We hosted my son's birthday party for his school friends last Saturday at Pump It Up, one of those inflatable jumpy thing warehouse places. Wow! Could I be any more vague? Their tag line is "The Inflatable Party Zone."

Anyway.

I had booked the party back at the beginning of summer, and sent home invitations to his entire class on the third day of school. No RSVPs. Then I sent home a reminder flyer (because I was waiting to buy party favors and the cake until I had a head count.) I got a few RSVPs from his class this time, and went ahead and made the arrangements for favors and the cake.* With our family friends, the total number of guests was 13, a perfect sized party.

*The cake situation will be its own, ranting entry. You'll have to just anticipate it. Tingling? Good. I just got an apology call regarding the cake situation, which is all I'm going to say about it. I will not rant. Continuing on:

The day of the party, we arrived at the jumpy place and unloaded the kids. After watching the video (Do we fall off the equipment onto our heads? Nooooo!) we unleased the kids into the play area.

Within minutes, all the equipment was crawling with squealing kids. My youngest demanded my 'help' in one of the giant round jumpies. To gain access to this arena, you have to crawl through a couple of narrow passageways. I treated the other parents to a view of my giant butt trying to fit into the entry tunnel. I managed to worm my way inside, where I learned that my front-close bra was woefully unable to keep up with my bounding breastesses.

I jumped onto the mushroom-shaped thing in the middle of the jumpy floor and launched my son up and away. He had been laying face down on the mushroom and my impact caused his body to be thrown several feet, as if by an explosion. He cried for a minute, but I think he was just shocked at my audacity. He forgave me.

I decided to get out of the chamber of inflatable horrors and go visit with the other moms. As I tried to figure out what approach would be best to exit the arena, I watched as my friend's husband launched his own son off the mushroom. Hah.

I ended up worming my way out butt first, an awkward, breech birth-type experience.

I felt really pretty.

I just wanted to sit and pant and blot my dewy face. But no. My toddler demanded that I help her scale the freaking Mt. Everest of inflatable slides. Up, up, up we went, with a line of kids complaining how slow we were. I totally tried to blame the slow motion on my daughter, but it was me.

Then we sat on the top of the slide and plummeted squealing to the bottom.

Or, okay. No. Not to the bottom. To the part of the slide that made anyone over 20 pounds come to a sudden, jolting, giant wedgie making stop. Like, ow. After the first couple of times, parents stopped trying to hide the fact that they were picking cloth out of their butts.

Good times, people. Good times.

There was an air hockey table in the room, and the kids took each other on with glee. Then, of course, my husband had to play, and he cannot let the kids win. Cannot.

At one point, the kids began to push each other in the Little Tykes Red Coupe into the inflatable walls, with vigor. There was much squealing and probably whiplash. Maybe even some wedgies.

When we jumped ourselves into exhaustion, we made our way to the party room for cake and ice cream. A few kids were a bit queasy from all the exertion, but hey! That's a REAL party.

Afterwards, the birthday boy sat in the inflatable throne and opened presents.

Then, for the grand finale, I wrote a check to the place and we loaded up the car and booked it home, while the employees of the place cleaned buttercream icing off the floor. Wooo!

All in all, my type of party.