FUN CITY - Gurgaon and Vasant Kunj

Looking for something to do when the temps soar over 35˚ celsius and you need to get out of the house?

Look no further than Fun City!

BUT be smart enough to know these little tidbits in advance!

Cute little feet on their way to Fun City.  

Ambience Mall - Gurgaon is located on the top level.  Best to be let off at Gate 3 and then take the escalators all the way up.  

Ambience Mall - Vasant Kunj is the LAST of the malls if you are arriving from South Delhi.  Maneuvering your way through the maze of malls is difficult so try your best to end up AT Ambience Mall (and not DLF Promenade or the other one, the name of which escapes me right now).

When you first arrive you will need to purchase a pre-loaded play card.  You can put any denomination of money on.  For us, Rs 500 buys ample time for two kiddos to play for an hour.  

You simply swipe the card and play.  The games average between Rs 10 and Rs 45 per play.  (note : you will have to wait 60 seconds between each swipe, so don't try to get fancy and hand off the card to the second kiddo in order to get the heck outta dodge more quickly!)

If you know Chuck E. Cheese from the United States, Fun City is ... well ... Chuck E. Cheese on steroids, and without proper air conditioning.  Consider yourself forewarned.

Just like any good gaming arcade worth its salt, your kids will earn tickets upon successful completion of the games ... which are then worth literally squat at the redemption counter.

The only thing that makes this experience better is the fact that you will have to wait while the poor guy HAND COUNTS your kiddos' tickets to inform them of their winning total.

Nope.  No monster eating machine that sucks up the tickets.  No handy-dandy scale to weigh the equivalent of ticket earnings.  This poor chap HAND COUNTED each and every one of my kids' 1, 560 tickets that day.

Disclaimer.  Elizabeth gave us their unused cards, which included some from a birthday party, which meant the littles had one hour of unlimited play time ... BINGO!

There is a pretty cool Fun Zone at both locations.  At the time of this posting, one hour of play time is Rs 150 per child.  The Fun Zone is very similar to your typical indoor playground ball zone/climbing structure.  

The staff is relentless about security and will only release children to those holding the claim tickets.  Socks are required, although they will provide them to those without (although I think they are recycled throughout the day).

There is a roller coaster at the Vasant Kunj location and a pirate ship of sorts at the Gurgaon location.  

EATS ::  McDonalds is located just beyond the entrance for BOTH locations.  Vasant Kunj has a Chilis and a coffee shop just outside of the FunCity.  Gurgaon has a full fledged food court available, including a donut shop kiosk!

Fun City also has packages available for birthday parties and just as an FYI?  Go in the morning ... on a day when local schools are in session.  It feels like a privately booked party!

WORTH NOTING ::  At any given time, only 50% of the games work properly.  The staff is not necessarily capable of fixing said games that are not working.  If you encounter this issue, just give the head bob and move on to the next game.  

Our family gives Fun City two thumbs up ... when utilized in moderation!  The littles love it, and if combined with a trip to Big Bazaar or Landmark, it's all good!

LIFE AND LEMONADE

(ok - we are testing this out ... can you comment?  I'm holding my breath to see if it got figured out/adjusted.  Humor me and comment JUST because ... to prove that it's working again?)




We went to Singapore about a month ago and one of the ABSOLUTE things on my list of things to do was a visit to Ikea.  I know.  It's lame to include Ikea on the list of things to do when you are in Singapore - the land of SO MANY THINGS TO DO!

The last time we were there (2010), I wanted to get some glass bottles for lemonade, but decided against it (I'd already exceeded our return baggage allowance) and they have been on my wish list for an entire year.

(Little did I know that I could have bought the SAME bottles here ... already full of lemonade ... to then reuse.  I wonder about myself sometimes)

I love lemonade.  I love it mixed half and half with iced tea ... I love it just barely frozen as a slushie ... I love it with beer (yep ... thanks Lynden and Tats!) ... I just love it.

What I don't love is the absence of decently priced Countrytime Lemonade drink mixes here in New Delhi.  You can find lemonade drink mixes, but it doesn't taste quite right and it comes at a price of about $8.00 USD.

It had been YEARS since I'd made lemonade by hand ... and the other day it dawned on me that it was the cheapest, easiest way ... and tasted FAR better than any old tub of powdered mix.

(yep, we took all of those seeds out)

The lemons here in Delhi are teensy ...

So teensy that little Mia can cup one in her hand and you'd never know she was holding a lemon.

Instead of halving 4-5 lemons and calling it a day, you can count on about 45 minutes of cutting, squeezing ... cutting, squeezing ... cutting, squeezing.  Oy.

Until I realized that 1/4 of these teensy lemons was about the size of my handy dandy garlic press.

Brilliant.

There is nothing better than fresh squeezed lemonade.

Well, there is the feeling when you accomplish something.  It doesn't have to be something huge.  It doesn't have to ring bell tones into the rafters.  It doesn't have to make the front page of the newspaper ---

When you set out to accomplish something, and you reach your goal, it feels good.  It tastes good.  It warms you up a bit and revitalizes you.

There is something to be said about starting a day with an end goal -- whether it be to lace up the shoes and run a mile, or put away all of the laundry, or figure out how to make an additional $1,000 for your favorite charity.

We all have a different size of box that we lay out for ourselves every morning.  I'd like to think that I can continue to expand the size of my box --- expand the size of the goal that I hold out for myself.

Accomplishment ... sweet success ... it's like fresh squeezed lemonade.

WATERMELON JUICE and A DAY OFF

In the not so recent past, I randomly gave our staff the day off (including the driver).  In fact, I gave most of them two days off.  I needed a bit of a break.  I needed to spend an ENTIRE day in pajamas.

I needed for the doorbell to not ring for ONE day and I needed to be in 100% control of everything that happened at our house for ONE day.

(OK, so obviously no ONE person can be 100% in control of EVERYTHING, but I wanted to FEEL like I was in control)

We woke up at 7:45 to the dog barking furiously at the front door.  (We were sound asleep - who knows how long we would have slept if he hadn't felt the need to be a ruthless guard dog)  We rubbed the sleep out of our eyes, and stumbled toward the front part of the house to see what the ruckus was about.

SA was standing there with a very fierce "I got this" look on his face ... and when I looked out of the hole in the door (what is that called? Peek hole?) there was no one there ... just our morning paper.

Since we didn't need to take any affirmative action, we all plodded into the living room, plopped on the couch and flipped on the morning cartoons.

It's now nearly 6:00 pm when I type this and we are all still in our pajamas.  

We've done more crafting, purging, organizing, recipe creating and movie watching than anyone could possibly stuff into a 12 hour time period ...

We made ::

watermelon juice

Apple Juice Slushies (everything tastes better with itty bitty spoons)

A scrumptious dinner of mashed potatoes and beef in the crockpot.

Two more boxes filled for donation at the Thrift Shop.

Poked our heads out the door every couple of hours to hand the guard on duty a cold bottle of water.  

Spent some time on some handwritten cards to mail to friends and family

I slowly nursed a pot of coffee over the course of the day with my favorite creamer, and put a "coffee" scented wickless candle on.  

I struggled to respond to Mia when she said "Mama, is Shanti coming today?" after she found a recipe for applesauce muffins because "Mama, you don't know how to cook" (hence the mashed potatoes and pulled beef for dinner vs. McDonalds delivery).

(Guess what we did then?  Made homemade applesauce!)

We spent over an hour deciding where to hang our prized artwork in the newly created craft room in the basement.

I took some time out and read a couple more chapters in the completely engaging book, Unbroken (a MUST read).

We finished setting up the new pingpong table (it's ready for a match this weekend!)

I watched a knock down, drag out fight between the littles.  Like a crazed free-for-all where Mia threatened to scratch out Tony's eyes and Tony was screaming at the top of his voice "YOU ARE NOT NICE, MIA SARICE!!!!" -- I was so amused by their ridiculousness, that I just sat there and watched them.  I got my camera out and started taking pictures, which remarkably made them stop immediately!

We all took some time out and worked on our journal books ... (more on that in a later post).

We recently had a little visitor in the house ... well not so little.  He had a long tail, was black and nasty and ... ran OVER MY FOOT in the middle of the afternoon.  Blech.  Gave me the heebie jeebies.  He seems to have disappeared, thanks to some green colored "poison cakes" ... 

I decided today was also the day to ON MY OWN clean out the area where he came from.  I could easily have waited and asked our housekeeper to do it when she came back to work, but for a reason that maybe no one else will understand, I needed to do it myself.

I mustered up my cojones and walked in.  Shut my eyes and grabbed blindly at the closet door ... flinging it open with one very NOT graceful movement as I - at the same time - jumped as far away from the door as I could.  Really silly, I know, but ... 

I bleached everything that had a surface and felt automatically like I had actually accomplished something! (yea ... that's what happens when you barely do anything for yourself anymore ... even the little things feel like huge success stories)

Now that the sun is slowly beginning to set, and little tummies are starting to rumble, we may think about laying down some sleeping bags in the living room, lighting some wicks and having a 'candlelight' movie night.  

(Just now, I whispered that idea to Tony and his little eyes just sparkled ... yep, I think that's exactly what we'll do!)

SUMMER LISTS

Do you know about the summer list craze?  

The first I ever knew about was Meg's ... over at Whatever ... HERS ROCK!

The rest of these rock as well ...

Centsational Girl ... Pink and Green Mama .... Orangette (even though it's from 2010) ... Little Wonders' (she COLOR CODED her bucket list ... and literally has buckets!) ... and another 2010 list, but still good, Daughter of a Baker.

Need some help?  Jen offers assistance in creating a bucket list for your kids (she includes printables, even!).

Do any of these lists motivate or inspire you?  Any specific entry on the list that makes you want to say "me too, me too!"

I would love to challenge my friends who read me, who are living abroad ... and away from their normal environs ... to write a summer bucket list of their own!  

It might not look the same as a summer to-do list if you were living "back at home" but I want to see it regardless.  Up for the challenge? If you blog it, email me the link.  If you don't blog, just email me the list! 

(I have a feeling that those who "go home" for the summer will have completely different lists than those who "stay put" for the summer).  Humor me, people!