Harrison Family Round Up

We're back from our whirwind trip to Dallas. While there, we got neighbor Russ over to take an improptu family pic (isn't that precious that AK is sitting on Justin's knee? they have quite the brotherly love...)

Did you notice that I finally got my summer haircut? Even though Ma and Pa Harrison have a pool, I purposely forgot my swimming suit since I had just cut it the day before and wanted to avoid having to wash, blowdry, and restyle while we were there (especially when we're only there for 24 hours- who wants to spend that time doing hair?)

Brant's excited that we finally had a chance to ship his bike back from Texas- it should be arriving here in a few days and will give him a good project to work on during the next week (he's got to put it back together after taking it apart to fit in the shipping box, and then work on replacing the tubes in the tires...that bike has been sitting there since...oh, after he got home from his mission five years ago.

Fair Warning: If you get nervous flying in airplanes, you probably want to stop reading here

After our short but nice visit to Texas, we headed back home. This is our our flight went:

Take Off: Normal

Leg Room: Fantastic- we were seated in an emergency exit row

In flight beverage: Normal H20 and square napkin

Initial Descend: Normal

Landing: Now here's the fun part. . .

We're about 50-100 feet from landing, and I'm getting ready to rate the landing (you know, on a scale of 1-10). As I'm looking out the window, I notice that we're starting to ascend back up into the air.

Now, since Brant will generally know what's going on in these kinds of situations, he just leaned over and said that its probably just windshear and we're having to go back up to loop around. So, after getting back up into the air, the captain comes on the speaker (a woman, which I thought was pretty cool) and explains that they didn't land because they weren't sure the the front landing gear was locked into place (thus, avoiding the possibility of basically landing, having the nose come down on itself and then skidding to a stop). She goes on to say that they now "believe" that the landing gear is locked and are going to try to land again, but "just in case" she asked the flight attendants to do another brief emergency landing demonstration to make sure everyone knows what to do if the landing gear doesn't hold.

I honestly think that the passengers were more calm than the flight attendants- the flight attendant for our section couldn't exactly remember the "crash position" that they wanted us all to be in when the plane landed "just in case" and was getting pretty flustered.

So after all the explanation of how to assume the crash position and how to get away from the plane as quickly as possible once we use the emergency exit, she comes by again an looks specifically at me. Remember how we were sitting in the emergency row with all that leg room? And who do you think was the one actually sitting right next to the door? You guessed it.

Me.

Now, I'm not one to panic (plus I've heard quite a few stories about the things that can go wrong from Brant), so when she looked directly at me and nervously asked if I was ok having to open the emergency door I just smiled and nodded my head yes (hello? didn't you ask me that once before we took off? Of course I can. and who wouldn't want to be the hero of the day by opening the emergency door? So I asked Brant to do it.)

So, here we go trying to land again...the back wheels hit the ground....and then ever so slowly we feel the front tire land.

Applause from the passengers here.

The emergency vehicles with lights flashing waiting in place for us while we landed "just in case" made it all the more exciting of an experience.

And after all that excitement, I was actually a little disappointed that I didn't get to this

In order to do this

Now wouldn't that have been an exciting photo- I even had my camera ready for it!

Alas, here I am back at home enjoying the summer night, cutting my coupons, and gearing up for another week of work.

I hope your weekend was exciting as mine.