forestland weekend
I'll say this for The Bun: kid's got a better social life than me. This weekend mostly revolved around two classmates' birthday parties. We did manage to go to some of the vineyards open for the annual Caves Ouvertes on Saturday morning, but otherwise it was all about hyper kids, lots of noise, and plenty of chocolate cake.
Saturday's party was a really memorable one. It was for one of The Bun's best friends, M, who is quite shy and introverted by nature, but he and The Bun have a mutual love of dinosaurs and their personalities fit together very nicely. A couple of weeks ago The Bun went to M's house for a playdate and M's mother reported that after the boys ate their lunch, they disappeared into the garden for about three hours and she never saw or heard from them because they were playing so well together. Now these kids want to do a sleepover! I'm not so sure about that because M lives at the top of a very windy single-laned road in the mountains and I don't fancy the idea of driving there at midnight to collect a Bun who has just changed his mind. We'll see. M's mother and I figure it may be good practice for the boys when they eventually have their two-night residential camp next summer.
Anyway, M's party was a very small one with just five boys on the invite list - keeping it within his best friends circle. I like the idea of that and will probably do something similar if/when we have a party for The Bun next year. (He won't have a party in Switzerland this year because he got a CBeebies Land trip as a big birthday treat, but I told him that we'll have a sort of family party in Singapore when we're there in August.) The party was held in a place called Forestland in a small town across the border in France and a short drive from home. It is a great place to have a DIY party because there's no entrance fee to the place; you only have to pay for some of the activities, like aqua zorbing or the tree-top obstacle course, fittingly-called accrobranche in French and costing only 12€ for unlimited runs.
I knew The Bun was a bit nervous about the accrobranche because he's generally a cautious sort of kid. The course for younger children is not that high off the ground, but high enough so that they have to do it themselves with minimal assistance from adults, including clipping and unclipping their own zipline safety clasps. A couple of the other boys had done the parcours course several times before so they led the way and The Bun just followed suit. He completed the course more or less on his own, except for an incident where M's father had to shimmy up at one point to pull him towards one of the trees because scrawny Bun didn't have enough body mass to whiz all the way across the zipline, ha!
After that there was no stopping the boys. I didn't keep track of him much because I was too busy drinking bubbly with M's mother and talking to some of the other parents. That's the other great thing about Forestland - there's no admission charge, and there are loads of open areas with large plastic tables and lots of chairs, so you can pull together some tables and basically create your own party spot. The management doesn't care if you bring your own food; I even saw a couple of families bring their own BBQ grills. M's mother brought helium balloons (good move so that the boys could always spot our table if they wanted to return to it) and loads of food both for the adults and the kids and we had a very nice time in the sun talking with each other.
It is probably partly due to peer pressure, but I think that party really proved how much more confident The Bun has grown in recent months. Apart from the accrobranche activities, he also went on one of those bungee trampoline things, did some aqua zorbing, and went up and down an enormous three-storey high bouncy castle slide several times. All of these were completely new experiences for him. J commented that The Bun just followed the herd and did whatever his friends were doing, but hey, not all of us are born leaders and it isn't all bad being a follower sometimes. Case in point: The Bun being exposed to new experiences that he otherwise would have been too cautious to try.
The party wrapped up at 7pm when it was supposed to end at 5pm. Everyone was having too much fun to leave! J and Bao came to join us halfway through and she had a nice time with the bouncy castles and even tried her hand with the piñata. I think we'll definitely be returning to Forestland soon.
_______________
Sunday's party was at Yatouland, which is located inside a huge industrial warehouse that has been converted into a dance club. When you walk in, all the walls are painted black, there is an enormous mirrorball above your head, and there are funky sculptures and leather sofas dotted all around the place. The clever owners figured out that if they pushed all the furniture to the walls and stuck twenty bouncy castles onto the dance floor, they could make a pretty penny from parents and maximise the use of their space during daylight hours. After all, bouncy castles deflate in minutes and after that's done, the place can go back to being a dance club.
It's a good place to hold a kids' party because the management divides up the furniture so that everyone has a demarcated 'party space' with lots of tables and sofas for guests. You can bring your own food and just pay for the children who attend the party, and you don't even have to entertain them or watch them because they're in an enclosed space mostly filled with inflatable objects.
Anyway, I don't have photos of the party because I dropped The Bun off, and then did a quick Picard supermarket run with J and Bao. The weather was so nice that J brought her to the playground after we got home, and I got to sit at home and eat an apple while reading for fifteen whole minutes without being interrupted. Now that made my Sunday.
We didn't do much for the rest of the Sunday - the kids spent a couple of hours playing in the park downstairs, while I baked an oatmeal peach bar (that sort of turned out like a kind of soft peach cake) and made roast pork for dinner. I like cooking if I get to do it on my own while listening to ancient grunge music (i.e. music from my teenhood).
This happens to all his trousers by the time the school year ends.
I consider it a good sign!
We are going to hit our second anniversary of our stay here and how things have progressed since our first year, especially for The Bun. Playdates and parties, grass stains on trousers, rock collections in his pockets and a love for the outdoors - now that's a childhood I envy.
Saturday's party was a really memorable one. It was for one of The Bun's best friends, M, who is quite shy and introverted by nature, but he and The Bun have a mutual love of dinosaurs and their personalities fit together very nicely. A couple of weeks ago The Bun went to M's house for a playdate and M's mother reported that after the boys ate their lunch, they disappeared into the garden for about three hours and she never saw or heard from them because they were playing so well together. Now these kids want to do a sleepover! I'm not so sure about that because M lives at the top of a very windy single-laned road in the mountains and I don't fancy the idea of driving there at midnight to collect a Bun who has just changed his mind. We'll see. M's mother and I figure it may be good practice for the boys when they eventually have their two-night residential camp next summer.
Anyway, M's party was a very small one with just five boys on the invite list - keeping it within his best friends circle. I like the idea of that and will probably do something similar if/when we have a party for The Bun next year. (He won't have a party in Switzerland this year because he got a CBeebies Land trip as a big birthday treat, but I told him that we'll have a sort of family party in Singapore when we're there in August.) The party was held in a place called Forestland in a small town across the border in France and a short drive from home. It is a great place to have a DIY party because there's no entrance fee to the place; you only have to pay for some of the activities, like aqua zorbing or the tree-top obstacle course, fittingly-called accrobranche in French and costing only 12€ for unlimited runs.
I knew The Bun was a bit nervous about the accrobranche because he's generally a cautious sort of kid. The course for younger children is not that high off the ground, but high enough so that they have to do it themselves with minimal assistance from adults, including clipping and unclipping their own zipline safety clasps. A couple of the other boys had done the parcours course several times before so they led the way and The Bun just followed suit. He completed the course more or less on his own, except for an incident where M's father had to shimmy up at one point to pull him towards one of the trees because scrawny Bun didn't have enough body mass to whiz all the way across the zipline, ha!
After that there was no stopping the boys. I didn't keep track of him much because I was too busy drinking bubbly with M's mother and talking to some of the other parents. That's the other great thing about Forestland - there's no admission charge, and there are loads of open areas with large plastic tables and lots of chairs, so you can pull together some tables and basically create your own party spot. The management doesn't care if you bring your own food; I even saw a couple of families bring their own BBQ grills. M's mother brought helium balloons (good move so that the boys could always spot our table if they wanted to return to it) and loads of food both for the adults and the kids and we had a very nice time in the sun talking with each other.
It is probably partly due to peer pressure, but I think that party really proved how much more confident The Bun has grown in recent months. Apart from the accrobranche activities, he also went on one of those bungee trampoline things, did some aqua zorbing, and went up and down an enormous three-storey high bouncy castle slide several times. All of these were completely new experiences for him. J commented that The Bun just followed the herd and did whatever his friends were doing, but hey, not all of us are born leaders and it isn't all bad being a follower sometimes. Case in point: The Bun being exposed to new experiences that he otherwise would have been too cautious to try.
The party wrapped up at 7pm when it was supposed to end at 5pm. Everyone was having too much fun to leave! J and Bao came to join us halfway through and she had a nice time with the bouncy castles and even tried her hand with the piñata. I think we'll definitely be returning to Forestland soon.
_______________
Sunday's party was at Yatouland, which is located inside a huge industrial warehouse that has been converted into a dance club. When you walk in, all the walls are painted black, there is an enormous mirrorball above your head, and there are funky sculptures and leather sofas dotted all around the place. The clever owners figured out that if they pushed all the furniture to the walls and stuck twenty bouncy castles onto the dance floor, they could make a pretty penny from parents and maximise the use of their space during daylight hours. After all, bouncy castles deflate in minutes and after that's done, the place can go back to being a dance club.
It's a good place to hold a kids' party because the management divides up the furniture so that everyone has a demarcated 'party space' with lots of tables and sofas for guests. You can bring your own food and just pay for the children who attend the party, and you don't even have to entertain them or watch them because they're in an enclosed space mostly filled with inflatable objects.
Anyway, I don't have photos of the party because I dropped The Bun off, and then did a quick Picard supermarket run with J and Bao. The weather was so nice that J brought her to the playground after we got home, and I got to sit at home and eat an apple while reading for fifteen whole minutes without being interrupted. Now that made my Sunday.
We didn't do much for the rest of the Sunday - the kids spent a couple of hours playing in the park downstairs, while I baked an oatmeal peach bar (that sort of turned out like a kind of soft peach cake) and made roast pork for dinner. I like cooking if I get to do it on my own while listening to ancient grunge music (i.e. music from my teenhood).
This happens to all his trousers by the time the school year ends.
I consider it a good sign!
We are going to hit our second anniversary of our stay here and how things have progressed since our first year, especially for The Bun. Playdates and parties, grass stains on trousers, rock collections in his pockets and a love for the outdoors - now that's a childhood I envy.