I was typing away an hour earlier, then turned around to see… ORANGE!

I thought it was bushfire, so woke everyone up. (Good for them all to have an early morning heh heh)

Am wondering if we should all be turning off our computers and covering them until this passes? Probably!

A young man’s fancy leads to… trampolines?

Well, in this household, the very young men (aged 3 & 7) are out on their trampoline every day.

We picked up a 12 foot trampoline on Ebay last Christmas – new at only $200. They were running out the cyber-door on Ebay auctions.

The 10 ft and 14 ft trampolines were the most popular on Ebay

I tried to get a 10 foot trampoline and kept being outbid, so settled for a larger one.  The 14 ft trampolines were also disappearing fast, not that I wanted one. All the trampolines had safety nets and safety mats over the springs.

A quick car ride down to Sydney to pick it up showed a line of cars stretching out forever, all there to get their Ebay trampoline.

Some clever people had shipped in container loads of the things, knowing they’d sell like hotcakes. In the department stores,  trampolines were selling for hundreds more.

Putting it together out in the hot sun Christmas Day  sun, we realised two things:

• When the instructions said to set aside two hours to put it together, they weren’t tickling trilbies
• This thing was going to take up almost a third of our yard

Show an old trampoline new tricks

Having a small grass area and a toy the size of a blow-up pool in the same space meant looking at ways to make them complement each other.

With a bit of trial and error, these are the things that worked best:

• Give it shade - Tie a shade sail to the poles so the kids have a shaded area to play in – or even have a little picnic
• A ball arena – Let the kids kick soft balls arounds in there – the netting keeps the balls in and it’s easy for the younger ones as they have much more chance of kicking the ball in a small area
• Sprinkler jump – Have a sprinkler running into the trampoline (use tank water in areas where there are water restrictions.) This cools the kids and waters the lawn!
• Parachute play - If you have a 12 ft trampoline with 8 poles, you can get a 12 ft play parachute that matches the octagonal shape exactly. Pop the parachute loops over each pole. The parachute will hang down. Pour soft ball-pit balls on top and let the kids run underneath, hitting the balls up. (Take the parachute off after each play and only use it under adult supervision.)

Be sure to supervise kids at all times when on the trampoline.

Nine months after purchase, the kids are still enjoying their trampoline. As far as toys go, it was an excellent purchase. When other kids come over, there’s somewhere for them to go and play. It also gives the kids daily exercise and ’somewhere to hang out’.

These type of trampolines with the net enclosure have become so popular, I hardly know anyone with kids who doesn’t have one.

Our problems so far with the trampoline is that the zipper fell off on the very first day of use, and the black plastic canvas that holds the safety net to the canvas has started to crack and come apart (due to the sun) The netting itself and the trampoline has remained in excellent condition.

It’s looking like we’re going to need to buy another safety net – what would the kids do without the use of their trampoline?

Who am I kidding?

The question is, what would I do without the kid container trampoline!