Can Families have Play Dates?

We haven't seen Thomas, Anya and Emmanuel since before our trip to the US. When we got back, they were away. So, this afternoon when they called to see if we wanted to go to a new indoor playground in town, I was very excited. I was ALSO excited to have something to do with David. It was raining, and he has been something of a crankypants since getting back to Jena.

As it turns out, it's not just a playground.

It. Is. Awesome.

(It was also about 110 degrees inside, but what can you do.)

So here are some photos from today!

Climbing up to get to a slide that lands in the ball pit.

In the end, David was way less interested in the climbing & sliding part than I was.
But he loved the ball pit!

Emmanuel has become quite adept at throwing. Too bad they don't play much baseball in Germany!

We didn't play in this part, but it's so cool I had to take pictures.
First, you climb into the giant inflatable whale's mouth...

And then, from what I saw, you scream loudly as the whale's lower jaw rises and the big ol' whale mouth closes around you. Now that is cool.

We all had a lot of fun on the trampolines, too. There were six trampolines positioned like little islands in a giant, squishy floor. Again, very cool.



The only problem was, David wanted to run, walk and fall his way across all of the trampolines. He was not deterred by anything, including much larger children jumping like crazy right in the middle of the trampoline he wanted to run across. Needless to say, we had to put a stop to this.


There was also a big bumpy slide, which Michael and I both tried with David.


Once again, David had other plans:


Immediately after taking this picture, I realized that David was moving WAY faster than I had anticipated. Fortunately, there is no photo of my scrambling up the slide to retrieve him. (It's actually a lot harder than it looks!)

And, finally, David's favorite: A giant, moon-bounce blob surrounded by a bouncy alley of sorts.
It was awesome. (OK, so it was my favorite part too :)
I haven't seen David laugh this hard in a long time. Maybe ever. For a while, David sat up top with me while Michael threw himself against the blob, and bounced himself off the walls. This was, by far, the funniest thing David had ever seen.

At the end of the afternoon, we were all completely spent. Emmanuel and Michael wrapped up the day with a good heart to heart:
(Isn't he SO big?!)

It's days like this that make me appreciate the fact that David is, finally, a great sleeper. He sleeps 12-13 hours each night, with no help from us. I think even HE was happy to get to go to bed at the end of the day.