Not So Picture Perfect

We pulled off a picture-perfect birthday celebration for Jersey #2 last month...

The reality was far from perfect.



It started out well. All of the gifts and supplies were purchased in advance...I even found pink pirate party supplies...

We normally take some time the evening before a birthday to get things ready. It is tradition to have the dining table decorated, with the gifts and cake on display. It is a fun scene for the birthday child to wake up to.

This birthday was for one of our night-owl children. She was so excited about her birthday, that she really had a hard time getting to sleep that night. That meant we were up much later than usual to get things prepared, because we got such a late start.

To top it off, her birthday gift from us was a wooden doll house. The box was filled with all kinds of pieces that needed to be put together.

Normally, The Referee puts the kids' toys together with ease. This time, he was suffering with a sudden gout attack. He could hardly walk. He was on major medication, and in great pain.

I am really grateful he suffered through the doll house assembly task, because I was busy in the kitchen, making quite a mess of the doll cake...

With my previous doll cakes, I used 1 cake mix. This time, I tried 2 cake mixes, because the Barbie doll I bought for the cake was taller than the mold of 1 cake mix. It turns out that the batter bowl does not hold 2 full cake mixes. It only holds about 1.5 mixes. Oops! There was boiling over. There was burnt cake. There was smoke. It was a tasty mess, though. I had to scrape off some of the batter in order for the rest of the cake to bake. Thankfully, it worked out well enough, in spite of Barbie being a bit tall for the dome "dress."


There is even a story behind the pirate chest present...

Granny & PawPaw sent their present early, and it was sitting wrapped in my bedroom. It became unwrapped one day, and I thought the kids had played too rough around it and damaged the wrapping. I gave them a lecture about it, and re-adjusted the gift with the paper loosely on top. Two days later, Jersey #2 came crying to me because she was overcome with the guilt of having opened up her birthday present, but not admitting to it at the time I discovered the torn paper. She learned a valuable lesson with that experience, because the guilt was really eating at her. I had a good laugh remembering the story as I set out the unwrapped pirate chest gift on the table the night before her birthday.

The morning of her birthday, I wanted to get a picture of Jersey #2 with her cake, before we dug into it. She posed well and I snapped a few pictures, before it dawned on me that some tampering had occurred...

It appears that a certain toddler got his hands on the cake. Apparently, he got a hold of the number seven and attempted to lick the frosting off the bottom. His sisters caught him and stopped him, then tried to "fix" it back before I noticed. They did not realize that they placed the number seven backwards.

After I noticed the number, I then noticed the line of fingerprints through the frosting on the front of the doll cake dress. I served that piece to Jersey #5...

There is never a dull moment around here!