Sunday, August 28, 2005

Mad Scientist Surprise Birthday Party, Volcano Cake & Alien Cupcakes for my Son

My son loves all things science, so for his 9th birthday, we had a "Mad Scientist" themed Surprise part for him!
I made these super easy Alien cupcakes with marshmallows and the 'sticks' are leftover melted cinnamon candies that I used for the volcano cake below.
This volcano cake was super easy, too.  I just used a bundt cake and filled it  with a bunch of cool whip and then melted down those red cinnamon hard candies.  Once they melted, I poured them out onto foil in different lava looking shapes. It was a big hit!
 

One of his creative friends wrapped his gift in foil:)

The big surprise! 

This is from 2005!

Friday night, after many upheavals trying to get a kitten (after option one two and three all fell out, two at the last minute), Dh found one in the bargain shopper... actually IN our own town! (The rest had been at least 45 minutes out of our way.) He picked up the absolutely GORGEOUS 2 month old 1/2 siamese kitten and brought her home. I smuggled her in my bedroom as Dh took all the kids to the play for their last performance.

I baked the volcano cake and the martian cupcakes, cleaned up a bit and did the other next to the last minute things that needed to be done.

The kitten spent the night in our room... and Jaedin didn't discover her!! We even managed to keep it a secret from Paris and Abyni as well;)

We kept Jaedin away from home by telling him that he had a job doing some gardening work for a friend.  I took him to do his "job" weeding my friend Shawna's garden. I was about ready to burst by this point, I was So excited. 

We also stopped at a garage sale, where I found 4 white button up shirts for 50 cents each, for the assistants "lab coats." Meanwhile Sprite, her friend Kerra & Kainan were at home starting the decorating process.

I finally dropped Jaedin off, picked up Shawna's two girls and came home. We hustled and got ready, another friend of Sprite's showed up to help... and at 2:00 the guests started arriving. 


WHEN THE GUESTS ARRIVE:

The assistants pinned the name badges on each child, then sent them to the guessing game table (three jars of candies and plastic critters ~ guess the closest to the actual # and get the jar:)

ACTIVITIES:

TOOTHPICK BUILDING CONTEST:  While we waited for the birthday boy, the guests worked making toothpick structures (all had a bag of 3 tootsie rolls, 4 DOTS candies, and 10 marshmallows for connecting the toothpicks. We latergave prizes for the sturdiest, tallest and most creative.

EGG DROP CONTEST: We did an egg drop contest ~ all the kids got three feet of masking tape, 12 straws and a raw egg. We then dropped them from different heights, until there was only one left. The boys actually didn't do too bad. Several of the boys' eggs made it after being dropped from knee height, and the winner's egg lasted until dropped from shoulder height! 

EXPLODING VOLCANO:  We had an "exploding" paper mache volcano that we had built around 2 liter bottles of Dr. Pepper.  My husband dropped a roll of Mentos into it and it was fun:)

Film Canister Rockets!  You can get film canisters from the photo department of WalMart or whatever

We had each boy make his own jar of slime.

Home made Slime!  The kids each made some in a little jar to take home.  Ewwww, but boy did those kids LOVE this!
 
I called Dh, and he and Jaedin were around the corner at a Pet store and on their way home. ALl the kids hid and we got ready. When Jaedin walked in, everyone jumped out and yelled "SURPRISE!!!" (With 15 kids, that's a pretty LOUD surprise!:) 

Jaedin was SO SHOCKED. He had NO idea... and he was so happy to get all the attention:) He did the guessing jar thing right quick and then he and the rest of the boys finished their toothpick buildings.

I took all the kids out to do the film canister rockets. We had too much water in them the first time, so they all exploded before the kids could put them down... so it was try again! THe second time it was a bit better... some of those rockets flew across the street into the neighbor's yard!

Then we did the big Dr. Pepper volcano. The first one didn't go too terrbly high ~ maybe 3 -5 feet high. The second one went probably 8 - 9 feet high ~ and had Dh trying to figure out a better way to get a higher pressure stream next time:) He has decided to cut a hole in the board underneath, so he can swap out new Dr. Pepper bottles:)



We then did some of the other stations, while Dh set up the slime table. The recipe was wrong, so we had to adjust a bit, but soon all the boys had their hands full of green goopy snot looking stuff (ICKKK!!) There were more than enough baby food jars for everyone:) thanks to my freecycle friends!


THEN we did gifts (we were quickly running out of time:) Jaedin was thrilled with all of his gifts. He got some cool cub scout stuff from last years' den leader and his son, he got some AWESOME science stuff from a homeschooling friend that he was so excited about. He got some money, some legos, some seeds & a pot and some books... and then it was time to bring out the kitten...Kerra covered his eyes, and all the kids were instructed not to breath a word. The gasps were heard all around... and when Jaedin opened his eyes, I thought he was going to cry. He just kept saying, "Oh.... my... god!" He could not believe it. He sat there rubbing his nose on the kitten's face and just being so cuddly. It was sooooo sweet.

ANYWAY ~ most of the guests had to go at that point. Jaedin and Kainan holed up in their room playing with legos and science stuff... Dh and the teen girls made oobleck int he kitchen and messed witht aht for a while, Paris and Abyni and their friends went outside to swim... and I began to pick up:)

That was about it!:) It was a FANTASTIC day and we had an ABSOLUTE BLAST!! I am SO glad we dd it this way ~ and I know that Jaedin really enjoyed himself, and just felt so specialf or having that much effort put into something for him. Yay!:)