As the boys get older, the places you can take them to indoors to play changes.

This year two of Jack’s buddies had their birthday at Sky High.

At the same time, Jack has been bugging me to invite his two mischievous little buddies over for a sleep over. Which I’ve been avoiding. But when I saw this invite I thought to myself, this is the night. If this place doesn’t exhaust a bunch of rowdy 8 year old boys, nothing will. It was my best chance of having them over and not having them up all night too.

If you’ve never been to sky high, I’m not sure what to tell you. It’s awesome. It’s terrifying. It’s unique. It’s a perfect place to wear out your pent up little Chicagoans in the dead of winter. It’s a sweaty, gross sort of experience. Kids don’t notice that kind of stuff, but I made sure and buy the grip socks they offer instead of having them jump barefoot.

The kids jumped for almost two hours straight. They were red and sweaty and I have no idea how they kept going, and going, and going.

In addition to this open trampoline area which is for kids 7 and up, they also have another trampoline area for 6 and under. I understand it’s for safety but remember that tip when you want to take your family of different ages there by yourself!

The other areas they have are a trampoline that lands into a foam pit, and another trampoline area where you can play dodgeball, and one where you can play basketball. I didn’t get to see it all because I was too scared to leave the boys for an instant. There were a lot of accidents, people bumping into each other to kids falling and another person jumping on them. Luckily nothing happened to any of the kids I was watching!

They managed to scarf down a quick pizza and birthday cake before heading right back to the pit for as much jump time as possible.

When they got home Jack was so tired he fell asleep at 9:30 with the lights on, next to his friends who were systematically dumping every toy bin we have in the basement. If you’ve been to my house at all, you know that’s a painful statement.

I would have been angry except I can only blame myself for having so many toys and in truth I’ve been meaning to sort through them for a while and now I had a great reason to start the 6 hour project.

I asked Jack’s buddies to lay down for bed at 10:30 and they did without question and were silent from the moment their heads hit the pillow. It was almost too good to be true!

Ironically Ben, who was invited to the sleep over, ended up in our bed and at midnight Jack woke up disoriented and I brought him to his bed to sleep. So it was a “sleep”, but it didn’t last until the sleep was “over” for my two kids.