Evan's birthday (late)

THIS is the EVAN's BIRTHDAY post! (yeah, it is quite late)
Although EARLY for his party with friends (which will probably get its own post).
anyway...

What could this be??

And what's this one????

YAY! 24 different colors, just like Ben's!

Buildable traintracks are a present for both of us!

What's under the packing-safety-plastic stuff?

UM, wow. just Wow. these cake people are very skilled,

considering this was meant to fit a cake at least 4 times this size.

And from Snugabug & aunt lindsay (who were able to visit :) ):

A baseball-auto-pitcher thingy!!!

I think Evan had a FUN birthday. and I enjoyed it too,

because I got to help him with the traintracks.

-Ben

Crystals!

On monday, we also made crystals (idea from here), as well as pom pom poppers.

Evan forming his pipe cleaner shapes.

Stirring, stirring, stirring to dissolve borax in water.

All in a row (pre-crystal-growth)

My robot.

DRAMATIC view of my crystal robot.

E for Evan

Balloon (and weird face)

EVAN's robot.

All in a row (after growth)

-Ben

From Mom:  This was SUPER easy!  The kids had used a recipe from a science kit to attempt to make sugar crystals, with only a tiny bit of success after several days of waiting, but the blogger I borrowed this project from seemed very confident about it, so we gave it a shot.  Our crystals are HUGE compared to others I have seen - wish I knew what affects their size!  If you decide to try it, I highly recommend using pipe cleaners instead of pencils or dowels to suspend the forms from, because it is really easy to adjust them to the right depth in the solution below.

Pom-Pom poppers!

on Monday, we made pom-pom poppers (idea from here)!

Sproioioi....                  POP!

hmm, what's this?             POP!            WOW!

pulling is fun!          huh?             my pom-poms are gone !

Note: the secret formula is: balloon+paper cup=POPPER!

-Ben

From Mom:  These were really fun, and snapped all three of us out of not-so-great moods!  My favorite part?  Both kids decided to decorate their poppers, and mine as well... love that they are crafty like me! 

Rolo-centered chocolate cookies (HIGHLY delicious)

For WCW, we made yummy chocolate caramel that use a Rolo candy in the center to provide the caramel... YUM!!!!  (Delicious, simple, 4-ingredient recipe from here.)

How the Rolos were pressed into

the middle of the dough balls.

Roll ball, press in caramel candy,

re-ball form, put on sheet.

fun, right, guys?

About to be baked...

...and after baking! YUM TIME!

-Ben