four year old Max

This little nugget is now 4!  This was supposed to be the 'off-year' for a friend party, but I caved. Max ended up having quite the birthday week. I fear the bar has been raised too high now for future birthdays. We really need to have dry ice around more often. After the party was over we made dry ice bombs learned about pressurizing gas in a fixed volume. That was one good thing I learned in my lab.

Dinosaur mania.  The cake was strawberry, so the pieces looked suitably 'realistic,' although Max just really likes strawberry cake.  He was not going for 'flesh-like' with his flavor choice.

 Balloon pit on the trampoline - or 'T-Rex' stomp if we're keeping with our theme.

Make a dino out of play-doe.

Pin the horn on the triceratops.  We also had pictures of a T. Rex, pterodactyl, and apatosaurus - or brachiosaurus depending on who you ask. The artistic quality was of course top notch.  It will be harder and harder to have my drawings pass muster as my little people get older and more discerning!

We also had an excavation site set up in a kiddie pool, filled with chicken bedding and dinosaur figures to hunt for.  We chased rocket balloons at the end while we waited for parents to retrieve their kids.  Nobody cried, so this party goes down in the books as a success!

We hit Freddy's for lunch after the party.  Yes, Max did eat all those fries.  Alex wouldn't eat his hamburger because some mean woman cut it in half for him, thus ruining the flavor.

On Max's birthday we went out to dinner at Old Chicago, because the GREAT LLYODINI, or Royal-dini as Max keeps calling him, was there doing magic.  The 'red light trick' is still everyone's favorite.  After dinner we went to the pet store to pick out Max's present - a gerbil.  We are now officially full of pets over here. Well, the fish situation actually keeps us just under 'totally full' on a regular basis.  Here's hoping the gerbils fare better!

This little muffin just keeps getting more fun the older he gets;. We're sure lucky to have him in our family.  My favorite thing about Max right now is that he likes to wear two different colors of socks.  He takes the pairs apart so he can get the right color combination for the day.  What a fun little dude!