Katie Turns Nine!

I can hardly believe it...............

But Katie is nine years old.

How can the years go by so fast when the days go by so slow?

Nine years ago today I was offering to arm wrestle the lady in the next hospital bed to see which of us would go to the operating room first. They only had one OR room for c-sections that day so we had to go one after the other. The person who went second was not only going to have to wait for the first baby to be delivered, but was also going to have to wait for the room to be completely cleaned and sanitized. I really wanted to go first. I still don't know why they picked her. An arm wrestling match would have been so much more fair.

Katie wanted a party with some science experiments. We had been to one at another child's house not too long ago but when I asked the mom about it, she said they paid $400 to have someone come put on that science party.

Uh, no.

I knew we could come up with plenty of science experiments that we could do for a lot less which we be just as exciting to the guests. I bought a scientist's lab coat for about $10 (see, there is a good reason Halloween costumes are out in August) and hired Ben to be our scientist.

By "hired" I mean "told him he would do it".

Then I turned to Steve Spangler Science, our trusty guide to all things science related. I watched tons of videos at this site and came up with a bunch of things we could pull off.

We had a great time doing all this! I bought two flasks and we put colored water and dry ice in them to make them bubble like they were boiling. Ben put a stopper in one, and then acted surprised every time the stopper would pop off and accused the kids of sabotage. They thought he was hilarious.

He put a balloon over the top of the flask and let it blow up the balloon. He used the filter flask to blow the carbon dioxide into everyone's mouths. Then, and this was really cool, he put some dish detergent in the flask and bubbles boiled out of the top. When the kids each took a scoop of the bubbles and popped them, smoke came out of the bubbles. Talk about a show stopper!

He explained to the kids all about dry ice and told them about ten times not to touch it. Then he dropped a big block of dry ice into a bucket of hot water and made clouds of smoke.

He then did the mentos geyser - twice. And we made rockets out of film canisters and used Alka Seltzer and water to shoot them up in the air. That one made me very anxious, because I was so afraid someone would get hit in the eye with an exploding film canister.

We ended when Ben had everyone sit back down and he told them, "I have one more thing I need you to do...............RUN!" And he pulled out two cans of Silly String and chased the kids all over the yard with it. Just when they thought he was done, he pulled out two more cans and chased them again. Much screaming ensued.

There is nothing like having free teen labor in the house.

And it doesn't hurt if he's a total ham and enjoys it.