February 20

Cade's 5th Birthday Party! I finally had it. I got invites printed for free on a photo card website before I got sick. The plan was to have the party on Feb 6th, but I got sick and never even got the invites out. So....I just scratched the date and changed it to the 20th. Thank heavens I was feeling well enough to have the party. It was a natural disaster party, of course, (Cade's latest obsession) and I think it was pretty fun if I say so myself. Cade requested a party about earthquakes and "epsunamis and flotts" so....this is what I came up with.

We made tsunamis in a bottle. We put water, oil, blue food coloring, monopoly houses, seashells, and spaghetti sticks to make a big wave in the bottle. The kids loved it. My floor loved the oil and the table loved the glitter and broken sea shells.

We made houses out of spaghetti sticks and marshmallows. Then, I pulled out the hairdryer and we had a hurricane. I got to be the big bad wolf and blow all the houses down. Yeah! Messy - but fun for me.
My low key decorations: instead of balloons punch balls one for each kid hung from my kitchen lights, and natural disaster books from the library rounded out the decor.

These are the loot bags. Brown paper bags, with pics glued on. Inside? Meteor rocks. Made from used coffee grounds, flour, and water with a hidden treasure inside.

Cade made a book about Haiti for his party. He put pictures inside about the recent Haiti earthquake, pictures of the destruction, and maps of where Haiti is.

This is the cake for the party...a volcano cake. It was right down my alley. A bundt cake and two round cakes stacked together all crumbly with two bottles of chocolate frosting. Red frosting for lava and crushed up oreo cookies for rocks. A styrofoam cup in the center of the cake filled with dry ice completed the masterpiece. The kids loved the eruption and I loved the fact that I could make a cool cake. It was SUPPOSED to look messy and crazy. I can cook this kind of stuff.

We also made individual volcanoes. We took paper cups and plates, put tinfoil over them, filled them up with baking soda, dishsoap, and red food colored vinegar. We put the volcanoes in pie tins in the sink and all the boys (since that was all that was at the party) got to erupt their own volcano. I think that was a hit, too.

We had a hailstorm. (They all hit each other with the punch balls.) I had thought a blizzard off my loft would've been fun with styrofoam peanuts would have been fun, but after the mess from everything else, it is probably better that I didn't.

Cade blew out the candles, we ate the cake, we swept, we mopped, and we slept.