The zombie birthday party in review

We finally had Max's zombie birthday party last Saturday.

Due to some scheduling conflicts and the fact that Max kept forgetting to hand out the invitations at school, the party ended up being three weeks after his birthday.
We even tried to work a deal with the kid where we offered him a brand new bike instead of a party, but he had his heart set on the party, and we promised him a party.........

Up until the day before, we were trying to convince him to go with a different theme, seriously, the dollar store was full of really cool pirate stuff, but no dice, Max's obsession with the game "Plants vs zombies" won out.
The night before the party, I stayed up ridiculously late to make a zombie pinata (I didn't even attempt to buy one. I did a google search to see if I could find one as an example, but the only one I could find was too scary for me, let alone a group of seven year olds)

A bunch of newspaper, tape, crepe paper and a few hours later I came up with my version of a zombie pinata.

And before you ask, yes, I did mean to make it's eyes uneven.

During the time I had been taping this creation together, I was baking two dozen red velvet cupcakes. Max originally wanted brain cupcakes, but after finding some disgusting zombie looking teeth at the dollar store, I came up with the idea for the zombie cupcakes also. I will say that the teeth were a big hit with the kids.

Fortunately, they tasted much better than they looked.

Saturday morning, I was quite concerned, because Max had handed out 12 invitations, and I hadn't received a single RSVP.
We had made up 12 goodie bags full of dollar store plastic toys, and I really wanted to get rid of all of them.
We ended up having a total of 4 boys show up. Max said that the day before, all of the boys were asking where the party was going to be. I kind of wonder if some of them didn't come because we weren't going to a cool bouncy house or something. Max said a lot of the boys play soccer, so we're just going to assume that the other 8 boys were at soccer games.

We had several games planned for the party.

Game #1- Brielle had used sidewalk chalk to draw a large game board on our driveway. We called this game "Zombopoly"
Some of the squares said things like "You lost your head, go back two squares to find it" "Do a zombie dance and move ahead one square" and "You found a head, but it isn't your own, go back one square"
Aaron made a large dice (die? dice?) that the kids rolled to determine how many spaces to move.
I got this idea from a website with kids party games. It said that the kids LOVED to play this game. Actually, they were pretty lukewarm about it.
We did have some zombie glasses for them to wear while playing the game. I really wanted to get those glasses that have the eyeballs on springs, but we couldn't find them anywhere, so we went with some stupid plastic glasses with cardboard inserts that made them look like they had crazy eyes.  I guess I shouldn't complain, they were 6 for a dollar at the dollar store.

We had also planned to play some other games, we had a relay race planned, a version of musical chairs, using the music from Plants vs Zombies, and a game called "Wake the zombie" One child lays on the ground, very still, and the others take turns saying things to try and make them laugh. Once the "Zombie" laughs then their turn is over, and the kid that makes them laugh gets to be the zombie.
Unfortunately, the boys were more interested in jumping on the trampoline than they were in playing the games.
The boys found our stash of pool noodles. These had been cut in half to make "snords" they created a new game on the trampoline which was basically jumping while whacking each other with the snords.

We managed to get them off of the trampoline long enough to eat some pizza. One kid didn't like pepperoni, so I peeled it off for him, then he said the pizza looked weird and he wouldn't eat it. Another kid already ate lunch and wasn't hungry.
We had a lot of pizza left over.
We had pizza for dinner Saturday night and breakfast on Sunday.

We got some special relighting candles for Max. He hadn't ever seen these before, and he thought they were pretty funny.
I love his giggles :)

Max opened his presents and got several Lego sets. This is great, because he loves builing things!

Next, we broke the pinata. Unfortuantely, the plastic broom handle broke before the pinata, so they used the shorter pieces of the broom handle until they broke, then they just started stabbing it with the small sharp pieces of the broom handle.
Let me just point out now that Smarties are not the best candy to put in a pinata. When beaten and stabbed, the packages break and you end up with a lawn full of Smartie dust and plastic wrappers.

We finally just dumped all of the candy out and the boys piled on top of each other to get at it. All except for Max, he ended up with one tootsie roll. Poor Max.
One kid, Connor ended up stuffing his goodie bag so full of pinata candy that it broke. All of the boys put their candy on the table and went back to jumping on the trampoline.

Within a few minutes, there was a new hole in the net of the trampoline, it is a hole large enough to drive a car through. Aaron said that Connor was the one that did it.
While Connor wasn't looking, I had Aaron go and take about half of the pinata candy out of his bag and put it in a bag for Max.

Without the net on the trampoline, we didn't feel it was safe for them to be on it, so we needed a new activity. Aaron brought out the water balloons that he had spent the morning filling. Aaron was very protective of the water balloons, because he discovered just how much work it was to fill them. He split the kids up in teams, gave them each one water balloon and a snord then told them to fight each other. It didn't take long for all of their balloons to be broken and so then they started beating Aaron with the snords.
After a few minutes of this, he just gave up and let them go crazy at each other with the bucket of water balloons.
Soon after, the parents started showing up to get their kids. I gave each one a goodie bag full of plastic junk and sent them home:)
Then I sat on my porch swing, looked at all of the mess in the back yard, put on a pair of Zombie glasses, closed my eyes and took a nap.
I now have less than a year to convince Max that a new bike would be way better than a party.

Birthday Max, the zombie boy

Next week, Max is turning seven.

YES! I KNOW! MY BABY WILL BE SEVEN YEARS OLD!!

Yesterday we were discussing what he would like to do for his birthday party. I suggested a pirate themed party. Max was slightly interested at first, but then he got what he thought was a much better idea.........

Max wants to have a Zombie Apocalypse Birthday party!

He has a few great ideas for the party, starting with cupcakes frosted to look like brains.

I, however, have a few concerns, like how are the parents of his friends going to react when they get the invitation?

Will the seven year old children be frightened at the idea of a Zombie Birthday party?

Is there a way to portray the zombies as being "friendly" Zombies so the children won't be frightened?

Are there such things as friendly zombies?

Will all of that Zombie blood stain my carpets?

It would be so much easier if he would go with my idea of a Pirate birthday party. I can get a bunch of eye patches pretty cheap.

In other news, the pick up zone at the kids school is outrageously crowded, so much so, that many parents have been parking on the road near the school to pick up their children rather than waiting in line.

The problem with this is that the neighbors have been complaining. (rightfully so, some of these parents don't pick up their kids until 30-40 minutes after school lets out, allowing their little darlings plenty of unsupervised time to run freely through the yards, climbing trees and fences, throwing rocks, trampling flowers, having pine cone fights.....) (some of the parents even park in the neighbor's driveways to wait for their kids, needless to say, the neighbors have reason to be upset)

Last week I noticed that the lines on the road by the school had been repainted to be closer to the sidewalk, and no parking signs had been put up, making it quite clear that there should be no parking on that part of the street.

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from the school informing everyone that new stripping had been put put on the road, and the parents are no longer allowed to park there due to the new stripping, and the police department will be enforcing the rule of no parking in the area, and anyone parking in the area of the new stripping will receive a ticket.

My kids walk home, and being the rebel that I am, I have informed them that they are required to keep all of their clothes on while walking on that street.

Creeper or genius?

In school, Aaron sits next to a boy who constantly harasses him. He writes on his arms with ball point pens, he steals his pencil and throws it out into the hall, he steals his ruler and hits him with it......

You get the picture.

Aaron is a pretty big kid, one of the tallest in the sixth grade. This boy (we'll call him "Bubba") Is actually taller than Aaron, however, Aaron is quite strong and manages to knock the kid over and wrestle his pencil/ruler/textbook away from him.

I used to worry that the teacher wouldn't see Bubba stealing Aaron's stuff and only notice when Aaron is sitting on top of Bubba, recovering his belongings, and think that Aaron is the instigator, but Aaron said the teacher doesn't care.

Either the teacher doesn't care or he realizes that both boys are taller than him and there is a serious chance he could get hurt if he got involved.

A few days ago Bubba started a new activity. Suddenly he wasn't content just to steal pencils and rulers, he now felt the need to take Aaron's homework and other assignments.

Aaron decided that physical confrontation wasn't going to work any more, so he decided to take another approach.

Aaron found out Bubba's dad's name, which ironically was Bubba Sr. and looked up their address on White pages .com.

Next he went to Google maps, found where Bubba lives and using the street view, he printed out a photo of their house.

The next day at school, Aaron sat the folded piece of paper on the edge of his desk. It took a while, but eventually Bubba took the bait, and grabbed the paper.

Aaron said when he unfolded the paper and saw his own house he freaked out a bit.

"Hey! That's my house! What are you doing with a picture of my house?........You stalked me! You're such a creeper!"

He had assumed that Aaron had actually come to his house and taken a picture. (Aaron let him believe this)

Aaron grinned at him then gave him his slightly deranged, zombie eyed look and said "I'm watching you!"

Bubba has left him alone for the last few days.

Excuse me while I go purchase some additional home owner's insurance

Aaron's favorite television show is Mythbusters.

He loves to watch how they scientifically try to prove or confirm whether or not a myth is truth, however, I think his favorite part is watching how they blow up stuff if it doesn't blow up in the first place.

He once told me that this was a good show for him to watch because he can let someone else experiment, and he can still see whether or not something works (and he won't have to try to blow it up himself)

I do like how they begin every show saying "Don't try this at home" (However, Aaron has changed that phrase to "Don't try this at home, go to a friends house.")

It never really occurred to me to be worried about his fascination with this show until one day when he came up to me and said "Hey mom, can you get me some liquid nitrogen?"

Say what?

Liquid nitrogen?

My response, naturally was "NO!"

Then a few days later, he asked me if I could get him some lithium. And an incinerator.

(again NO!)

Last week we were trying to clean a spill off of the stove. I'm not sure what it was, but it was burnt on pretty good. Aaron said "Hey! I know what would clean that stuff off of the stove!"

"OK, what?' I asked.

"Sulfuric acid! Of course I would have to wear a bio hazard suit and there probably wouldn't be much of the stove left when I'm finished, but it would definitely get rid of that burnt stuff!"

No Aaron, I will not get you any sulfuric acid.

Then yesterday he came up to me really excited and asked if I knew of any way he could earn forty dollars.

"Forty dollars is a lot of money" I told him "Why do you need forty dollars?"

"Well, I found something really cool on Amazon and I want to buy it!"

He's really into electronics, and it's not unusual for him to find some sort of cable or memory stick or other computer accessory that he wants, so I just assumed that it would be something like that, so I was very surprised when he told me what he wants to buy on Amazon for forty dollars.

Are you ready for this?

Uranium ore.

That's right, believe it or not, you can purchase a chunk of uranium ore on Amazon for $40.00

Naturally, I told him "NO!" to which he replied..............

"But it's radioactive AND explosive!!"

Technology kills productivity........

Earlier today I was helping Brielle make a double batch of sugar cookies using my grandma's super delicious sugar cookie recipe.

Once the dough got too stiff for the mixer, I dumped the dough into a larger bowl, got out the large wooden spoon and stirred in the last of the flour.

"I just remembered why I don't like making sugar cookies" I said "I really don't like having to stir all this dough by hand."

Brielle said "I bet your grandma didn't have an electric mixer to mix the dough in the first place. Was she a very patient person?"

"Yes she was, in fact, she nursed twins until they were 18 months old, and during that time still managed to take care of her two other small children, make bread, do laundry, keep the house clean, make breakfast, lunch and dinner, take care of a garden, can vegetables from the garden and she even crocheted a queen size bedspread!"

Brielle chuckled and said "Obviously, she didn't have Facebook."

Facebook fury!

OK, so Facebook has disabled my account for "security" reasons.

They are now holding my account hostage until I give them my phone number.

I don't want to give them my phone number. We have an unpublished number and they have not earned the right to have my cell phone number. (this number reserved for good friends)

They want to call or text me with a code to use to log back on. (so giving them a fake number is out)

They tell me they need my number to confirm that it's really me logging in, however, I've never given them my number, so how do they know that the number I give them is really mine? How could they possibly know whether or not it's me or just some other strange person pretending to be me, giving them a phone number to access my account.

Facebook is stupid.*

Anyone know of a way I can get around this?

*And when I say that Facebook is stupid, that does not in any way mean that I don't want to regain access to my account.

Never a dull moment

Max came into my office while I was working and started making a very annoying noise.

When I asked him to please stop, he said "I'll stop if you say a big word"

So naturally I said......

"A big word"

"No!" he replied, "I meant a big word like discombobulated or something like that!"

Discombobulated?

???????????????

Last night, Aaron showed me a picture he had created on the computer.

(chocolate + mom = happy mom)

What can I say, my kid understands me.

I told him that he should add some Diet Dr Pepper, because combined with chocolate, that would make me even happier!

A few minutes later, he comes back with this.

I'm not sure if the addition of the delicious diet drink made me insanely happy, or just insane. It certainly appeared to have caused me to lose a bit of hair.

I told him that it would be awesome if he could give me a little more hair and while he was at it, he could give me a nice pair of shoes.

Yep, that's much better :)