Pump It Up!!

How many times do you not have your camera with you and miss that Kodak moment? Well, last week, that was me! And, on top of that, my cell phone died so I couldn't even take a bad picture with it.

I was on my own (only adult) to take Shane to a friend's birthday party at a fun place called Pump It Up where they have 2 rooms filled with huge aired up toys (similar to a moon bounce). Joe and Brett had gone to get groceries while I took Shane and Cole.

Cole was SO excited watching all the big kids coming down the slide I decided to see what he thought about going down himself. So, I grabbed a mat to slide down on and Cole and started the tough climb up. There are not actual steps to climb up but only little nubby bumps to try to keep from sliding back down. There is no hand rail to make sure you don't fall or to assist in the climb up (only a small rope to grab AT YOUR FEET to pull yourself up with). I'm sure it would have made for a pretty funny picture seeing me hold this very floppy child with the mat in one arm and the rope in the other to get to the top.

I did it! I was very out of breath, but I did it! I laid the mat down at the top and sat us both on it. WOW! It was a lot higher up there than it looked from the bottom! I let us start the slide down and I KNEW we were flying down a LOT faster than what the other children were (no mention of additional weight will be suggested here). At the bottom of the slide there is a short aired up wall that, I can only assume, is supposed to stop you. It did not! Yep, we went flying over the wall! Apparently this must happen occasionally since they had the padded mats at the bottom for us to land on. Oh, and I sacrificed my body to make sure my baby did not land on the bottom or get rolled on.

I was relieved to see Cole's original expression of "What the heck?" quickly changed to the happy expression of "Woohoo, that was fun!"

We had so much fun with that, that we moved over to another one. We had to climb through (as if in a tunnel) some small openings to get into the center of a huge area that had a big "platform" in the middle where children could use padded sticks to joust (I guess?). I held Cole up while we bounced around and he especially loved it when one of the jousters would fall to his death, flopping flat on his back and bouncing everywhere.

We all had a great time (and yes, it felt good to play like a little kid again)! I just wish we could play like this every night because it helped Cole sleep ALL night! Of course, I was exhausted too!