In the House Where We Live: so much to catch up on

Wow, life sure has been busy around here lately Both of my older children had "milestone" birthdays these past two weeks. Christie turned 10. Jordan turned 8. In the LDS Church, of which we are members, turning 8 is the "age of accountability". The LDS Church is also known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Eight years of age is when children in our church are baptized. Jordan has been looking forward to turning 8 for quite some time--not only because he can be baptized, but also because he can join Cub Scouts. His first den meeting was last night.

Anyway, with the "milestone" birthdays, I told Christie and Jordan they could have friends birthday parties. We don't do friends parties every year--only on the milestone birthdays (5, 8, 10, 12, 16, and 18). We do celebrate as a family each year.

Christie decided on a High School Musical party. They played musical chairs to the High School Musical 3 soundtrack and had a backpack relay race. For the relay race, they took a backpack to a pile of school supplies, put everything in the backpack, ran back to their team, high-fived everyone, ran back, emptied the backpack and ran back again to hand it off. I made a yellow cake with star cutouts of the HSM stars. The frosting was supposed to be red but it ended up being a really dark pink.

Jordan wanted a rocket/outer space theme. The children made spaceships using round cake boards, black plastic bowls and the lids from Slurpees. They also had a Moon Rock Relay where they used tongs ("robot arm") to carry "moon rocks" (plastic balls from the dollar store) to a bowl at the other end of the yard. I made a rocket ship cake using Wilton's football pan. It turned out pretty good although next time I will use different colors so the different elements show up better. For party favors, I made candy rockets. I got SweetTarts, covered them with colored paper, hot glued a Hershey Kiss on one end, and cut out triangles and glued them on the other end for the fins. They turned out pretty good! If I'd had more time, I would have decorated them a bit more, but the kids thought they were great anyway!