How old am I now, mom?

This is the question I have been getting from Michael, a lot, lately. He can now put up another finger to show off his maturing age.

Happy 4th Birthday Michael!!!

His celebration started off on Thursday, at preschool, where he received a birthday hat, coloring book, and was given a rice-krispy treat. They stuck a candle in it and let him blow it out after they sang to him.

The morning of, he was so excited. We've started a new tradition at our house (so new that we've only done it twice...) where you have to run and break through the streamers to make your new age official. 

We made him wait all day long, until Dan got home from work, to open his presents. Oh, AND he had to eat his dinner. AND wait until the kitchen was clean. AND the living room was cleaned.

BUT, he finally got to open them! He got some games, a spiderman on a 4-wheeler,  and these cool binoculars.

And of course there was the birthday cake...

er, I mean,  cupcakes....

....4 teeny TINY cupcakes...

He didn't care. After all, it's all about puttin' out the flamin' fire!

Oh, don't worry. He got his real cupcakes at his party the next day, but we'll get to that in a little while...

I  think I have a party-disorder. I go a little crazy and get a little too excited about birthdays. Oh well. It will be all too soon when they just want to order pizza and hang out with their teenage-buddies and the cutesy parties will be all over with.

The party had a "space" theme.

My crazy-talented little sister made these adorable invitations for his friends.

The written invitation folds up and inserts in a pocket on the back of the rocket. SO cute!

Thanks fri..., er...bud. :0

I tried to plan things out carefully, preparing things a little at a time throughout the week. For instance, Michael helped me make the moon rocks: We took some mini plastic aliens from oriental trading, covered them with a baking soda paste and baked them at 200 for 20 minutes, then wrapped them up with tin-foil.

When our guests first arrived, we started by decorating our own planets.

Then we went to the living room to go to astronaut school, where we learned a little about space, watched a you-tube video of a rocket launching, and made our own orbiting solar system.

Finally, the kids were ready to graduate and get become astronauts. I had fun making these backpacks from cereal boxes and and water bottles during the week...nevermind I can't spell my own child's name...

Now we needed to get into our rocket, so we played pin-the-Michaelnaut-on-the-rocket.

Now we were ready to launch. I got some blow up rockets from oriental trading, and we had the kids practice "flying" their rockets around various obstacles.

Then we were able to go into outerspace. Our laundry room is off to the left of this picture. We put up glow-in-the-dark stars and planets in the laundry room and turned off the lights to make it look like space. The kids really loved it and kept running back into "space" during the party...even when it wasn't time... :)

When we landed on the moon, we needed to gather moon rocks for our laboratory.  I placed our previously made moon rocks in this pile of balloons. (The original idea was to have the room filled with balloons, but I grossly underestimated the number of balloons it would take. Dan rigged this cage for me with none-other but dental floss and sport cones. :)

I don't have a picture of the "laboratory" as it got a little crazy at this point. We gave each kid a clear drinking cup with a solution of vinegar and water. They unwrapped the foil and dropped in their moon rock. After the fizz had gone down, it revealed their alien toy. I thought I had made a good ratio of water and vinegar to just let the fizz rise to the top of the cups, but I should have done a few more tests. The fizz overflowed the cups, and the plates that the cups were on, and made a HUGE mess.

(Note for next time: Just experiment on one rock at a time, together, as a group, in ONE large cup. )

Our last task was to destroy an asteroid that was about to hit planet Earth. Again, no pictures. I had a giant tinfoil ball with layers of tinfoil, pop-rocks candy, and colored tissue paper. We passed around the ball until the music stopped. Then whoever had the ball, unwrapped a "layer" to get to their prize. We did this until everyone had a turn and the asteroid was destroyed.

Finally, it was time for cake and ice-cream. yeah...these cupcakes looked a lot better in my head then in reality. But, I was pleased when the 4-yr olds said "Hey! Those look like Earths!"

Sweet. Mission accomplished!

Yes, it was a ridiculous amount of work. Yes, I had an extreme headache by the end.  Yes, I did fall asleep while watching Michael and Chelsea at the play place of McDonald's when we went there for dinner a few hours after the party. Yes, I did go to bed at 6:30 PM with my house trashed from the party. (My awesome hubby had most of it cleaned when I woke up to feed Brinly around 9...)

But...

 who wouldn't do such a thing for this sweet now-four-year old?

Happy Birthday "boy"! We love you!!!

P.S. Congrats! You made it to the end of this ridiculously LONG post!