my little addiction

So I think I might have a little photo addiction. I moped around the house all depressed yesterday when I discovered I'd lost the pictures of Spencer's party. Then today I didn't even feel like blogging about it because, well, what's the point if I don't have any pictures documenting the event? If you don't have pictures of something, did it really happen?? Pictures are my way of remembering. Otherwise my memory gets fuzzy real quick (I don't have Maryruth's amazing ability to remember everything ever done/said; seriously, she remembers more about my life than I do), and if you ask me about it next year I have no idea what you're talking about. Pictures immortalize things for me. However, it was such a cool party that I just have to share a few details.

The party was last Friday night, which I decided works out better than Saturday. Otherwise we are getting ready for and eagerly anticipating the thing all day Saturday, which is more excitement than some people can handle. We invited 8 boys, 7 of whom could come. I made a flask cake, just like Tyler's but smaller - just 1 cake mix instead of 2. But here's the really awesome part - I put pvc pipe in the middle and filled it with dry ice and water when we lit the candles, and smoked billowed out the top. The boys went nuts. We also made gum drop molecules, slime, ice cream in a bag, and soda rockets. We cleaned out the laundry room, covered up the window and had a black light with a radioactive box (rubber gloves and goggles attached to the sides). There was lots of energy with 11 boys here, as you can imagine. The party lasted 3 hours, which is longer than I usually do my birthday parties, but we also included pizza for dinner. Then the boys just played for the last half hour while Dave and I cleaned up and packed the car for our lake trip. We left as soon as the party ended and got to our friends' lake house around 9:30. I'll blog about that tomorrow, and I do have pictures. Thank goodness.

One great thing about this party was that this is the first year Spencer has had really good friends to invite. He hasn't even had a friend party in 3 years, since he couldn't think of enough people to invite. He's always gotten along okay with some of the boys in his class, but he's never wanted to hang out with them after school. This year he's discovered some good kids at school who "don't use the Lord's name in vain or say bad words," which is really important to him. They're a good bunch of boys, and mad science was an especially fun theme for this age.