How to Have a Great Birthday

First you need a cake, a layer of Mom's homemade brownies, with chocolate chips instead of nuts, topped with a thick fudge frosting with green decorations.

Then you need some friends to have some fun with.  It sure was smart of Mom to rent a minivan for the day so that everyone could come along.

Exploring the "birthday mobile" was part of the fun.  Then there was swimming, always a good thing for the water-crazy birthday boy, and lunch at the pool.

After that came rocket launching out at the biggest open field in the area.  The weather was perfect for it, with a calm breeze that made rocket recovery fairly easy.

The theme of this party was officially "X-Box birthday," so after the rockets we drove home for cake and ice cream and X-box games.  As the party was about to break up, they had one last hurrah, popping a case of forty boxes of "poppers" I had picked up a month ago from a firework stand.   It was a good ending to a great party.