Balls of Fun

There's an indoor playground called "Balls of Fun" where my mom friends and I take our kids for some rainy day fun. Let me tell you, there's no shortage of ball jokes to be made the entire time we're there. We're clearly pubescent teens disguised as mature mamas.

Pardon my vulgarity, but the word balls makes me laugh. When my friend from teacher's college was doing her first placement in an elementary school teaching P.E. she instructed the grade five students to, "Stop and grab your balls!" Of course this was followed by a gym filled with ten year old laughing hystercially.

I laughed too when she told me. Apparently I'm not ~~smarter~~ more mature than a fifth grader.

Balls are indeed fun so this is why I'm sharing three fun outdoor ball games! Play them with your kids and/or invite some adult friends over. You'll sweat, you'll relive your youth and you'll laugh your balls off.

1. Ladder Ball. We played this relatively new game with friends at their house last weekend. Played in teams or one on one, the object is to hurl your balls across the yard and hook them on the rungs to score points. Of course, the guys were the blue team. (That last photo is of a shot that whizzed past my head and ended up hooked around the legs of a patio table. Zero points for that by the way, but ten bonus points for narrowly missing my Gin and Tonic.)

2. Tether Ball. I played this rather violent and highly competitve game often as a child. It explains a lot I think. The traditional apparatus is a single pole with a volleyball hanging from a rope. The object of this two person game is to whack the ball back and forth until one player gets the upper hand and is able to twist the rope completely around the pole. You can buy a portable version of this game called Swing Ball. We bought it a fews ago and it got a lot of use. Finallly, the pole bent and snapped. I still say I won that game.

Image: toysrus.com

3. Four Square. Do you remember playing this bouncy game in elementary school? It was fun then, and it's just as much fun now. Grab three friends and give it a try. Smack talk is highly encouraged by the way. If you forget how to play, you can find the simple rules here.

I was going to add Croquet and Bocci to this list until I remembered... they're boring. No offense to Croquet or Bocci Ball fans. I just prefer a little more swing or bounce to my ball games. It's the way I roll.