Urban Air - part 3 - finishing touches

The trampolines arrived mid-July and things got to moving really fast.  Good thing since we had our grand opening scheduled for July 31st!

 The day before the 4th of July we decided to make the golf cart an Urban Air float and be in the Stilwell parade.  The family helped assemble these poolside on the 4th.

 Hopefully by next years parade we will have our act together and decorate a little better!

Our kids didn't want to ride.  They wanted to watch the parade and catch candy.  Will, Nick and Ava rode and threw out candy with Adam and Rusty.

 The platform was coming together .  In fact, this is where we had our first round of interviews, tables and chairs set up right on the platform.

 That big empty area is where the warrior course is now. 

 We have paint!

 July 14th-the trampoline installation began!  

 Adam was up here working like crazy when I called him the day after Laney's tooth accident to tell him we were headed to ER for dehydration.  It was a crazy couple of days!

 You can see the beginning stages of the playground in the left hand corner.  The playground came over on a boat from China in 40,000 pieces.  Adam picked up 2 China men from the airport that spoke NO english who spent the next month putting the playground together.  It was quite the transformation to watch. 

 The kids tried out the trampolines.

 2 days after Laney's accident and we had were trying out the trampolines.  I am 99% sure her dentist would not have approved of this activity.

 Cooper and I watched a training video on how to be a court monitor while the girls napped.  We texted Adam this pic and told him we were both trained and ready to work!

This was progress on July 16th, 15 days from opening. Yikes!   A lot of work to be done, needless to say, the playground didn't open on time with the rest of the park.

Ok-I had more pictures than I thought when I began this post.  

To be continued...

Urban Air -part 2

We made family trips to the store about once a week to check on the progress of the store.  Adam was there a few times a week meeting with contractors and such.  Our trips were full of "don't touch that, don't step on that, stop running, etc." to the kids.

April-July were busy months but things only got crazier once the doors opened on July 31st.

 This is the back of the store, the party rooms.

 The building of the front desk area.

 Our room behind the front desk.

 When you walk into the store.  At this point, Adam was at the store almost daily to check on things.  For example, see that wall on the right hand of the picture?  That was not supposed to be a full wall.  Only a half, so that had to be fixed...just like construction of anything, there always seemed to be something done incorrectly.

 Jumping for joy that this building was starting to come together!

 The master plan!

 Laney was the only kid brave enough to go to the top!

 These pics are from June 8 and we opened our doors for business on July 31.  Needless to say, a lot happened in those last 6 weeks!

Again, if you have been in the store, those are the party rooms in the back.  That opening was left there to bring in all the trampolines thru the back garage door.

 The trampoline frames arrived on June 10th!

 Bringing the frames in the store.

 This was super exciting!

 Building the frames, the beginning!

 The construction guys left the store a mess so Adam and Cooper spent an evening at the store cleaning up so all the trampoline frames could be installed.

 He was earning his jump time that evening!

 Cash stopped by to help too!

 Child labor at its best!

 You are looking at one of the Dodgeball courts and the kid's bowl.

 Up in the corner is the Apex.

 June 22 - We have signage!

June 26 - The building of the platform that you walk on between all the trampoline attractions.  This was taken on the runway, warrior course on the left, looking ahead with BagJump on left, Apex on far right and Dodgeball on upper left.

This is how we got from the back of the store to the front and vice versa.  It was a little scary having the 3 kids up there.

That big open spot was where the warrior course was going to be installed.

In the evenings we would stop by the store to check things out then go get ice cream.

That is our office window above the party zone area/concessions.  Wanna know something crazy?  We have been open for almost 6 months and the contractors still don't have our office finished.  They weren't exactly timely in anyway.  Lesson learned.

 This is the beginning of the ramp from the back of the store to the front.

Cooper checking people in at the front desk.

Next up, the fun part, the trampolines arrive!

Urban Air - part 1

I think you all know by now that my blog hiatus is due to us opening a business and having a lot less free time in the evenings.  Now instead of blogging, I am catching up on business with UA.

So let's back up to almost a year ago.  We were in STL for Kellen's birthday.  He was celebrating at SkyZone.  When we got back to KC, Adam decided we were opening one in Overland Park."  Now, you need to know that about once a month Adam has a new idea or plan for a business.  Those wheels of his are always spinning and most of the time I shoot the idea down or he talks himself out of it.  This idea...I was all over it!  We live in an area full of young families and nowhere for them to go in the city.  People were driving 15-30 minutes to the nearest entertainment/birthday party place.  Adam immediately looked into SkyZone and someone already owned the franchise rights to KC.  That's when we started to look into Urban Air.  We had been a few times when we lived in Keller.  Within a week Adam was on a flight to DFW to meet with the franchise owner.  At this point we spent most nights after the kids were in bed brainstorming all the questions we had before we 100% jumped in.  Adam hit it off with Michael (UA franchise owner)...small world, he actually lived around the corner from us and his daughter was in preschool with our kids!

We decided we were all in, now we just needed to get the funding figured out.  Adam called his brother to talk about it and Aaron couldn't believe it (we hadn't told anyone) since the night before his neighbor told him that her and her sister were opening a trampoline park in OP.  What!?!?  What are the odds, right??  So, there was serious meetings/negotiations for the next couple of weeks.  In the end, it was...are we going to both open similar businesses within miles from one another and compete or can we do this together??  We decided to go for the latter, it seemed like the obvious choice.  

Next up was lots of behind the scenes details that took lots of hours/meetings/lack of sleep ;).

 Adam had a work trip back in April in our old town so the kids and I tagged along.  We were in the process of opening Urban Air but I didn't blog about it in the original post because we hadn't told many people about it yet.  We met the franchise owners for lunch and they took us to Urban Air.  The kids loved it!

 The kids were officially pumped to have their own Urban Air!  It was so nice to meet Michael and Melissa since we would be working so closely with them for years to come.  They couldn't have been nicer and the kids had so much fun with their daughter.

 Our 4th baby in its beginning stages.

 The building had been a Steinmart so it needed a complete demo.  This was the beginning stages.  If you have been in the store now, you are looking at the front desk area.

Lots and lots of work to be done!  Demo started in April.