8! 8 years old! How??

Our big boy is 8 years old, as of 4 days ago! They are studying Egypt in his class, largely because the June before school started up again, his teacher asked them all what they are interested in, and then she creates a year theme that encompasses all of their interests... that's right... he is the luckiest kid... except the little one's teacher is like that too, so equally lucky! Anyway, he said he was interested in Egypt, so that is what they have been doing for the past several weeks!

Anyway, because of this I made cookies (he wanted chocolate sugar cookies, so I found sugar cookies can indeed be chocolate) and chocolate sugar icing... then I put the first letter of each child's name in the class in hieroglyphs. I put them in the fridge, and they ended up looking sort of weathered like this, which is perfect:



He said people just ate them and loved them and didn't pay attention to the letter! Mental note for future... kids just like cookies... no need to include the Rosetta Stone.

For the party with friends, I read through my favourite birthday party idea site, called "birthdayPartyideas.com" which is where I have gotten sooo many ideas over the years... then I picked the ideas to use... I made an Egypt cake:



The pyramid is made out of rice crispy cake. It was cute... instead of asking for an end piece or a corner piece, kids were saying "Can I have some of the Nile?" or "Can I have some of the pyramid?" The "sand" is actually graham wafer crumbs from Bulk Barn. The cake itself is a beautiful chocolate cake recipe (click here to see it... then MAKE it!) because my 8 year old said he wanted chocolate cake, so I thought "well, then it is going to be REAL chocolate"... and WOW! What a fantastic recipe! It turned out perfectly! Note in the comments of the recipe the "Jennifer" that is talking about how great the cake is - that's me! Because it was great!

When the kids showed up, they went to an archaological dig, in which I had put little plastic Egypt figurines that I had bought from Michaels... they come in a tube. It seemed a good thing to do as they arrived one at a time... something to occupy that waiting time:



Then they had home made pizza, that Kurt made (by request, because his pizza is amazing)...

Then we went on a mummy hunt around the house... This was an idea I got from this website (click here). I had clues written in hieroglyphs, with a code chart that they could all have. They ran up to one room, and found a few mummies, under which one would have a clue for the next room... and off they all ran to that room... up and down together, it was pretty cute! Good reason to have lots of small rooms, and do this at home, because it wouldn't have been as fun in a community centre gymn... where would you hide stuff? I had hieroglyph names above all the entrances to rooms. Once they all found their mummies (they had their names written in hieroglyphs), they opened them in the living room. As they opened them, chocolate coins and jewels (ring pops) fell out, to go with the idea that mummies are in their tombs with all of their prize possessions. I had to refrain from explaining that to a room of kids who might not want the mom to "teach" them on a Saturday. Then, the bigger item was t-shirts that I had made with the Egyptian hieroglyphs for the word "jubilation" which I had found in a book. I decided to loosely interpret the word "jubilation" to mean "party" :-)




I made them all from a template I carved from a pizza box! Good thing I kept it because one was too small, so I'll make another one!

Then cake, presents, and they played "decorate the mummy" which they did with toilet paper. I came up with goofy titles like "most horizontal" or "straightest" instead of having a winner!