In fact, I have made it my mission to inspire my children to start making their own lives happen, and to ingrain the enthusiasm for *LIVING* in them too. My 12 year old just came back from his first school ski trip, and for Christmas I got him a junior Ferrari track day, my 9 year old is just about to have a roller-disco party with 40 of his friends (which he really wanted for his birthday), he is also started fencing lessons, kayaking tuition and rock climbing lessons with his school and he got a go-karting track experience for Christmas for him and a friend, and my 4 year old recently had her first flying lesson in a real plane from her Daddy and tomorrow we’re taking her to Disney on Ice and then we’re taking her to ‘My First Sleeping Beauty’ a ballet for children as she’s taking ballet lessons.

I also booked us ALL a family ticket to AirKix which was the place you reviewed in Milton Keynes because the kids came to watch me sky-dive with my partner (who had done it before in Oz)… Afterwards, the kids all wanted to do a sky-dive too-this was the only thing they could do legally, and the video’s I’ve seen of 4 year olds doing it are hilarious! I cannot wait to watch them!

I think it’s one of my ambitions to raise my children with an attitude that anything is possible if you put your mind to it… I have told my oldest now that if he wants to do stuff, he needs to do the research, find the inspiration, do the homework on how and then ask for help if he needs it (after he recently complained about his younger brothers easy access to activities at his school). I told him-life doesn’t get handed to you on a plate when you’re older-you have to help yourself. Find what you want, and make it happen, it’s a good habit to form. The way I see it, he has a computer and internet access, and he’s just as capable as me of inspiration and research! I will help with the purse strings of course (if it’s realistically obtainable within our means)… Anyone who uses motherhood as an excuse not to live is not only robbing themselves, but also failing to inspire their children in my opinion

…Any way, I digress, in our situation, I think they did the weight thing for reasons that are actually very honourable, and that was flight safety. You’re supposed to balance weight so that it’s distributed evenly throughout the aircraft. It may be that in your case-the weight difference was negligible which is why the heli pilot wasn’t fussy?)

We said we’d go back to Vegas again (did you do yours as part of a trip o Vegas too? We stayed at the Bellagio for a week, just the 2 of us with no kids in tow-my treat to us for all the stress we’d been through over the previous year)… If we do go back-we want to drive out and hike though the Canyon, as our time hiking in the Valley of Fire was one of the best days of the trip… I also did the zip-lining thing from Red Mountain which was only about a 40 minute drive from The Strip. We drove out to the Dam and visited that and walked across the new bridge too. Anyone who says a week in Vegas is too lung-clearly isn’t thinking outside the strip… There is SOOO MUCH to see and do close by.

The Sky-Dive will probably be better because you did this first actually… I think a lot of people use this as practice, and then do the AFF course so that they can jump alone, although doing a proper sky-dive from 13,000 feet as my first experience and not a static line jump that opens straight away was what I wanted…

Doing it for such a personally motivated charity so close to losing my Dad really kept me going and keeping positive in what wasn’t otherwise a time that I was particularly happy…

I decided that having a ton of stuff to do in that 1st year after I lost Dad was a good way to keep from looking back too much with sadness, but to turn it into inspiration for happiness instead. SO glad I made that choice

Anyway, great to meet you too – its been lovely reading all your comments and can’t wait to hear about many more awesome things!!