap, helmet tuck, or requirement to braid.

Lastly, we had an issue with our videos and photos that we’re still trying to work out. We were a family of four and when we went to check out our media, my name was listed but the media was of my daughter (whose name wasn’t listed). A call to your staff had them researching the footage and I did eventually get my videos, but am still waiting to see if they can find my photos. I know mistakes happen but I have to say it was upsetting to realize I initially didn’t have any videos or pictures of my bucket list experience. I will say, though, that dealing with your staff regarding this has ended up better than I’d expected—emails were answered quickly and my issues thus far were solved efficiently. I am hoping to resolve the photo issue quickly as well. (I am wondering if there isn’t some way to scan your wrist band before each time you step in the chamber, which would trigger the recording with your name. It would seem you have some similar type system since the videos were mostly attached to the correct person…but then I’m not sure how my flights were all missing.)

All that said, I will say that overall we were very happy with our experience…and we will be back. But I would strongly suggest adding both the child-practice sessions and the long-hair issue to your pre-flight information and lessons.

Thank you!!

So, while there were some bad parts (the hair thing and the missing media thing), overall I would still recommend it…plus I get two extra flights during which my hair will be tucked so far up in my helmet it won’t budge. And I will have Tom taking pictures and videos the whole time.

Ahhhh. I love the feeling of a fresh cut…

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Especially after my hair nightmare earlier this week. She definitely saw lots of breakage but thankfully my hairstyle hides it well.

And this is what it looks like when my hair is being dried and styled—since I have so much hair, my stylist grabs anyone else available to help. 🙂 (I had the kids with me—and they had their iPhones since we were in Occoquan—so I texted Owen to take the picture.)

And look at what we found on the walk to the salon…

And testing a new lipstick when I got home.

My poor poor hair.

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So, iFly was amazing…except my hair is just about ruined. Seriously.

I honestly didn’t think about my hair again until the morning after (this morning!) when I knew I’d have to really condition it in the shower and detangle it. I mean, I’ve had knots before, but you just really douse it with deep conditioner and then use a wide-tooth comb and yes it’s tedious but I’ve done this before and 20 minutes or so was all it took.

Ha.

HAHA.

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My hair was SOOOO densely knotted in the bottom 8″ that 30 minutes in the shower with two of my best conditioners and a wide-toothed comb did almost nothing. NOTHING. I eventually turned off the water and just stood there freezing my butt off while trying to untangle. I eventually gave up, planning to try again later leaving the conditioner in for awhile before I tried to comb through it (of course I had a doc appointment this morning so I couldn’t do it right then).

Fast forward to later that morning and this was my hair saturated with spray detangler, coconut oil, and heavy duty conditioner…wrapped in a warm towel. I honestly didn’t have much hope.

I undid the towel and just stood in the bathroom trying to comb out the nightmare. I’ve had knots before…but this is a whole new level I’ve never experienced. Wind speeds from 85-180mph. It’s literally a full head of this. And you know how thick my hair is.

I would dip my hair in a sink of water, spray it with more detangler, add more coconut or olive oil…and nothing. I even got out a fine-tooth comb and tried to do tiny 1/16″ sections at a time. Nothing. Well, I made a little bit of leeway, but every time I thought I was getting somewhere, I really wasn’t. So after maybe another half hour, I gave up and just ended up going brute force on it because I just couldn’t stand it anymore and I wanted to cry—and I pulled out a crap ton of hair. And my head HURT. If I had been making any decent headway, I would have painstakingly continued, but I wasn’t. I was already scheduled for a trim with my stylist, but I can’t wait to talk to her and see how bad it is and if I need more cut off. I may not end up needing extra inches cut off but I definitely screwed it up. The iFly headquarters is definitely going to be getting helpful feedback about dealing with guests with long hair.

Where are my iFly pictures and videos?! (Part 1)

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April 9—5:26pm

So we get home and I pretty much went straight to the computer to check out our photos and videos. If you recall, our iFly tickets each came with a free video and then Tom and I added on the High Flyer experience which came with a photo. So I login to get our videos and pictures…and guess what? There are exactly ZERO of either for me. Everyone else has a video (or two). Everyone else has a bunch of pics (Katie and Owen each had like 15). I HAD ZERO OF EITHER. The way their site is set you click on your location > date > flight time > name to see your associated media. Except Katie’s name wasn’t listed and my name showed all of Katie’s photos and videos! I flew right before her so had no idea how they could possibly have skipped me…twice? Including a high fly experience AND a double-length flight?!

I called them immediately and told them what was going on and they said they’d have to look into it and call me back. It didn’t sound terribly promising. They did call back within about 15 minutes to ask what color shoes I was wearing—I’m assuming so they could scrutinize the video feed and try and find my media. So I was a bit upset…but in a holding pattern hoping they would come through.

And what really gets me is that I didn’t take (or have Tom take) one single picture or video with my phone!! Why not you ask? Because I was thinking I didn’t want to keep it in my pocket while I was flying…but DUH I could have easily handed it off to Tom because we obviously weren’t flying at the same time. I was so pissed at myself about that for quite some time.

April 9—8:32pm

When we hadn’t heard anything back from them, Tom called to see what was going on. They assured him they were taking care of it.

April 9—11:24pm

I checked my email before bed and discovered they had sent the download links for two videos (so I actually got a free video!) but…they didn’t send any pics (!!) so I had to email them back about that. And after watching the videos…it’s two snippets from one flight and not a video from both flights! (Believe me, I’m very happy to have gotten the videos at all, but I am still very much hoping there’s a picture or two since they are much clearer than the video.)

We all flew at iFly!

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Today was the day I got to cross something off my bucket list—skydiving!! Or at least a close enough approximation of it to satisfy me!

We had about a 15-minute prep class where we saw a video on the basics, saw a brief demonstration of proper form, and learned the hand signals that they would use (since you can’t hear anything in the chamber).

There were only a few hand signals and basically you relax in the tunnel while bending your arms and legs a little and keeping your chin up. Easy, right? Of course! (Until you step into the tunnel, but I’m getting ahead of myself.)

After the class, it was time to get suited up. We all got jumpsuits, plastic goggles, ear plugs, and a helmet. I asked how to best wear my hair and was told braided or in a low ponytail so I took the easy way with the ponytail (I actually tried a quick braid but it wasn’t working and we didn’t have THAT much time to suit up). And I have to say: What a joke. They really should have stressed wearing a braid, wearing a cap (which I would have gladly done), or at the very least putting the ponytail inside the helmet. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We were each slated for two one-minute flights, plus Tom and I had added a “high flyer” package which meant the instructor would take us up higher towards the top (instead of staying at or below chest/head level); it also came with a photo.

There was a group of about 10 of us and we filed into the chamber. Katie was the youngest and there were a few older than us—and everything in between. A set of grandparents and a granddaughter went before us. The granddaughter was a previous flier because she started out with a bit more advanced moves which was fun to watch. Soon it was my turn—and as soon as I stepped foot into the wind tunnel my mind kind of went blank. How was I supposed to bend? What were my arms supposed to do? What did the hand signals mean? It’s amazing what 120-180mph winds will do to your brain as you’re being blown around like a leaf! 🙂 (I never once felt unsafe—the instructor is RIGHT THERE with you and your jumpsuit has handles on it for the instructor to grab—but it was FREAKY.) It probably took a good 20-30 seconds to calm down (maybe less, but time almost has no meaning in there) and start thinking more clearly, but by then you’re on the downswing of your allotted time. Needless to say it was VERY, VERY cool and I had A LOT of fun and my first minute was over too quick.

Katie was next and HOLY COW she REALLY flew around like a leaf! (They can adjust the wind speeds on the fly, so they probably calmed them down a bit for her once she got in, but she took off like a shot!) She did very well and appeared to be having a good time…but after her turn was over, she said she didn’t want to do her second flight, so I would use her time instead and get a two-minute flight for my second time!

Then it was Owen’s turn. He actually did better than I expected, considering he’s generally afraid of anything out of the ordinary.

Then it was Tom’s turn. Then it was time for the second set of flights. And let me just say that two minutes practically feels like an eternity in the wind tunnel! But, since I was now somewhat experienced and was getting the hang of it, the instructor let me do some hand movements that made me spin around. It was completely amazing how the tiniest of finger tilts could send you spinning around and around—tilt to the left, spin to the left; tilt to the right, spin to the right. It was also super cool to be zoomed to the top of the chamber with the instructor—we did that two or three times in fairly rapid succession (as seen in Tom’s video after mine below).

Then it was Owen’s turn again, and he didn’t have as good of a time on this go-round. His legs were like spaghetti and he just couldn’t seem to get them under control. Again, there was no danger and he didn’t seem concerned or scared, but the instructor pretty much had his hands on him the entire time.

Then it was time for Tom’s second flight. This is a picture from his instructor-assisted high fly as they came down to the bottom of the chamber:

So, you may be wondering why there is no good picture of me. Funny story, but I’m getting ahead of myself. 😐

So after all the participants were done flying, we filed out, received our certificates, and eventually disrobed.

We also took some pictures. 🙂

And it was at this point that I realized my hair had a big knot in it—I had tried to take out the ponytail to wear my hair down (we had plans to meet friends for lunch afterwards) but it was nothing I could fix with my fingers so I just put it back up in a pony tail and honestly didn’t think much of it.

Of course they had a sales pitch at the end as well, offering more flight time at a pretty good discount. With the assurance that we could use it at ANY location…and since there are three in the Chicago area…we went ahead and bought it. The kids aren’t interested, but I certainly am. Tom might or might not—he enjoyed it, but it really messed with his back (though he thinks that if he stretches out more ahead of time it might be better).

So we left and I was excited to get home and check out our photos and videos—remember, our package had come with one video for each participant plus Tom and I each upgraded to the high fly which came with a photo. But first we had to go meet friends for lunch…

And you will have to keep reading to find out what happened with the photos and videos…