Zoom Park Asia – Trampoline Park – Media Invite

Posted in Media Invite, Reviews, Weekend activities with kids by jahbella

We were recently invited to the newly opened trampoline park, Zoom Park Asia at Pandan Gardens. We have been wanting to bring JahBella to a trampoline park for the longest time but have been abit apprehensive and uncertain if they will be able to handle it. I worry about the people jumping out of control all around them and whether they will find jumping around boring.

I honestly don’t know why I worry so much but I’m so glad that we had the perfect ‘excuse’ to bring them to one.

Jah has been jumping on his bed a lot recently and a trampoline park is just the right place for our boy to get that jumping out of his system (or well get more jumping into his system ;p)!

Zoom Park Asia is not exactly your regular trampoline park. Apart from the usual trampolines, it also has tons of activities like dodgeball and slam dunk (basketball) that are combined with the trampoline jumping. Jah was extremely happy to be jumping around and throwing balls at people. Actually I think Joel was very happy to throw the balls at me while Jah went about collecting balls. (don’t ask me why). My worry about people landing on my kids were also unfounded as we were all briefed on the safety rules prior to starting our session.

Dodgeball

Slam Dunk

The kids were very excited to explore the entire Zoom Park, trying out all the different sections and then coming back to the ones they enjoy the most. There was also a very challenging rock wall which jumpers can attempt to climb horizontally. A foam pit awaits you at the bottom if you should fall and trust me you wouldn’t want to fall because getting out of that foam pit is equally challenging! Yes I was unable to get out of it, too fat, too heavy! Don’t laugh, you have to try it for yourself to know what I mean.:(

Mummy is this a slide?

Rock Wall and Foam Pit

Other innovative ways of playing with the foam blocks according to Jah

Not sure which kid enjoyed himself more :p

The park also has a very good system for tracking when each session starts or ends. Every jumper is given a colour tag that indicates the time of their jump session and announcements are made when the session for a particular colour ends. All in all, very organized and impressive.

You will also find a café in the park who currently serves simple cakes, snacks and drinks. While most parks or indoor playgrounds may choose to charge an arm and a leg to their captive audience, Zoom Park Asia charges very reasonably for the F&B at their cafe.Great for that 5 to 10 minutes break for kids (and for me) before they re-charge and continue their jump session.

Taking a break but extremely happy!

Even though Zoom Park Asia may be on the other end of the island from us, it has definitely been placed on our regular go to places. In fact we brought JahBella’s uncle and aunty there with us last weekend and even they admitted it was really tiring good fun! We will be heading there again this weekend at the request of the rest of the Village :p. After all which parent can resist an outing that = fun for them too and results in a hungry child all ready to eat his lunch and take a 3 hour nap after!

JahBella’s Mummy

7Jan2015

Whisk and Paddle Review – Tebing Lane

Posted in Eating Out with Kids, Food, Food Journey, Reviews by jahbella

One would think that we would have discovered this café/ restaurant a lot earlier, given that we live almost right next to it and it has been opened for almost 2 months now. I guess this kinda shows that we haven’t exactly been on our family bike rides much in recent times.

Jah and I chanced upon Whisk and Paddle on Saturday morning when we took a Mummy-Son bike ride. Joel’s bicycle had somehow ‘come apart’ that morning, a combination of his annoying bike tyre problem and Jah messing up the bicycle chain while we were trying to solve the tyre problem. The result being, Joel and Bella were relegated to a morning at the playground (Bella was very pissed off) and Jah insisted that Mummy stuck to the original plan and took him to the park for a ride.

Whisk and Paddle is located at Tebing Lane, with a view of the park and the waters. It would have been a perfect morning outing for mummy and son but ermm mummy didn’t bring any money with her so we were resigned to coming back at another time with papa and little sister.

The view!

We decided to come back on Sunday evening for an early dinner with the other half of the JahBella team. The restaurant does not take reservation on weekend evenings so we did a walk-in. At 6pm, the place was already half filled with the other half of the place fast filling up. We chose to sit further at what I call the family friendly seating area, long tables with sofa benches. The other seating area consisted of more traditional café like tables and chairs. There was a small play area with a tent and some toys to keep the kids occupied. The play area was right smack between the two seating areas which in my opinion was perfect! Rather than have the kids play at some corner where only parents seated at those corners could see what was going on. Having kids right in the middle meant that they could have lots of light and they could spot their parents no matter where they were seated. 🙂

Family friendly seating area

Play area

The restaurant serves all day breakfast and other mains from 3pm onwards.

We ordered Eggs Benedict with Smoked Salmon and Ham for the adults and a Bolognaise Penne for JahBella to share. We wanted to try the chunky fries with truffle mayo but it wasn’t available. We also order a Piccolo Latte, a Babycino, a Crunchie Honeycomb Milkshake and a warm Chocolate Fudge cake with Ice cream. One word sums up our food experience..yummy! Jah was very happy with the food and he was also very happy with the old school snack corner. 🙂

The food plus the laid back ambience, blue skies and fresh air really completed our wonderful weekend. Our kids are very much like us…give them crappy food and we will get very cranky kids. Give them a good ambience and yummy food and we have the sweetest kids ever. :p Suffice to say, our kids were extremely happy and cooperative that day.

We will definitely be bringing the kids back to try more, in fact I think there might already be plans to celebrate our Wedding Anniversary with the kids there this weekend.

For now, we will let the pictures do the talking…:)

Eggs Benny with Smoked Salmon

Bolognaise Penne

Eggs Benny with Ham

Piccolo Latte

Crunchie Honeycomb Milkshake

Babycino

Warm Chocolate Fudge Cake

Old School Snacks Corner – Spoilt for choice!

JahBella’s Mummy

5Jan2015

SG50 Family Picnic at the Istana – Families for Life

Posted in Weekend activities with kids by jahbella

We had our first family picnic of 2015 over the weekend and we had it with tons of other families during the SG50 Family Picnic at the Istana organized by Families for Life.

Family pic before entering the Istana

Families for Life is organizing a series of family bonding activities and monthly family picnics in conjunction with the SG50 celebrations this year. In fact the monthly family picnics started last year and is held at a different location/neighborhood park each month.

The one we attended over the weekend was held at the Istana and was one of the largest one to be held, with families from all over Singapore gathering on the Istana grounds.

There were games, music, free milo, ice cream, coffee and popcorn. Bouncy castles and play equipments were set up all over the lawn to enter the little kids. Balloons and stickers were given out to kids and families. Each family that pre-registered for the event was also entitled to a complimentary cooler bag with some useful items like first aid kit, rain coats and a small umbrella to name a few. The cooler bag came in very handy for us to store our bag of ice because we were too lazy to lug a cooler box with us. :p

Milo truck

Items in our free cooler bag

SG50 Stickers and Calendar

Playground on the lawn

Families could also purchase up to 2 picnic baskets ($10 each) with proceeds going to the President’s Charity. I loved the little red picnic basket and it had some nice little treats inside. Especially nice for families who may have decided to travel light for their picnic. We, on the other hand braved the load and probably looked alittle silly carrying bags of bottle drinks and sandwiches and pies with us while queuing to get in but we were absolutely happy with the extra ice cold drinks and food. :p

Picnic basket goodies and more!

While the weather threatened to dampen our moods with passing showers (literally passing with 5 minutes of rain each time) and the occasional drizzle, the event was pretty cool. The kids went absolutely crazy with the space they had around them. The sprawling park and lawn where they could run freely without having us adults shouting at them to be careful. Something we really are not quite able to do or not do anymore. The live music that they could dance and groove to and the whole family just being able to relax and bask in the sunlight or huddle under one brolly together.

Perfect blue skies!

I’m singing in the rain!

The process of getting into this event was I assume slightly more tedious than the other park events but this is to be expected, given that we had to clear security etc to get through. Perhaps we will attend one of their other monthly picnics again soon to check out the difference. That being said, there is really nothing stopping us all from organizing our own little picnic with our families is there? 🙂

This is truly an awesome initiative and I hope more families will look to spend more time with each other. I’m fortunate that JahBella has the ‘village’ to spend weekends with, their ever sporty and fun uncles and aunties! #familytimeprecioustime 🙂

One more family pic before we leave!

JahBella’s Mummy

2Jan2015

Kovan Special Noodle and Chikuwa Tei Chirashi – Food Journey

Posted in Food Journey by jahbella

This blog was started to document our parenting and family travel adventures but this year I have decided that I will attempt to document our food journey as well. This might include not only food joints that are family friendly but the food ‘adventure’ that Joel and I embark on as a couple. 🙂 They may range from your simple hawker fare to ‘nice food’ for that special occasion. They say the key to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I say the key to a happy marriage is awesome food! Trust me! Totally tested! We argue less when there is good food. :p

So let’s kick off 2015 with the food we had today!

The Special Noodles at Kovan market is an old favourite for us. We discovered it way before Jah was born and used to have it almost every weekend. We have stopped visiting for awhile because bringing kids to a hawker centre and having to queue at least 20 mins for noodles is not exactly ideal. The stall serves your usual wanton mee, Ipoh hor fun and shredded chicken noodles etc but their signature dish is what they call Special Noodles which is kind of a mixture of all the above noodles I have mentioned. The sauce plus the chilli and tomato ketchup mix is simply awesome! Just make sure that you come early if you want to try their special noodles as they tend to sell out fast and the stall normally closes by late morning.

We decided that our lunch stop for today would include Jap food, a good barachirashi to be specific. We made a reservation at one of our usual Barachirashi haunts but found out when we got there that they were not serving their usual lunch bentos today! Argh! It was 210pm and we were fast running out of options. We did a quick search and ‘settled’ for Chikuwa Tei at Mohamed Sultan which was a 10 mins drive away. I am so glad that we were ‘forced’ to try this restaurant. At $25, their Chirashi sushi bowl is a real treat! Value for money with generous slabs of very fresh sashimi. They also had a very good variety of bentos and sides and we have decided to include them as one of our go to place for good jap food. 🙂

All in all, a very good start to 2015 yummy wise 😉

Here’s to more feasting, delicious food and a happy marriage!

JahBella’s Mummy

31Dec2014

JahBella’s Top 10 Blog Posts of 2014

Posted in Eating Out with Kids, Holidays, Kids health, Online Shopping, Perth, Photoshoot, Plays/ Theatre, Reviews, Tips with Kids, Travel Planning, Travel with Kids, Weekend activities with kids by jahbella

2014 marks the beginning of our blogging adventure – a decision to document our special family moments and vacation experiences as well as to give a little insight into the everyday lives of two full-time working parents, with two childcare going children. Although we have only been blogging for the last 5 months of 2014, the attempts to note down our experiences and thoughts have truly enrich our lives in more ways than we could imagine.

So to round off and recap our year, here are our Top 10 Blog Posts of 2014.

1) Why a C-Section Doesn’t Make You Less of A Woman/ Mother

A reminder to all c-section mummies that regardless of birth method, we are all precious in the eyes of our little ones and a c-section does not make you any less a mummy.

2) Little Nyonya – Peranakan Outfits for Little Girls

Want to know where to pick out food quality Peranakan outfits for yourself and the little one? Little Nyonya has really authentic and beautiful pieces!

3) The Playhouse @ Rochester – Review

An Outdoor AND Indoor playground for the kids, with yummy brunch food for the whole family

4) Update on Jah’s Head Injury

A life-changing and scary moment for our family this year in fact the entire family + uncles and aunties are still pretty shaken by this event. We thank God that Jah is well and healthy today.

5) 3 Must-Have Items When Flying With Kids

Our family’s must haves when flying with kids and looks like we will be trying these items on Bella in 2015.

6) My Top 4 Kiddy Products of the Moment – (Sep 2014)

While we are no longer using our Double Stroller, the other 3 items still continue to be my favourite parent-life saver of the moment..

7) How to Survive an Eye Test with a 3 year old

We will be attempting our 2nd eye test with Jah in Jan 2015. Perhaps another post soon on how we survived the same test, this time at a private practitioner. In the meantime, this should lend some insight on what goes on during an eye test at a government hospital.

8) Trigg Beach Family Photo Shoot (March 2014)

Our first of many more family photo shoots in Australia (i’m sure). Its really hard to get the whole family to look at the camera together pix especially when attemping wefies so I’m totally for photo shoots during our vacations..at least it guarantees some nice pics to take home with us 😉

9) Hop and Honk (I Theater) – Review

Jah’s introduction to his first full on theater play + an intermission and we survived! In fact keep a look out for more reviews on upcoming I Theatre productions in 2015! Can’t wait!

10) Getting Spectacles for Jah – The Ups and Downs

Finding a place that offers spectacles for kids below primary school going age, is really a tough feat in Singapore.

We are glad we found a place to go to for good quality spectacles that are ‘child resistant’ – a 3 year old is not going to treat his specs with the same care as a 13 year old.

So here are our Top 10 Blog posts from 2014!!

Thank you everyone for your support and we hope to share more of our adventures, tips and activities with you in the new year.

Happy 2015!

JahBella’s Mummy