8 April 2018

Happy Birthday to Abe who turned 15 on Tuesday!  

 Abe works hard all day from early morning seminary at 6:25 am until he finishes golf or soccer practice at 7:30 pm.  

We took Abe to the DMV before school on Wednesday so he could take the driving test for his learner's permit.  Abe went driving for the first time on Saturday.

Abe's friends came over Friday night to celebrate his birthday.  They played the same saran wrap game that Helen played at her birthday party.  We decided to make the game harder by using press and seal plastic wrap.  It was definitely harder to peel the ball apart and get the loot out.

Popular prizes were gift cards to fast food restaurants and colorful socks.  Clockwise from Abe in the photo are Jake, Ashton, Camden, Cameron, Malakai and Spencer.

 Gibson had a birthday party on Saturday.  He wanted an Ilvermorny party.  Ilvermorny is the North American School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Harry Potter's world.  It's mentioned briefly in the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and there's more information on the website Pottermore.

 Like Hogwarts, Ilvermorny has 4 houses that the students are sorted into.  Each house has a mascot and the people who belong to each house are known for similar broad characteristics.  We planned an activity for the party to represent each of the houses.

 The first house, Puckwudgie, is known for being healers.  For this house Brandan created a couple of activities using potions.

He used red cabbage juice as an acid/base indicator and let the kids find the relative pH of a few household items.  The dramatic color changes seem like magic.  From the top left are Nick, Aubrynn, Javis and Michael.

 The kids also microwaved bars of Ivory soap and watched it puff up into a large mound of fluffy soap.  This is Clara.

The second house, Horned Serpent, is known for having scholars.  Helen created an escape room for this activity.  The story was the kids were locked in a room and had to follow the clues to find their wands to unlock the door and escape.  It took Helen about 5 minutes to plan the escape room.  Here are her notes

Here's a photo of her clever hiding spot for the wands.

She cut the spines off a few old books (we got them from the library book sale) and glued the spines to a cardboard box.  When she slid the box onto the shelf, the box was completely hidden.  The wands were inside the box.  Everyone enjoyed following her ingenious clues.

 The third house, Wanpus, is known for warriors.  For this activity, the kids battled with balloons.  They taped a straw to the top of a balloon, inflated the balloon, ran fishing line through the straw, then let the air out of the balloons so 2 balloons would race toward each other.  One balloon would push the other balloon to the end of the fishing line.  Here's Gibson with his balloon which isn't fairing well.

 Here's a photo of Eddy getting ready to battle Gibson.  Also in the photo are Ethan and Brandan.

 The kids taped bamboo skewers to their balloons to hopefully pop their opponent's balloon.

 The last house, Thunderbird, is known for adventurers.  The fourth activity was maneuvering through the hallway without touching a spell- the yarn crisscrossing the hallway.

 Here's a photo of Helen making her way through the maze.

 Next we had cupcakes and snacks.  This is Gibson blowing out the candle on his cupcake.  Each cupcake had a chocolate snitch on top.

 Since Ilvermorny is in North America, we let everyone choose which house they wanted to be sorted into.  Most kids chose Thunderbird.  Abe was the only one who chose Puckwudgie.  He's wearing his Puckwudgie badge in this photo.

 We ended the party with a game of Quidditch which is a worldwide sport in the Harry Potter world.  Here are Michael, Caleb and Nick.

 Here are Eddy (in the back looking for the snitch), Caleb, Nick, Helen, Sophie, Clara and Abe.  It was a great party.  Everyone in our family contributed by making invitations, planning games, making wands and Quidditch goals, decorating, making food and cleaning up.