Do you bounce? Our day at the Bounce House

Sundays have a fun routine in our home. Following morning worship at church and lunch – it is family fun time. I usually get an idea a few days before. Recently, my idea to go to the Stockley Gardens Art Festival and the Chrysler Museum’s Family Day was getting rained on heavily. The forecast called for rain all day. So, I had to come up with another plan. I mentioned a trip new indoor inflatable playground near our home. Our daughters, seven-year-old Charlotte and five-year-old Julia cheered. My husband quickly agreed.
“I love those places,” he said. “So do I,” I answered. It is true, although my husband and I are well into 40s, we love, as much as our daughters, to race through the obstacle course, go down the slide and jump in the jump house. I am not sure if it is because such places did not exist when we were young or we think it is such a great way to play with our children, but we love them – especially on a very rainy Sunday afternoon.

So I called the Bounce House near our Newport News home. The lady said it was $8 per child and they must wear socks. I asked is it cost extra for parents to play.
“You want to bounce?” she asked. “Yes, my husband and I want to bounce with our kids,” I said with much glee. There was a pause. “Well you are welcome to come in the play area with your kids, but I don’t think you can bounce. And you must wear socks,” she said. “Oh, okay, I said. I hung up the phone and delivered the bad news to my husband who was helping Julia with her socks. “They said we cannot bounce, just the girls, but we can hang around the area they are playing. I guess we can watch and encourage them,” I said.
“We can’t bounce?! Darn! Well I guess since we let the cat out of the bag, we still need to go,” he said.

When we arrived, the man taking our money said we could bounce. “Just be careful, don’t land on any kids,” he warned. The place was pretty empty when we arrived. “We’ll be safe. We just want to play with our kids a bit. If it starts getting crowded, we will back off,” I said. My husband walked, in from parking the car. I turned to him while he shook the rain off. “They said we could bounce!” I said.
“Cool!” he answered.

Off went our shoes. We quickly scoped the place out. Julia took her daddy’s hand and pointed him in the direction she wanted to go, Charlotte headed toward a very big double sided obstacle course (I had no idea how big) and said “wanna race?” We were off. After getting down the final slide, I was greeted with the big seven-year-old smile “what took you so long?” she sassed.

“Let’s go find Daddy,” I replied with a slight puff to my voice.

I found him just about to go down the tall slide. While our daughters cheered him on, I thought how funny and sexy he looked at the same time.

The looks from other parents was mixed. Some looked surprised, a couple people were not happy (but that may not have been our fault), and a few smiled. Some seemed like they took our idea and joined their children in a bounce.

For more than an hour, we climbed, crawled, slid and jumped as much as we could.

Then a birthday party trickled in with a few small children. So my husband and I settled down on the side with water and a packet of trail mix.

That was until my biggest seven-year-old rival came to me and said “You can’t catch me!” she said.

“Just don’t go where there are a lot of little kids,” I said chasing after her.