december birthday buddies

                ella turned 11 this year. holy heart attack! you know you're special when you turn 11 on 12.13.14!  i feel my blood pressure rise every time I think about how quickly we are approaching the teen years. Lord have mercy. she is really growing up, and with braces added to the mix she is looking more the part of a tweenager than i'd like. the festivities started with root beer floats at school, then bean chose to go to pattison's and roller skate with a couple of her closest friends, and then out to red robin for dinner. the girls had fun whizzing around the rink and of course ella entered every contest and race. she cracks me up with her fearless, confident spirit! at dinner i barely got a word in edge wise as the 4 of them laughed and laughed. there is nothing on this earth like the sound of giggling girls ~ music to my ears! the two items on her birthday wish list describe her personality perfectly: a pogo stick and perfume. now how is that for a contradiction?! i guess she is stuck somewhere between a little girl and a young lady. i'm telling you, this is going by way too fast.

dawson helped me serve whipped cream topped root beer floats to ella's class!

their teacher lets them stand on the chairs to sing happy birthday...

oh lordy, the selfie era is in full swing.

dawson is always ready and willing to light something on fire.

looks like Dawson isn't lucid, but had to include a shot with the bros.

my beautiful birthday girl. ugh, those killer dimples get me every time.

 
umm, that's a more accurate snap shot of her personality.

now on to Big D...

for sanity and budgetary purposes, we only do full blown parties for the kids every other year, and a simple family party on the off years. so it was Big D's year to party hard with his buddies, and i'm so glad it was because he earned it! poor guy had the H3N2 flu over Christmas break, and on his birthday was fevering and throwing up! grateful we'd already planned to do his party after the holidays otherwise we would've had to cancel it! plus, it was his first year at full-time school so he was excited to celebrate with his classmates. he knew exactly what he wanted, a mad scientist party! and a theme is mandatory in this house. a party without a theme is just a meeting.
when it came down to it, what I thought was going to be a simple party to pull off wound up being a lot of work for different reasons. by the time it rolled around I felt like igor, abused, tired, and in need of a raise. who knew it was so hard to find cow eye balls to float in a jar in our "laboratory"?! or that i'd have to drag the kids to 4 stores just to get dry ice, just one of the million things on the list. we hit several annoying road blocks, but the look on the faces of 17 little boys as we did each BubBliNg, foaming, foggy, erupting experiment was worth every bit of effort! dawson's party proved that 8 is gr8 and worth celebr8ing in a BiG way!

 we celebrated dawson at school before it let out for christmas break. birthday boy got to pick a game to play with the class, he chose 4 corners.

just love his teacher chloe! she is so dear! we brought tie dye cupcakes, a precursor to the crazy science party to come...

my day-after-christmas baby is 8 already! this boy represents the culmination of a lot of blood, sweat,  tears, and prayers. how precious he is to me! he rallied some energy and appetite  to enjoy some dinner, mommy's key lime pie, and birthday candles. we were cleaning up dinner and my mom asked where dawson was. poor buddy had fallen asleep at 7 pm on his birthday, of course after throwing up one last time. maybe italian food and key lime pie don't mix well with the flu. good times!

he looks so grown up in this picture:(

dawson's pre-birthday party photo shoot was a crack-up. this one took the cake and became the front of his invitation.

todd's mathematical genius was offended by my invitation. i just tried to use every math symbol I could that kinda worked with the party details. he kept saying "but it doesn't make sense... your math doesn't make any sense!" 

my dining room was transformed into a laboratory. and all those strange books todd used in college and all my biology and anatomy books came in handy as props.

dawson's "professor poses" are a hoot.

that dry ice was so fun!

it started snowing on dawson's birthday, so special for him, he loved it! i added snowflake molecules too.

dawson loves italian sodas so the plan was to have the kids use beakers etc to mix their drink. it quickly became apparent this was going to be a disaster, so my sister saved the day and served as the mixologist!

Experiments:

acid base balloons

elephant's toothpaste

"make" snow

dry ice bubble

mentos eruption

*elephant's toothpaste was a big hit, so nice we did it twice!

*the dry ice bubble was awesome, what a crowd pleaser! we did this twice too:)

my mom was my trusty lab assistant, and i wouldn't have survived without her, my sis and my friend erin! this was definitely a party where extra hands {adult ones} were appreciated!

every party needs balloons, right?! but at our science party, we used a chemical reaction to blow 

them up! that look on dawson's face!

 

lab rats 

love the look on charlie and mitch's faces! so happy all three of the boys were captured in this picture. {ella went to her bff's house to play during the party}

my mom/igor did a great job playing the part of the crazy lab assistant. she had the kids squealing and giggling and screaming!

anatomy lesson. we had a few class drop-outs that hid in the back.

mitch was a good sport and let me spike his hair and put soot on his face from an earlier explosion.

we had pizza, brain jello, fruit and veggies for lunch and one of the boys came up to me and said "miss laura, i kinda lost my appetite because of that..." and pointed to the pig parts. i said "i'm so sorry buddy, can you maybe sit over there?!" and he said "but then there's that===> and pointed to the eyeballs. i laughed so hard, these poor kids were probably scarred for life!

this great old guy was the 5th butcher i'd called over a two week period of time trying to find "parts" for our lab. he pulled through with some eyeballs, a cow heart, and an amazing connected set of pig heart, lungs, trachea, esophogus! so cool, and for free! aside from the rufflings, only one other boy was brave enough to touch!

petri dish cookies. 

i got biohazard bags to use as party favor sacks. calculators, nerd glasses, mechanical pencils, pop rocks and candy were the perfect take home treat for our little budding scientists.

and this final picture sums up how i chemically reacted to this party;) look at those happy faces though!