Spencer's Birthday Party

Spencer turned 6 this Saturday. I can't believe he's so big! He's such a sweet boy and we're so glad to have him in our family.

We decided to have a science-themed birthday party this year. My friend Eliza had a similar party for her daughter when she turned six, so we decided to go with that. We invited his whole kindergarten class and his whole Primary class. His birthday fell on the Saturday after a week break from school, so I thought a lot of kids would be out of town and not be able to make it. And when we sat down and started on the list, I felt bad not including some of the kids. So we decided to go all-out and just invite the whole lot of 'em. We ended up with 19 kids at the party, not including Spencer. It was a crazy two hours, but it ended up being a lot of fun.

I thought the first little bit we could have a few games going on and I set up Hyperdash in the living room and Hullabaloo in the basement. But it turns out the kids preferred to run around the house screaming. After a little of that, we had everyone sit down for pizza, carrots, and fruit. Peter had the great idea of serving Capri-Suns so we wouldn't have lots of spills to clean up. We set up the dining room table for 10, the kitchen table for 6, and then had about 4 in the basement. One child did not want to join us for lunch and entertained himself with balloons in the family room. Whatever.

Then we broke out into stations. Every child was given a sticker when they arrived - yellow, red, or blue. The red station started with Peter in the laundry room. They did magic sand. It's this colored sand that is treated with Scotchgard, so it stays dry in water. It makes really cool shapes underwater, and then you can reach in and pull it out in handfuls and it's completely dry. It's actually very cool and the kids seemed to like it.

The yellow group went with Erin DeGraff. She's a new woman in our ward and has a son that's Spencer's age and came to the party. She did experiments with layers and elephant toothpaste. We significantly simplified the layers and only did it with honey, colored water, and oil so that the layers would stay more distinct.

Brad Damstedt did the third station. He did an experiment with fire (I'm actually not exactly sure what that was....) and an experiment with combining water and alka seltzer in a film canister and waiting for the gases to be released and the canisters to pop open.

I was mainly cleaning up from lunch and taking pictures, so I was upstairs while the stations were going on. It was so fun to hear the kids' reactions. They were especially vocal in Brad's group - who doesn't love fire and exploding things? They were laughing, screaming, jumping up and down, and generally enjoying themselves. I put a lot of effort into this party, so it was very nice to hear them all having fun.

After the stations we had cake and ice cream. I made Spencer a flask cake. Brad, who's a scientist in real life, was impressed. He even knew the proper name - an Erlenmeyer flask. You make it by putting two bundt cakes together, inserting a paper towel tube covered in aluminum foil in the holes, and covering it all with a lot of frosting. It took about 4 tubs of frosting to cover the whole thing, especially since you have to try to make the curve look natural. There's cotton candy coming out the top of it to look like something bubbled over.

After cake and ice cream we had Spencer open presents in the living room. This was another very loud undertaking, as the kids were very excited to see him open the presents that they had brought him. But it was nice to see them excited about giving something away - it was only a few years ago that this would have made everyone very sad to see someone get so much stuff, but they all seemed much more excited than sad.

Drop-off and pick-up of kids was crazy, with 19 coats and 19 sets of shoes and all the parents coming and going at the same time. But other than that, it was actually much more manageable than I thought it would be.

Here's a picture of the living room before:

and after:

Later that night we ordered Chinese food for dinner, had more cake, and opened a couple of presents from us and from Grandma Brinton. We gave him a flashlight/lantern and a camera from Fisher-Price (thanks modeling money!). And Grandma Brinton gave him Hungry Hungry Hippos. He seemed to really love them all.

It was a really fun birthday, but I'm glad they only happen once a year. Happy Birthday, sweet Spencer!