I always feel that fun time ends faster..,
But of coz I still hope every weekends is full of fun, be it with my family or friends.
Thank you all the guests who celebrated Jamie's big 5 birthday at POLW!
I also had lots of fun going down the slides with my two babies ^^
Weather turned out to be great!! We checked the weather forcast the night before and it started there will be thunderstorm islandwide. But there was not a drop of rain in Sentosa throughout the party! Instead, it was kind of hot and it was cooling (not too cold) to be in the water! Lucky us!
But because the weather was hot, the day started off with two cranky children in the car. They were getting hot and uncomfy in their party clothes and stuck in the car for 1hr plus, because we had to set off early to have lunch, pick up the cake, then head to Sentosa.
Setting off
Happy Birthday Girl
But problem solver Laogong never fails to save the day. After turning on the classical music for 10-15min, both children fell asleep in the car. We decided to leave them in the car and started the deco first.
My other savior is Godma Yvonne who never fails to stand by me, give me realistic advices and lend her helping hand, whenever I have to coordinate events. Like she always did, she was the first to reach Port Belly restaurant to help with the setup. We reached at 2plus and there were still lingering lunch crowd. Nevertheless we found few unoccupied table and set up one for the goodie bags and cake.
Princess Jamie came shortly after.
Simple Party Setup
Guests started to arrive from 2.45pm and by then we were lucky enough to get more tables for the guests.
It was so cute watching Jamie received her guests! All the kids were so excited to be invited and Jamie was really a good host! See how thrilled she looked!! This year she even insisted to invite two of her closer classmates!
Jamie receiving her guests
Of coz, there are also some adult guests who are my closer friends and have watched Jamie grew from a tiny baby to a pretty young child.
Last but not least, my parents, Brother,
Da Sao and Jamie's favorite cousin Claris and cousin Clarence came too!
The kids were going wow wow wow when they saw the pretty birthday cake! Even Mummy Me herself loves the Barbie mermaid doll! Hahaha...
So I giving myself a pat on my shoulder! Great choice to match the birthday theme!
Excited children
Blow candles
Cut Cake
Did u notice I even dress according to the theme? Sometimes I feel organising Jamie's parties are like granting my childhood wishes..
Life isn't easy for our parents when I was young, so we never had such luxurious birthday celebrations. But it was never the expensive parties or beautiful cakes I wished for. I simply wished I get to meet my cousins more frequently.. And sometimes holding birthday parties is one of the bonding activities to get people together...
Now that I am a grown up, I tried to mend the lost kinships with some closer cousins and their spouses. I treasure these "newfound" kinships and family support, hence I also want to help Laogong to mainstain his kinships with his cousins. I wish to pass down this practice and belief to Jamie and James. At the same time, I hope Jamie learns to be more sociable and more resilient, through interaction with her cousins and friends.
Back to me and my mermaid! Really love it!
After the cake cutting, we served food and the kids just can't wait to jump into the water.
We didn't take photos during the water play because it was meant be just fun fun fun!!! Anyway, once Jamie got into the pirate ship, she can hardly be found!
I think she really enjoyed herself coz she knocked out when she was on the way home!!!!
And I think I learnt a lot too from this party so I can do a better job the next time if I want to do similar party again!
Lessons learnt
1. Outdoor activities = At weather'a mercy
- unlike indoor parties, where you are in control (ie. Keeping guests in a confound area means easier to gather everyone for cake cutting), it's very hard to avoid everyone running off into the water and refused to come out. That's why we decided to do cake cutting before free and easy water playtime.
- I was pretty prepared for the worst when I checked the weather forecast the night before but I didn't stopped 'praying' for no rain too.
- So it's good to have a wet weather plan in mind, or at least a sheltered holding arwa should there be rain that postponed your outdoor activities. We had the sheltered restaurant at POLW to hold the cake cutting and guests.
2. No rain is good but too hot = impatient children. So some adjustments to schedule has to be made if necessary.
- I noticed the children were more restless. Even my two kids were so restless after we set off. It was not easy to get the children's attention.
- We decided to cut cake after majority of the guests and children had reached. We couldn't even wait for my parents, brother, da sao and Jamie's favorite cousins to come before we started to cut cake. I knew I had to miss them out because most of the other children were getting distracted and restless.
3. It's not easy to get restless children's attention. So you need to be firm to get the children to listen to instructions (which includes standing straight, look at the camera and say cheese when doing cake cutting). Hahaha.. I hope I didn't sound like a discipline master though.. Maybe more like a teacher calling names of those not listening to instructions. But well, it worked so who cares as long as I get the party going ^^
4. It was a good decision to do cut cake then free and easy.
- We did cake cutting first coz we knew the children will be shagged and tired after the water play. No one will have mood to eat or cut cake. True enough, I was totally shagged too after the water play.
- Because it was a Sunday, so we expected people to leave before 6pm (when POLW closed). True enough, most left before 6pm.
- We expected long bath queue too which would delay the cake cutting time if we did water play first. True enough there was a long bathing queue after 6pm. By the time Jamie and I left the toilet, our last guests had left.
5. People do eat heavy refreshments. And unlimited supply of water is a MUST!
- we were expecting less people want to eat at 3pm but it turned out more prefer to eat the refreshments than the cake. Ended up we had quite a lot of leftover pieces of cake.
- what we didn't expected is there were guests who totally rely on water provided by us. So they had to purchase their own water after what we ordered were finished and we were both busy playing with our children in the water area. For this, we had to apologize to our guests. Water will be our top prority next time!
6. We were lucky the lingering lunch crowd slowly walked off nearing cake cutting time. But because of this, we couldnt receive some guests who came when we were still trying to spread out the table cloth after the crowd cleared. So next time I will still prefer to do pre-booking so I don't need go down early to chop seats...
7. Children being children will play in pairs more than threes or in a group.
- I had hoped everyone can play together. But end up I see mostly were in pairs. Jamie was initially with her classmate and later on she decided to look for her favorite cousin Claris. But the girls were not comfortable to play in threes. That's really weird.. Anyone know why? Maybe young children still prefer undivided attention.
- Hence, to build individual friendship, it's better to rely on frequent small groups gathering than large group activities like birthday parties ^^ I am definitely going to organise more outings for Jamie and the different groups of children! Coz I also want to born with their mummies! Hahaha!
8. Not necessary to get themed cutleries. Yeah, themed goodie bags are good to have but themed cutleries are not necesssary.
On the whole, it was a very pleasant experience holding the party at POLW. The children really had fun! I 'interviewed' every child before they l eft. They all said they had fun ^^ I think ln children naturally like water play an d indoor playgrounds. Maybe I can try oholding at an indoor playground the next time!
Last but not least, thank you everyone for the lovely presents for Jamie!
Haha! Will start thinking about James party by end Nov 2014!
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