*nerds are cool*

We have made it to October. And it is before Christmas.

I have hope that I may get one hundred percent caught up before the end of the year.

Poor Liam had to wait for what seemed like an eternity to have his friend birthday party. It was just over a full month before we could make it happen. We were going to do it just a couple weeks after his actual birthday but his little friend planned his party for the same day, football was sucking up our Saturdays, and I was just so tired to make a valiant effort to get things going. If I wasn't so excited about the theme of his party I may have scrapped it altogether. And my mom came to help which was so nice and kept me sane.

I am so glad I didn't because it turned out to be super fun.

Liam has been interested in how things work for as long as I can remember. He loves space and science and getting down to the nitty gritty. He was over the moon excited when I suggested we have a mad scientist theme for his party. And to be honest, as I started planning it and looking into all the fun experiments we could do, I think I may have been more delighted than Liam.

I kept the food simple since it was in the middle of the afternoon.



We had jello with gummy worms in petri dishes,


molecules made out of toothpicks, grapes, and yogurt covered raisins, lime koolaid with dry ice (which the kids loved by the way),


and of course, cake. My cake decorating skills have much to be desired but I found this relatively easy cake on Family Fun. It is hard to tell but it is indeed a flask, which none of the kids knew what that was, so I probably would have been fine with good old fashioned simply decorated cupcakes. Oh well.



I didn't really get any pictures of the party favors but I filled test tubes with nerd candy, glow sticks, little magnifying glasses, bug tatoos, and pop rocks. There truly was so much to choose from and in my "I-just-want-to-get-this-party-over-with-lets-just-do-the-least-amount-possible" mode, I was happy with it.

For our first experiment, we made Liam's most favorite thing in the whole world. Slime.



It is so easy and at one time I was asked to help him make it at least once a week. Thankfully it is not as often now because although it is easy to clean up, he has a habit of dropping little pieces of it everywhere. I am sure his friends' moms are thrilled with me.

J was not so sure about this stuff at first. He warmed up to it after a minute.


This experiment was also easy and we did it over and over because the kids thought it was so cool. All it takes is milk, food coloring, and a toothpick whose end has been dipped in dish detergent.


Then we blew up balloons with vinegar and baking soda.


And then the big finale. The party goers waiting in anticipation...


...setting up the experiment...


...success!


We made four diet coke guysers. I am glad I bought enough 2 liters of diet coke to make this magic happen multiple times. I mean, look at these faces. I wasn't even sorry that I didn't have any left over for me.






Oh my goodness Liam, I love you so much. Thanks for letting me be your mom.



And I cannot find any pictures of the boys' games this week vs Judge. It was a pretty cold morning and I think I just didn't want to make the effort to take any pictures. It was a pretty crappy week for football though--we lost all three games and Nick got a concussion. Awesome, huh? Luckily, it was mild and everything checked out okay. He hated that he had to take it easy the next week in practice but he was thrilled when the doctor cleared him to play in his game vs. Juan Diego.