Today we hosted the Boy Wonder's sixth birthday party. In the event that my admitedly rudimentary cake decorating skills do not make this obvious, this was a NASA-themed party. This cake is meant to resemble the moon, although without the lunar landing module you would be forgiven for not quite getting that.

Sigh. My baby is six. This has been rather hard on me, perhaps because there's the whole "official school-age" thing, too. I don't know. In any case, the party was enjoyed by all, "all" in this case meaning seven kids ages five and six. The adults present are all now quite exhausted.

Because we have apparently entered the birthday party = a couple hours childcare zone with this event, I didn't plan on lots of adult entertainment as I have in previous years. This year's birthday party philosophy dictates that the kids must be kept moving for the entire two hours and under no circumstances should encounter an unprogrammed second. While lots of unstructured time was quite charming at ages 4 and 5, the amount and variety of trouble a bunch of six year old boys can find alarms me, so for an afternoon that involves drop-off playtime in conjunction with lots of sugar (see also: moon birthday cake) just call me Cruise Director Mommy.



I don't think it can be underestimated the joy that diet coke/mento rockets brings to the pre-K/K crowd (not to mention any geeky parents they might have lurking about). Followed by little foam finger rocket thingies, a paper airplane distance flight contest, a space shuttle pinata and something else I've already blocked out, well, in the words of one guest, "This is a great party! The mess is awesome!" And, really, isn't that the point?