A Surprise in Waiting

I have been telling Baby that we are not going to have a birthday party this year.

I don't want the "party" idea to be ingrained in her and cause her to feel entitled to lavish birthday parties every year.

She voiced out a few times that she would like to have one but each time I said no.

And I started feeling a little bad.

Birthday parties cost a lot more these days than when it was during Coco's time. I recall her eighth birthday party at Wild Wild Wet was no more than $500 in all, with the 2-hour charge of about $250 for ten to fifteen children, with unlimited number of accompanying parents, if I remember correctly. Food and cake were self-prepared and ordered separately, respectively.

The last I checked, Wild Wild Wet has a basic package that cost $450 now, and only two accompanying adults are allowed in the premise. The other adults' entry is chargeable. 

Really expensive.

A birthday party these days easily cost $1000, as I found out while preparing for Baby's last year. 

I feel that it's too extravagant to spend such an obscene amount of dough on a child's birthday party.

The cheapest I had enquired was KidzAmaze but the slot was quickly snapped up. 

I started drumming into Baby about our own private party, that we would celebrate it ourselves, until I saw on Facebook about a mother's preparation for her young son's party at school. 

For all the Pokemon Go I have been playing, it is such a shame it didn't occur to me to give Baby a Pokemon-themed party!

And it occurred to me that I could just give her a quick celebration at her school canteen, during recess! She has expressed a few times that she wants to celebrate her birthday with her friends. 

Stupid mummy!

So last night, I started sourcing for Pokeballs with Pikachu figurines.

My goodness! Tough. Tough. Tough.

Aplenty as they were on Carousell, these sellers kept replying that their Pokeballs were sold out!

I started to feel discouraged.

William said we could check out the Toy Outpost shop in the morning.

What gave me hope was the cake makers.

Super last minute as I was, two cake makers were willing to accommodate my one-day-in-advance order!

And those were popular cake makers - Cake Avenue and Sensational Cake.

I will always be grateful to them.

I chose Cake Avenue for the lower price and being a perfect alternative (will show the cake in the next post).

After the most important part of the celebration was settled, William and I continued to search for Pokeball sellers.

I sent messages to eleven Carousellers and finally narrowed down to two.

 

Eventually I bought them from whom I thought sounded helpful.

 

I was so disappointed with the figurines that come with the balls that I started sending enquiring messages to other Carousellers to check if it was possible to buy Gen 1 figurines from them.

However, they didn't seem helpful. 

Then William said,"I found out that these are later Gen's mons! You could be chasing them next time."

I was skeptical and asked him to find out the names of these mon-figurines.

And he did.

Then he said something that made me turn around,"But the children will like the ball."

Ya! It's the ball that matters. The figurine was just a bonus. What was I thinking!

Baby doesn't know she has a cake or is celebrating her birthday during recess. I told her I will be bringing her goody bags to school so that she could give them out to her friends.

I hope she would be terrifically surprised!