More annoying than an indoor play center

Well, I think I’ve done it! I’ve found a place more annoying than an indoor play center. A place with more noise, more unsupervised screaming children. A venue of  impending dread when it comes to every party invitation brought home. A place that I am more relived to leave than any other……

…You must be asking ..What is this hellish location? What could possibly be worse than smelly unsanitary play equipment, smeared by endless nappied bottoms and sticky fingers…. not to mention what is lurking at the bottom of the ball pit….a place where in a ‘Lord Of The Fly’s’ way children appear to push, hit pull hair, bite, stab others with forks (OK I’m exaggerating a little here…I hope!)

In a way, I’ve almost come to like indoor play centers now…they are tame. In days gone by I would be the mum sliding on the slides and playing in the ball pit with my toddlers…squeezing through tight tunnels and jamming myself into impossible locations (often whilst pregnant) to retrieve a crying distraught child…I would be the one needing a nap in the afternoons….

….nowadays, my kids are older and I can almost drink a coffee in peace, and maybe even read a few paragraphs of a book…(I send my eldest child in to the fray to defend the youngest…hee hee hee).

So, what could be worse than an indoor play center???......

A games center….

A Games center has recently opened in our part of town. It contains seemingly hundreds of arcade games and side-show games (think pizza planet in toy story). It also has a dodgem car track, a lazer- tag gaming maze, even a few lanes of 10-pin bowling!

Sounds fun doesn’t it?.......

Now factor in the most awful doof-doof-doof music at a volume that is impossible to hear yourself think, let alone hear the voice of your child! The center is swarming with hundreds of excited kids trying to win it ‘big’ on the games machines…many of which seem to be shooting games that I really really dislike!  It is dark and stuffy and there are flashing lights everywhere…talk about over-stimulation! Everything costs so much money…you could easily go though $50-100 with a couple of kids and be left with a few trinkets as ‘prizes’. In my opinion these places are way worse than those tame indoor play centers….

You may well be asking why do I go to these places at all…why put myself through the pain and frustration….well, I do it for my kids. Just like when they were toddlers at the play center, their happy red smiley faces…hair stuck to their foreheads with sweat…the excitement of anticipation of being taken to one of these places and their sheer joy is hard to begrudge…so like thousands of other parent, I dutifully take my kids…once to play centers…now to games centers.

Because the games center is my kids favorite place at the moment, I took my niece and nephew there along with their unsuspecting parents…Hee hee!

You can see in the pictures the kids had an absolutely fantastic time…us parents…not so much. I think they headed off in their car, back to county town Australia, thankful to be diving far far away from the doof-doof of the games center…

I’m just glad that I won't be teaching my nephew how to drive!!

Sharing today over at Diary of a SAHM for #TeamIBOT....Have a great Tuesday and pop over to read some awesome blog posts!