Hell A.K.A The Indoor Play Centre

It's a well known fact that you may find me in a McDonalds playground on any given day.

Those new to the blog : don't be too quick to judge my slack parenting.  I go toting my own healthy snacks.  So, if anything, judge me on my mean spirited parenting - in that I make the twins eat carrot and celery sticks while watching other kids eat nuggets and chips.  And we only go while Miss5 is at school, so she thinks she's missing out on nuggets and chips, because she doesn't believe me when I tell her the twins didn't get Happy Meal's.

Today, I thought I'd try something different.  Because the Macca's staff were getting a little too familiar with me and my kids, and also my BYO policy.  Before it got to the stage of the staff fronting me on the matter (and therefore, me being all offended and outraged and denying everything like a dodgy politician), I thought we should just have a 'cooling off period'.  A bit of a break.  In true, loving relationship style.

It's not that I don't love you anymore.  I just need some space.
And believe me, this is hurting me more than it hurts you.

So instead I went to the local indoor play centre.  What a treat that was.  Insanely noisy, and not an open-air space in sight to let any of that noise - or the deep fryer scent - out into the atmosphere.

The twins were a little shell-shocked at first.  What was this foreign place?  Where is Ronald McDonald hiding?  Why does the nugget and chip smell seem so strong here?  What happened to the natural light?

A few minor tweaks and you'd have the floor plan of indoor Hell.

It took them almost an hour to stop standing like stunned zombies in the middle of the room.  I shit you not.  If only they would be so still and silent at home, it would make my distracted parenting method much  safer  more successful.

You get the picture.

Speaking of pictures.  For the first time ever....I joined the ranks of the snap-happy parents.

Remember the 'old days' of cameras?  How they were only pulled out for special occasions, trips to the park, birthday parties, holidays etc?

24 - 36 unforgettable family moments per film

Thanks to iPhone's and all their poor cousins of other branding, mobile phone cameras are clicking away at every single moment in time.  Every.  Single.  Moment.

Thanks to my new mobile phone (one of the poor cousins, as I am not financially flushed enough to join the elite iPhone crew), I was able to snap away with the best of them.

It's fair to say that well over half of the noise in the play centre was mothers yelling at their kids in a maternally insistent and impatient tone :

" Just look at Mummy! "  

" Over here! Over this way! "   

" Ok that's it!  That's perfect!  Now hold it!  Don't move! "

"....oh for crying out loud, I said DON'T MOVE....now we have to start all over again! "

" Wait...where are you going?  Come back here! "

Some  all  of which may  definitely  have come out of my mouth at maximum volume.

Multiple times.

Along with some rather Kath & Kim style  " Look at moi...Look at moiiiii ".

The result being that my poor cousin of the iPhone captured many blury shots of the twins running past me as they yelled " No Mummy! "

If I had an iPhone I could've caught such bliss minus the blur and on video...

iPhone technology : Just point and shoot

The icing on the cake for me, was when the twins emerged from the play area.  I was sitting down, blissfully reading a magazine circa 1998 (they probably get them from a Doctor's surgery).  The twin tornado approached all smiles.  Chewing away.

Chewing away?

I hadn't fed them yet?

They offered up fists full of mini Easter Eggs.

Not their own.

I took them away, and did the rounds of the other tables of parents, offering up an apology and searching for the owner.

Nobody owned these mysterious Easter Eggs.  Many eyed me suspiciously as if I was that stranger offering sweets to their kids.

So the twins took me to where they scored their bounty.

Insert suspenseful DUM DUM DUMMMMMMM

The ball pit takes no prisoners.  Only left over Easter Eggs

Of course.  Where else....the ball pit.

I've heard many jokes about what's supposedly at the bottom of a ball pit.  Never have I heard Easter Eggs in the punch line.

And I have another 9 visits on my multi-pass to find out just what other treasures lie beneath the multi-coloured plastic surface....