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Jul. 12, 2007
Brendan's Detective Birthday Party
Brendan turned 8 in June and we had a Detective Party to mark the occasion.
The heist: the cake mysteriously disappeared shortly after the party got rolling.
 The Party Crashers: well, maybe they just crashed the picture - they never miss an opportunity to be in front of the camera.
 The Cake - intended to look like a magnifying glass in case you couldn't tell.
Alyssa's comment upon seeing the cake for the first time was: "Mom, this isn't one of your best cakes. It looks like it came out of a preschool." I took that to mean, "It looks like a 4 year old made it." Alyssa has very high standards as I didn't think it was so bad.
 The Crime Scene - John did a good job wrapping the yard in Caution tape.
 More visual effects: Alyssa made this chalk drawing of Chase on the driveway.
 The evidence: this muddy footprint on the patio...
...a partially eaten slice of cheese on the table, a dirty fingerprint left on the pile of party napkins (carefully made using a black ink pad for clarity) and a bicycle track left in the mud headed toward the back gate.
We investigated the evidence as follows:
We took a picture of the footprint and compared it to all the shoes in the group. It turned out to match the shoe of the birthday boy himself.
We had each party goer bite down on a slice of styrofoam plate and compared upper and lower teeth marks to the cheese left on the table. It turns out 'One Tooth Emily' (who is missing one front tooth) was the culprit.
We took fingerprints using a Crayola Colorwonder ink pad which is invisible on fingers but shows up nicely on the Colorwonder paper. Alyssa's fingerprint was the one on the napkin.
We made up some plaster of Paris and poured it into the bicycle track. Once dry it was a perfect match to Chase's bike tire.
 The bandits: the nefarious Sibling Gang
Now we knew 'whodunit' but where did they 'take the cake'?
Well, being young, inexperienced bandits, they left clues.
The first was found lying on the counter written in invisible ink which we revealed using a special pen made for the purpose.
It lead us to our mailbox, where we found a clue hidden in a sea of nonsense letters of various colors. By laying a clear red film card over the nonsense message, we revealed the cryptic message: Bushes 4891 Sherlock Street (address changed to protect the innocent).
We followed the house numbers until we arrived at the address in the clue. There in the bushes, we found a long, narrow cylinder which contained a long, narrow strip of paper full of more nonsense letters. By wrapping the paper around the cylinder, we revealed the next message which took us to yet another mailbox.
When we arrived at the mailbox, we found the final clue but it was printed backwards. Using the mirror found with the clue, we were able to discern our destination: "Back to where you started."
Having now circled the block, we came home to find that the cake had mysteriously reappeared on the table.
 The final mystery: what's under all that wrapping paper!
We finished the party at the local park where we played with water balloons, water guns and our new water balloon launcher which claims to send balloons flying up to 200 feet.
A good time was had by all.
(The careful attention to detail in documenting this party was done intentionally as I plan to throw this party again in a few years when Chase is a little older and I know my memory will not serve me well. Thank you for your patience.)
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A few years ago, when our oldest was 4 and her two brothers were both in diapers, my in-laws were a few days into a visit from their home 3000 miles away when my father-in-law noticed that the rug under the dining room table was in serious need of vacuuming. He is not prone to domestic duties (his wife is a great housekeeper) but seeing the need, he decided to try his hand with the Hoover. As soon as 'Grandpa' declared his intention to get out the vacuum, four little feet ran for the toy box to get vacuums of their own. We had one toy vacuum and we improvised a second from a 'popper' push toy. The baby, who was not yet walking, was right in the thick of things on all fours, never one to be left out. Grandpa, trying to maneuver the self-propelled 'Wind-tunnel' around the 10 foot rug while avoiding the table legs and dodging his three little helpers, remarked in exasperation, "I just wanted to clean the rug, I wasn't looking to start a three ring circus." Welcome to my life!
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My name is Tiffany. I am a 40 year old mother of 4. My husband, John, and I planned to homeschool even before we married 18 years ago but it would be several years before our oldest would be ready to start on this journey. We had our children in alphabetical order, quite by accident at first, but once we got started, we figured we had to keep it going. They are Alyssa 10, Brendan 9, Chase 6, and Emily 4. Our 4th baby, D, miscarried at 13 weeks. We have no intention of making it to Z.
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100 Easy Lessons Reading
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Apologia Astronomy/Botany
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Jul. 12, 2007 - Party
Kristy