This past weekend my family came over on Sunday to celebrate Easter. As we are not a very large group and everyone lives locally, we are lucky enough to see each other often … enough so that we’ve started to get creative in spicing up our holiday celebrations. Since the weather this time of year is perfect for a day spent outside, we decided to rent a moon bounce obstacle course for our celebration this year.

On Easter morning, the crew from Jason’s Jumpers, based in Amber, Pa., came by to set up the 30-foot obstacle course for us. As it was getting blown up, I quickly realized just how large 30 feet is; this thing was massive!

My family arrived around noon that day, and we spent hours running through the moon bounce. Save for my cousin’s 2 year old, the only people playing on this thing for the majority of the day were adults, so I’m sure this was a sight to see. Even our parents did a few rounds through the course. Before dinner, we conducted a “time-trial” to see who could get through the course fastest. The two with the best times, myself and my cousin Matt, were made captains and selected our teams. Once chosen, we raced through the course relay-style to crown the winners. My team unanimously won as the underdogs with a total time of 32.83 seconds.

Once we earned our title, we did a quick egg hunt before taking a break to eat dinner and relax for a while. After eating the traditional ham and sides, we had dessert. My Grandma’s 82nd birthday was the week prior, so we used the time together to celebrate her with some cheesecake and peanut butter pie. We headed back outside a little later to bounce around some more and enjoy the remainder of a perfect day. My neighbors came over with their kids to play for a while, which was a lot of fun to watch and join in with them.

This year was definitely the most memorable Easter we have had to date. I can’t think of a single part of the day where we all weren’t smiling and laughing. Along with the perfect weather and good food, it felt great to act like a kid again alongside my cousins, although I think everyone was a bit sore on Monday morning!

— Aly Evans, administrative assistant