Day 8: Bounce House

Recently one of my Young Women's leaders got in a car accident and got really bad whiplash. She hasn't been able to move around very easily since. For a mutual activity tomorrow, the Laurels in my ward are going over to her house and playing on a water bounce house in her backyard. (She is part of a bounce house company called GooseJumps.) So she had some of the employees drop off the bounce house at her house yesterday. She posted a request on Facebook for some of the youth in my ward to come over and help her set it up, clean it off, and then afterwards we would be able to play on it for a while.

So Aimee and I went over to help. At first we were the only ones there. So we would unroll and unfold the bounce house, and had to wait for it to inflate. For some reason, it was taking forever for it to inflate, so Aimee and I tried climbing up onto it, and pushing it up, but it just wasn't working. (And the bounce house was really hard to walk on when it wasn't fully inflated.)

At about that time our friend Sara and her younger sister Emily showed up to help. We were trying to move the bounce house over a little so that it wouldn't crush the garden, so we were digging around underneath, trying to find the tethers, when we finally discovered that there were two vents in the bottom that weren't closed completely. So we closed them, and finally the bounce house inflated all the way. We then used hammers to put the stakes into the ground which held the bounce house in place.

             

                       

This was the amazing bounce house we cleaned/played on. 

Well, the people who had used the bounce house last night, were apparently pigs, because there was mud all over it! It was filthy! So Aimee, Sara, Emily and I got towels and started cleaning it off. (Well once we finally figured out how to turn on the water that is.) It took us forever to clean it, but it probably seemed longer then it actually was, because it seemed like every time we would clean something, it would just get dirty a second later. So yea, it took us forever to finally get it clean. And it required sliding down the slides many times (whether on purpose or on accident, Aimee was queen of falling on accident) to try and wipe off some of the mud on your way down. But it was definitely entertaining! And we definitely got soaked in the process!

Finally, we finished cleaning, and had time to play on it. And let me tell you, it was soo much fun! We were all going down the slides in every position we could think of. One of my favorites was either acting drunk and just bouncing off the sides of the bounce houses until we fell down the slide, or at the last second pulling Aimee with me, so we would crash into each other at the end of the slide. But I don't think she appreciated that very much.

Eventually some of my Young Women's leaders daughters and her friends showed up, and they kinda ruined a lot of the fun. But Aimee, Sara and I made up for it by hogging one of the slides all to ourselves. We would each climb up the slide, and wait for the others at the top, and then we would sit there, side by side, and slowly slip down, until we crashed together at the bottom. It was pretty hard at times to climb up the slide because it was wet, obviously. So we would either have to cram our feet into the sides and push ourselves up, or be amazingly skilled like Sara and Aimee and use your arms to pull yourselves up, while your feet just walk up it normally. And there were many failed attempts where we would get half way up - or sometimes to the very top, and trying to get our knees under us so we can turn around and sit down - and we would slip and fall down the slide. And it was pretty entertaining when somebody did fall, especially when they took someone else out with them. (And yes, that happened a couple of times.) We would then all sit in a row, and Aimee would have a crazy idea that she wanted to touch the net on top with her foot, so she would keep scooting down the slide so that she could do so. And by then, we had slid so far down the top of the slide that we had no hope of staying on, and we fell down the slide. And then we would do it all over again.Yep, it was pretty entertaining.

We would also jump on the bottom of the slide, and slowly inch our way up, still jumping, until the incline was too steep and we would fall on our faces and slide down the slide. Yes, that was probably one of the best parts of the day. It was very entertaining watch one another biff it on the slide. (Yep, laughing at each other biffing it on our faces, and falling, such good friends we are, huh?) We would also throw ourselves over the side of the slide onto the stairs, and in the process either land on our backs or our faces. Yep, we had great fun beating ourselves up in many different ways! There was one time that Aimee was trying to get over the side of the slide onto the stairs, and apparently tried to accomplish the feat too close to the end, and so she kinda flipped over, so she landed head first on the edge of the stairs, and then slid onto the ground. It was very frightening to see, but of course, once she was on the ground, I was laughing my head off! She also slipped off the edge of the stairs, and almost ran into me another time. Yep, Aimee was very good at slipping and falling!

Well, finally all the fun had disappeared, so we went home. And let me tell you, three girls walking down the street, two of them in normal clothes, all soaking wet, one carrying a hammer, that was probably a very strange sight!

So Anyway . . . Service - Check! Fun - Check! I would say it was a pretty successful day!