Ethan has officially turned 5 years old on the 21st July. We haven’t celebrated with a birthday party since he turned 2 years old, electing instead with small getaways to Johor Bahru and a staycation at Wild Wild Wet theme park. With the number of his friends’ parties we attended lately, we finally decided to throw a party together (pretty much out of peer pressure). Except, we went the lazy way by hosting it at an indoor playground at Kiztopia. It was a relatively new playground that only opened some time earlier this year at Marina Square, and we must admit the hosts running the place weren’t too experienced. We had a pretty difficult time just getting the booking done, or just getting questions answered! In the end, we were lucky to be able to book a session on a Saturday (one day earlier than Ethan’s actual birthday) on the 20th July. It consisted of 2 hours of party room time with food and game hosting provided, followed by unlimited play time in the main playground. It was a relatively small party of 11 kids mostly from his pre-school. You would think he would be excited. Looking at some of his photos.. Ethan didn’t look too happy at all!
It might have been the relatively clunky Ironman suit and the birthday hat that required him to balance it on his head the whole time. He wasn’t like that all afternoon. His grandparents may have made a difference!!
When it comes to game time though, most of the kids looked like they had fun, though I wouldn’t call it engaging. The biggest complaint we had was that the game part was not very long at all with a lot of idle time where the kids were just sitting around. This was on top of a few issues with their technical equipment where musical chair music stopped unexpectedly or couldn’t start at all! Again, I think it’s just the inexperience of the party host showing through.
All was forgotten about the party organiser, when all hell broke loose after the 2 hours party room session was over. Most of the kids basically all “escaped” and were dispersed all over the main playground after that. I guess the downside of hosting a party in a shared playground like this is that the kids weren’t really playing together at all. Most of them just hung out in small groups playing separately in the jungle of rides available
Nevertheless, the playground was a massive draw card for the kids. I underestimated how long they would last there, which eventually went on with the last of us leaving at around 7:30pm (that’s a good 3.5 hours of just playground time). We were all pretty tired and went home sleeping much earlier than we normally would.
On his real birthday next day (on 21st Jul), of course Ethan asked about opening up his birthday presents first thing out of bed!
We spent much of Sunday just relaxing not doing a whole lot, though we did manage to go eat his favourite dish at the moment.. roast duck @ Duckland!
As parents would say, time flies when your kids are growing up. I always tell others that I swear it was only yesterday that he was born. It definitely didn’t feel like 5 years have gone by! As part of the party, I did put together a quick video to summarise what he was up to in the last 5 years..
Let’s just say, we don’t want our boy to grow up so quickly!
