Birthday Season!

All of the boys birthdays are one right after another for the last 3 months. So we call it birthday season around here. Instead of doing 3 different posts I am doing one post for all 3 boys' birthdays.

Andrew turned 9 and had just a family party for his birthday. He got to have Grandma and Grandpa come up for his special day though and we all went to Planet Play to eat lots of pizza and do laser tag, mini golf, go karts and other fun stuff. He is a big fan of Minecraft still so I made his cake with that in mind. The cake only really makes sense to real hardcore Minecraft fans.

William's birthday was next and he was so excited. He turned 4 years old, but if you ask him now he'd say he's 12 years old. (I think because he asked me when he could go to the temple and I said he had to be 12.) Anyway we went to Hollywood Connection and went on the carousel that he tolerated, the bumper cars that William LOVED, and we tried roller skating which he didn't love. For his cake he insisted on having a blue cat cake, so he got one.

Isaac turned 7 years old and it was his turn to have a friend party. I told him it had to be small so we could justify having another friend party when he turns 8. He informed me 1 week before his birthday that he wanted a Tron theme party. So I got busy and luckily found some stuff online such as free printable invitations, an idea for making program discs (that glowed) and playing a ring toss game, an idea for decorating the cake and a fun idea using black lights. I got most of it from the Disney family.go.com website. My brother also donated some genuine Tron music to play in the background that really set the mood. We had a ton of fun. After eating, pizza, ice cream and cake the kids all went down and watched some scenes from the movie in our Grid room. It was cool.

Isaac also really wanted a wooden samurai sword. We must love him because now he has one. Oye.

Isabella New Digs

A little while ago we decided that our rat Isabella's cage was too little and boring. So we set out to make a cage out of some wood left over from the bookcases and shelves I made for the boys bedroom.

We screwed the boards together and made a shelf and a divider with two holes for her to climb through then we bought some hardware "cloth" which is basically wire mesh and stapled it to the back and to the door that we made out of the basement railings that we took out  when we finished the basement.

Later I made a latter out of some balsa wood I had and we got some large PVC connectors and made a little play tunnel. She seems to enjoy it and the kids like to watch her play around in it.

I just got the news, after being one of the winners from his school science fair last month, Andrew got 3rd place at the District 3rd and 4th grade Science Fair in the life sciences category. Way to go Andrew!

At Christmas we got a pet rat that the kids named Isabella. So when it came time for Andrew to decide if he wanted to do a science project (in 3rd and 4th grade it is optional) one option we discussed was to use Isabella. We ended up deciding to run taste tests with Isabella to find out what her favorite food is among the different food groups. I know you can't read the board from the picture, so I will just tell you. It was peas. We had a lot of fun running the experiments and I'm sure Isabella enjoyed the extra treats and attention.

Cara loves this rat and if we aren't careful she will probably squish her to death.

In the pre-test waiting area. Isabella learned how to jump and climb on top of the sides though so she didn't wait here long. We designed the box with a divider that we could pull up to let Isabella through to the food.

One of our first tests. She wasn't as interested in the food at first as she was in exploring the box. Eventually though she learned that if she quickly picked a food we would let her eat it and then get out of the box to play on the table.

Andrew says that we would do a science project again next year. Good thing since he says he wants to be a scientist when he grows up.