This weekend was my niece and nephew’s birthday party. (Parties, really. One was at 10am, the other at 2pm, with a family gathering in between.)

They’re two years apart, but their birthdays are 5 days apart, so there’s usually a joint party. This year’s were separate parties, though, because there was a bouncy house.

(Bounce house? I think both are acceptable. I prefer bouncy.)

It was kids bouncing all day. (Though much more enthusiastic bouncing by the 4-year-olds than the 6-year-olds.)

And when the house wasn’t filled with little kids, there was some pretty good bouncing by one 47-year-old.

I’d never bounced in a bouncy house before.

I didn’t really have occasion to: There were no bouncy house parties when I was a kid, and it was never a party my daughters were interested in throwing, so we didn’t really have one at our disposal for me to mess around with.

But of course if there’s a bouncy house across the street I’m going to make sure I take a turn and see what it’s like.

A couple of observations:

Bouncy houses are hot. It was a hot day, and the more people bouncing in the house, the sweatier it becomes in there.

Bouncy houses are fun. I get the appeal. It was fun to jump and fall, jump and try to touch the ceiling (I did), and to jump around the house in a circle.

Bouncy houses are good exercise. I’ve seen that there are workouts built around jumping on a trampoline. I imagine there’s a similar deal with bouncy house workouts. It was certainly great cardio - I was out of breath. I imagine you use your core a bunch, and I think my legs were getting a bit of a workout too.

I was a little worried about turning my ankle at one point, so I stopped.

But it was a nice time.

Maybe for my 50th that’s what we’ll do - just do a bouncy house and call it exercise.