A visit to an indoor playspace; otherwise known as, my trip to HELL!

This afternoon I had the pleasure of taking my kids to a birthday party at one of those indoor playspaces complete with huge inflatable slide, arcade games and MEGA climbing mazes. This one also had the added attraction of air powered cannons. I brought my son over to the party room and paid for my daughters admission and YAHOO! let the good times roll!! These indoor playspaces are such a supreme idea in theory. Let me repeat...in theory. Oh. My. Freaking. God. After two minutes I was ready to jab sharp objects into my eardrums so I no longer had to listen to the shrieking, crying and electronic beepings not to mention the constant announcements "Smith Party please return to the blue room for cake and ice cream" " Jones Party can pick up your goodie bags at the front desk" and so on ad nauseum. And then the sheer madness of thinking I could keep track of the two girls and still keep tabs on my son. My foolish attempts at trying to know where each child was at any given moment was rivaled only by the efforts of the poor staff member who manned the ball pit, whose duties included desperately chasing the balls that poured forth from the ball pit and toss them back in one at a time. First stop for my girls was the MEGA climber. Because Katie is only two I had to stand inside the entrance to keep tabs on her. So there I stood and watched her creep up a variety of tubes, bridges and ramps to get to the twirly slide that I think swallowed her whole. Seriously...I stood there waiting for her to come out the other end for like 20 minutes...okay it was more like 5 but I finally kicked off my sneakers and climbed into the MEGA maze myself to find out what the heck happened to her. No one over 4 feet high, no matter how coordinated or athletic they may be, looks graceful clambering through one of those. By the time I got up there she, yeah I'm sure you can guess, had decided finally to slide down and was on the ground level. I had to slide down by myself and come out the other end all like "oh I'm just going after my daughter. yeah... don't worry I'm not some freak." So I'm standing there, now that Kate has the hang of it and am watching them play when I get hit off the head with a freaking foam ball. What the heck!!!!???? and that's when I saw the cannon. An air cannon put into the hands of children that shoots actual ammunition (granted the ammo is foam balls but still)...now this was a brillant idea. I think they singled me out for target practice. I cannot even tell you how many times I got beaned with those effing foam balls. In order to get away from the cannon I suggested to the girls that we go to the ball pit. Sounds fun! Dive into a pool of plastic balls just crawling with god knows what. Teresa loved it. She dove and rolled around in the pit like a little otter. I had to restrain myself from bathing her from head to foot in hand sanitizer. Katie, however, had a little trouble. I plopped her in and she just kind of sat there. Then she started to sink. So I'm hollering "stand up, honey! stand up! oh my god! stand up!" and she just kept sinking. She disappeared under the balls and other kids climbed in right over where she was and I'm yelling "get off! get off! you're standing on her!" as I jumped in to find her. I finally hauled her out and brought them to the cafe for ice cream because I needed a break from all this fun. After ice cream they headed back into the mega maze for more mind blowing excitement. By now however, I knew where to stand so I was out of range of the cannon, so much less traumatic for me this time around. I endured two and a half hours of this. I left the place a shell of my former fun loving self. As we walked to the van both Sam and Teresa had the same good idea...that's where we can go for our next family fun day!!!!! I just cannot wait.