Manhattan and Ryan's Birthday Party

On Thursday I took Kim to her doctor appointments while Esther got to take Ryan and Ethan as well as their friends Doran and Amory to the top of the Empire State Building. Our guys have been there once before, but it was Doran and Amory's first trip to Manhattan.
They really liked the Subway.
The top of the tall building was cool, too.
Today was Ryan's 5th birthday party. He actually turns 5 on the 25th CLASSIFIED, but no real spy lets anyone know private information. He had said he wanted a spy-themed party, but changed it at the last minute to a Rescue Heroes one. He still got lots of cool spy gear including binoculars hidden in a football and a secret code book with decoder pad.

We made him a Rescue Hero symbol birthday cake.

He got lots of presents.
We had 3 rescue games for everyone to play. First we put a bunch of plastic balls and some crumpled newsprint into a tent along with 2 dozen parachute guys. We covered the tent with white sheets. (Thanks Karen for tent and sheets and Mik for the newsprint!) That was a tragic avalanche in which the parachuters were trapped! The kids went in with flashlights and rescued them though so all ended well.
Next we made cardboard flames and set the swing set on fire. Ethan and Amory were trapped inside! Luckily, we had some water balloons to use to douse the flames. Teo and Kyle were happy to aid in the rescue.
In fact, we found no shortage of volunteers.
Ethan and Amory were in no hurry to be rescued though.

Oddly, some people preferred air in their balloons.
Finally, we hung some small foam airplanes in the tree. We said they were having internal fires. of course you can't use plain water to dose a jet fuel fire. Since foam fire spray is expensive and dangerous, we settled for whipped cream.

Sam was willing to demonstrates good firefighting technique.
But really, who could have whipped cream and waste it all on some silly airplane fires?

Certainly not Ethan!

Nor Amory!
Piper managed to make a can explode.

Ryan was content to just play the gracious host, or is he taking them back to fill water balloons?
So, we had a very full week and now we have four sleeping boys and several slippery spots in the yard where the rain is busily washing away the whipped cream.

We also have a little bit of leftover cake.