A bounce back in time

As you know, John and I tried to take a quick trip to Anchorage in mid-February.  I had all kinds of plans to do fun things with the kiddos, shopping, visiting with family.  An action packed quick weekend.  And then I landed in the hospital for four days.  Our quick weekend turned into a long 10 days.  I am very thankful for our more than accommodating family, to include my mom who flew up on a minutes notice to stay with us for three weeks.  I am now without a gall bladder and feeling fine almost all the time.  During our extended stay, after I was released from the hospital we met up with Aunt Missy and our cousins Bella and Amelia at a local bounce house.  My kiddos loved it.  Grandma and Dad got a great workout, I even got a small one (don't worry, I was scolded plenty), and the kids were worn out.  Here is our blurry photo fun.  Blurry photos are what is called for at a bounce place don't ya know.

 Bouncing around

 Checking it out

Handsome boy

tiny bouncer

The kids first enjoyed/explored the big bouncy area.  It is a mesh enclosed bouncy.  There is an area in the middle to climb up and slide down, but it was for older children.  My kiddos just enjoyed bouncing and being bounced around.

Then there were the slides.  The kids forced Dad and Grandma to join them because they started climbing up, no questions asked.  Dad had to scramble after them.  Notice nice Dad sliding down with child...Grandma climbing up on the side.

Grandma only slid once. She caught the side of some duct tape or velco and got a quick burn/rash - can you say ouch!  But, I still think she had fun.  And I'm pretty sure Grandpa would have LOVED this (and the fact that MOM did it)!

Note, climbing off was not necessarily easy for the adults.

See my daredevil climbing the stairs?  This is why we have to scramble after them.  It is a pretty steep climb, the kids would not be able to make it much past this point on their own.  You have to give their bottoms some support, read push, to make it to the top.  Mind you, they didn't really care about needing help. They wanted to go when they wanted to go.

Then there are the two times I climbed up (and got duly scolded).  Katie was headed up, so I joined her.  Note in the above pictures how Grandma and Dad were kind enough to slide down with kiddos?  Yeah, no.  I got Katie to the top, took a sharp "oh my, can I just climb back down?" breath...as Katie scooted backward, smiled, and went.  WITHOUT ME!  It was like she knew I was a little trepidatious and forced me to go.  She LOVED sliding down by herself.  This is also where she mastered the sliding on her belly we saw again at the park this week.

It was a fun time mostly because of the very small amount of people there.  Maybe 5 kids other than ours, and I think that is an exaggeration.  One of the other kids had a baby sister though.  Katie was fascinated with the baby.  She stood looking at her and watching her for quite a while.  Luckily for me, mom was understanding.  :)

The only piece of our bounce house adventure we don't have photos of is the 10 or so minutes Grandma and I stood waiting for Dad to emerge from bounce areas unknown with three kiddos.  He took one child into an area, of course another child followed and we sent child #3 because there is no way someone could be left out.  It looked like a bounce house obstacle course.  It began going under, the up and over, and well the rest we couldn't see.  Grandma and I waited (and waited and waited and waited) for John or a child to slide down what we assumed the obstacle course led to. No such luck. After seemingly forever, John and the kiddos emerged from the same obstacle course looking bouncy on the other side of the slide.  He got back to the "slide" and found it was a practically vertical climb up to the top. That was NOT going to happen with three kiddos in tow, so he was forced to exit out the other side, encouraging three kiddos to keep going the whole way.  We got a good laugh out of it.  Dad was pretty worn out by that point.  Imagine that.  Needless to say, we left shortly after.

All in all a good time was had.  Something we definitely look forward to doing again, but I do see the downside of the germ infestation those places can be.  Sanitizer wipes for all! 

Loves!