Weird Science: Jack turns 7!

Can you believe Jack is SEVEN!?! Wow, that has gone by fast!
He had a really special birthday that included having his cousin, Sam, over for a sleep-over. They had so much fun together. It's nice that they're old enough to do stuff like that, since they don't get to spend as much time together as they'd like. We started out the day with a the birthday gifts. Jack got spoiled. He loved every second! His friend party was at 10 am, so we went from that to frantic party-prep.
We started out the friend party with a little monster-making. The kids all made monster puppets with paper bags, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, and markers. They loved all the dry ice! The also really enjoyed some homemade "lava lamps". Those were just water bottles with 1/4 water and 3/4 oil. We let each kid choose their color and added 3 drops of color. Then we dropped in 1/2 of an Alka Seltzer. The bubbles pulled the colored water up through the oil, making it look like a lava lamp. These cool little bottles were also fun to shake. Because the oil was yellow and the kids chose red, blue, or green, they could make new colors and then watch the colors separate out again.
Then we moved on to the show.
For the fun part of the party, we had some 15 year-olds bring their science to our garage! They started out with water surface tension. That was cool. Then, they brought fire. That was even cooler!!! They built all of these experiments themselves and were great at explaining the science behind the reaction to the kids.
The kids loved it. We repeated the warning "do not try this at home. These guys are trained in safety measures. Don't ever play with fire. Or matches. Or electricity. Oh, and don't run with scissors!"
See! They burned right through the foil using electricity! Don't try that one at home, kids!
The kids were entranced by all the fire. They were cold, but they enjoyed the show! Awesome.
The grand finale? These boys made their own Jacob's Ladder. That fire is moving up between 2 wires. It was very, very cool. Later, some of the kids told their parents that "at Jack's party, they had 2 scientists with 2 years of experience and they blew stuff up." Yes!
All the party people. Partying. They loved all the containers filled with colored water and dry ice. They also enjoyed their cake.
The beaker cake. It's from Family Fun's website, but I'm not going to link you because it's late and might take some effort. Heck, I'm blogging. Just be proud of me for getting the pictures up before the end of November and Google "mad scientist flask cake" and you, too, can find it!
There was no way to top last year's R2D2 cake, but dry ice makes every cake cooler (get it? cooler?). I made the inside a rainbow by tinting cupfuls of the cake batter and pouring them in order into the bundt pans. This cake takes 2 bundt cakes and a tall, skinny glass (such as the "Italian Soda" glass from The Old Spaghetti Factory that I got my Freshman year at BYU--thanks, Kelli "Buttafooko", I still owe you for that one!) filled with warm water and dry ice. I'd recommend covering said cup with foil so that the warm water doesn't start melting the frosting before you hit it with dry ice. Not that I had that problem or anything... Oh, and pretend like I staged that picture properly, not with the breadmaker and paper bag and microwave behind.
Time to sing a little song for the birthday boy!
Amelia occupied herself during the fun. She seemed to enjoy getting stuck under the plant stand.
Aunt Rebecca came to pick up Sam and all the kids enjoyed slime-time. Except for Sheridan. She literally ran screaming from the room every time we busted out the slime, shrieking "it stinks! Put it away, it smells so bad I wanna throw up!". No one else had this issue. I'm hesitant to call her "crazy", but I guess it was a Mad Scientist birthday party, right...
After dinner (pizza, as usual!) we polished off the cake with one last candle-lighting and song.
Jack had a super-fabulous birthday. He proudly proclaimed it "the BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!"