Birthday at School, at Home

The big day finally arrived and Parker was thrilled to finally be 6.

I had a busy day getting ready for our trip tomorrow, but I did manage to fit in making sugar cookies in the shape of a 6 for his class.

The girls and I (and their friend Quinn) took them to the school at 2:15 as I had scheduled an ice cream party for Parker and his friend Orin whose birthday was also today. (The class won an ice cream party for having the most tickets at our booth at the recent Harvest Fair.)







Then after school, Aidan came over and we all went to dinner at Fentons which of course included lots of ice-cream. Aidan and Parker are ridiculously cute together, always laughing, hugging, talking about math, and generally goofing off.





And yes, if you are counting, the kids had ice cream twice today!

Hanging Around

Crepe Cake

Because we didn't eat enough cake this weekend (I think I counted 6 between the various parties), I made a Crepe Cake for a dinner party I went to last night. My friend Ellen from Bootcamp is having surgery Friday to remove some cancer and about 10 of us got together to toast her and wish her a speedy recovery.

The crepe cake, a two day ordeal, was worth it. The crepes were literally the best I ever made. The. Best. And I only had to make 25 of them to get 20 perfect ones. Yum.

The Party

The marble run party was pretty low key. There was one facilitator for all the kids and she basically showed them a shit load of supplies (tubes, ramps, pegs, etc) and said, have at it. And they did. Parker was in heaven and it didn't last long enough for him, but most of the kids were done by the time the workshop was over.













Afterwards, we went across the hall to eat the ridiculous cake (and the adult mocha/kahula cake I got at La Farine). The kids were getting pretty antsy so after cake we took them upstairs to run around outside. I chatted with parents, watched kids that had been dropped off, and helped the two that ran into cement stairs.







Then we made a quick stop at the Roller Coaster exhibit before we headed home.




Everyone seemed to have a good time and for that, I am glad.

The Cake

Parker's Bday party was today. Held at the Lawrence Hall of Science and was Marble Madness Workshop. I let Parker invite whoever he wanted up to the workshop limit and he picked about 8 kids from school and a few outside friends including both boys and girls.
A week or two ago, I thought we could do some kind of marble run themed cake. I did some poking on the internet, ask some friends, my sister and talked to Michael about it. I had some ideas, but Michael came up with using the Chaos tower with a cake and we stuck with that. He made up some prototypes over the last week and we made a practice cake a few days ago with bright red fondant. He learned a few things like we need a lot of fondant and frosting.



Then yesterday, we started to make the cake. I first made 3 13 x 2 yellow cakes (mixes) and we wrapped them and put them in the fridge. Then this morning, I made a bunch of buttercream frosting and started assembling them.




Michael did the cutting to make the cake slant down (to allow a marble to run down it.) He also cut a nice hole in the middle of the cake for the marble to drop through.



He then rolled and laid the white fondant on top. Not an easy part of the job. Then he started with the fondant marble runs in blue that go down the cake.




At this point, Michael was obsessed and pretty much worked on the cake solid for about 2 hours. Getting it just right. Testing the marble run. Adjusting it. Adding a 6 to it.

As you may be able to see, it has two routes. One that went on the top of the cake and one that went through the cake. Both routed back under the cake to the motorized elevator back to the top where it started again.

At the LHS, he set it up in the workshop room, I added some happy birthday candles, and he added some gumballs (that looked like marbles) to it and it was complete. The parents were impressed. Not sure if the kids noticed it.



Here it is in action:



And yes, we are both officially "those" crazy parents.

Tree

After much pressure and whining, I relented and got the kids a small tree today. They were happy, happy, happy and decorated it immediately.

This is how they went to swim class today.

More Early Presents

We let Parker (and the girls) open some more presents today.

Parker opened the present from Grandma Judy: a book about factor trees. He was pretty damn happy about that and made his own tonight.


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Then we let all the kids open the christmas presents from Grammy and Ginny since she told us that they were for our trip. They each got some jammies, a new bathing suit and a new monogrammed backpack full of great stuff for the trip like coloring books, stickers, games, pencils, paper, etc.











Parker then opened presents from Elizabeth and Miranda...art supplies that I "led" them too while steering them away from loud electronic stuff.

Tomorrow, he'll get a ton more presents and the kids will get the 2 each we got them for christmas when we get back on the 25th.

Early Bday Present

Amy said Parker could open her present early so he did. And was thrilled.

Index cards. And lots of them. With a whole container full of ideas about what to do with them. They included: Making a tower, guessing how many are needed to reach across the room, making name cards, making a puzzle, a memory game, a category game, a store making pretend money, a marble run, a tiny town, a book, signs, powers of 2, war, labels, little houses, tiny furniture, mystery numbers, paint and fold designs, hanging hooks, airplanes, and animals.

He got right to work on idea #1 and tried to make a tower. It was a little frustrating for him. He thought he had to do the first one completely before he could do the second idea. The girls liked them to and Parker was gracious enough to give them 3 (out of 1500) each.

I spy with my little eye.

There was a lot of traffic coming home from gymnastics today so we played I Spy which is a favorite.

Here is how some of it went:

Miranda: I spy with my little eye something that starts with an S.
Parker: Is is a sign?
Miranda: No.
Rachel: Is it a street?
Miranda: No.
Elizabeth: Is it the sky?
Miranda: No.
Rachel: Give us some clues.
Miranda: I don't have any clues.
Rachel: Ok, then tell us what it is.
Miranda: I don't know what it is! I don't know any words with S!

Parker: I spy with my little eye something that starts with a H.
Miranda: Is it a poo-poo head? [Lots of laughter.]
Parker: No!
Elizabeth: Is it a buddy butt buddy? [Lots of laughter.]
Parker: No! It's nothing silly!

Rachel: I spy with my little eye something that starts with a B.
Elizabeth: Is it a boobie? [Lots of laughter.]

Rachel: I spy with my little eye something that starts with a W (it was raining.)
Parker: Is it a whale?
Rachel: Do you see a whale? [Lots of laughter.]
Parker: Is it a walrus?
Rachel: Do you see a walrus? [Lots of laughter.]