Happy MYTHday to Emma!

We finally got around to having a birthday party to celebrate Emma turning 11. She chose a "Mythbusters" theme, and she and I had a great time figuring out a color scheme (yellow, black and silvery-gray, reminiscent of both caution tape and duct tape — plus yellow's her favorite), food (make-your-own skewers with ham, turkey, cheese and veggies for one and grapes, oranges, pineapple, apples and cherries for another, plus mini bagels, plus lots of dip/spreads for everything, plus chips and dip and drinks) and activities. We started things off with a "Mythbusters" quiz show where three teams of kids had to guess whether real myths from the show turned out to be Confirmed, Plausible or Busted. The kids chose team names for themselves, so our groups were Team Nerds, Team Uuuuhh... (Caution) and Team Waffle.

I read them the questions and they conferred among themselves before guessing, and Gracie kept track of points (she felt a little too shy to participate on a team at this point).


We had other activities, as well. In homage to the "Chicken Gun" episode, we found a plastic "Chicken Chucker" gun of our own that shoots tiny rubber chickens, and the kids competed to see who could shoot the chicken the furthest. We also had a pirate myth (of course!) where they wore an eyepatch to see if it helped them read a sign in the dark (the sign read, "I reject your reality and substitute my own," one of Em's favorite quotes from the show!).


We divided into two groups, and one tried to see how many times they could fold a piece of letter-sized paper (the best anyone did was 7, tying the Mythbusters!) while the other tried to construct a usable rope from toilet paper to test if it's plausible that prisoners could escape from jail with toilet-paper ropes (it is: all of our ropes held at least 10 pounds). Then we came back together for food, present-opening, in which Emma scored big-time, and cake (with sparklers instead of candles for that explosive "Mythbusters" touch), plus the grand finale: exploding five bottles of Diet Coke using Mentos (we did this outside, of course!). It was quite a day, and the 23 kids in our house (yes, you read that right) had a great time!