Holiday Adventures 2: The One with the Birthday Party (2)

This post is part of a series for the twins' Harry Potter birthday party. There's too much for one post. This one is about the fun bits that everyone enjoyed. There'll be others to come.

The previous post was about creating the fun that was the party. Today's one will be the fun in itself.

There was the official fun.

The good thing about throwing a party in a gym and having professionals who work with kids all the time and love kids run it is that it becomes a party full of fun. The games were simple with a Potter slant to it. The regular gym drills that the kids do became Inter-house competition and an obstacle course became the Tri-Wizard Cup.

The parents were all pleased that their children were sweaty, got to jump on a trampoline and were made to do things that they thought they couldn't do. One of Evan's friends was heard squealing "I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die!" when he got rolled on a giant roller into a handstand which he had no idea he knew how to do. Not used, they are to being upside down and to see the ground rushing up at them.

The twins spent a lot of time laughing, being sweaty and just enjoyed their friends.

Then there was the unofficial fun.

There was also a lot of open space for them to run about outside and that they did. At some points, they resembled hordes of marauders; this pleased them when we made that comment because that in itself was a Harry Potter reference. They created Harry Potter equivalents of catch and hide and seek and that entertained them while the parents chatted after the party. It got quite boisterous when the girls chased the boys and cornered them in the boys toilet after. That was when the parents had to intervene and tell the girls that they had to stop because the boys weren't having fun anymore.

There was the prop fun.

I made some frames out of old boxes so that the kids could take "Wanted" pictures of themselves. They hammed it up and got into character. The Dreams coaches added to it when they created more photo props that the kids could all use. It was very much in line with what you get at corporate dos or weddings these days.

In fact, the twins did look a little bit like a VIP couple who stood under a banner while we inserted friends to take photos with them. They're young enough to see it for the fun that it is and be silly for the sake of being silly!

The parents' idea of fun. 

Their's was looking forward to a quiet night since the children were likely to pass out early from all the running around. 

That and the fact that we hired an ice cream man. It was one of those hare-brained ideas that popped into my head in the middle of the night and after having to Google and speak to various ice cream men in Chinese (Packrat even approached one on the street), I came away with the realisation that people really like these ice cream men because all of them were fully booked up. Thank goodness for partymojo.com.sg who had an ice cream man available. 

He showed up with the cart, the umbrella and most importantly the bell. He served ice cream with bread, wafer, cups and I think cones. The minimum order was 100 slabs of ice cream and part of me wondered if I needed to bring in ringers to eat up the ice cream. 

But the novelty of having the ice cream man was thrilling and both parents and kids (whose parents allowed them to) went back for seconds. At the end of it, we had 4 slices left. The birthday crowd at inhaled 96 pieces of ice cream all in. Quite an impressive feat seeing that we had 30 kids and some parents.

I've declared that I can only throw a party on this scale once a year and only when the creative energy hits me. 

So, this is for posterity because who knows when the next one will be.