Bounce House Extravaganza

This week I’m taking a little trip back in time to chronicle our summer days before they wash away and become foggy.

First on the agenda is our bounce house extravaganza.

Troy has a knack for finding interesting Groupons and he found a deal at the beginning of the summer for a bounce house rental.

At first, I thought, What in the world am I going to do with a gigantic bounce house? But then I remembered that I was in charge of hosting playgroups in July and it would be the perfect opportunity to put that thing to good use.

We had to do a little date rearranging after glass shattered all over our backyard (more on that here), but once we got it all cleaned up, we set up the bounce house the night before the big event. The boys were out before breakfast the next morning getting the most out of that bouncy heaven.

I learned that when "bounce house" is mentioned in the playgroup email, there is bound to be a good turnout. I counted 36 kids that came to play over the course of the morning. 

Playgroup is just as much for the moms as it is for the kiddos. It's always nice to be at a house instead of a park so we don't have to worry about our children running off and we can sit in the shade and chat.

I was really worried about having enough activities to keep the crowd occupied since not everyone could fit in the bounce house at once. I set up lots of water stations for additional entertainment.

The water guns were a hit.

As was the slip 'n slide.

I had about 500 water balloons on hand. I set up the boys' sprinkler head with tiny spouts that are perfect for filling up water balloons. I cranked down the water pressure so the kids could fill them up themselves.

Everyone was thoroughly entertained for hours. Phew.

Crew woke up in time to supervise clean-up.

Having an enormous bounce house take over our backyard for a day was one of the coolest things on the planet in my little boys' eyes.