Sunday, June 28, 2009
It's time for me to describe the disaster of Adriel's birthday party. He's three now, I've had to do it three times, you'd think I'd get better at it, but this year was the worst yet.
It all started with the cake. Adriel said he wanted a chocolate cake with white icing. So the plan was, chocolate cake mix and I would make cream cheese icing to go on it. How hard does that sound? The night before his party, while we were on our date, we picked up the cake mix. We came home and I quickly mixed it up and put it in the oven thinking I'd get some of the work done the day before to save me some of the headache on the actual party day. I wasn't that lucky though. After a while Kyle said "Sarah, something's burning." "Oh no!" I leapt up and ran to the kitchen. Sure enough. Apparently, I had put the oven rack in upside down without realizing and there was a ledge in the middle that tipped one of the pans causing there to be cake ALL over my oven floor, caking onto the burner, dripping off of both racks and making a terrible burning smell. WHY?
Every year there is always SOMETHING with the cake!! The first year I made him carrot cake. I went to moms and hurried to write down her recipe and forgot the baking soda. I didn't think much about it until the cake was ready to come out of the oven and hadn't risen at all. That time I only had baby carrots and didn't have a food processor so I grated FOUR cups of carrots by hand! Bewildered because I didn't have time to do it all again, I phoned mom and told her I was having a crisis. She made the cakes for me. The next year, I decided to make carrot cake again. What of it? I really like carrot cake. Everthing was fine until Adriel who was playing with the broom just as we were leaving to go to his party, decided to drag the broom through the cake. AHHH! Then there was this year.
So I had to go the next morning to get another cake. Kyle was gone in the truck and it turns out our car is having battery issues. I had to walk. Not a huge deal because I had some time. Well I was out running an errand when the cakes were finished baking in the oven, in Anns car and Ann took the liberty to not only remove them from the oven, but also the pan while they were still really hot, and she totally broke one. This was frusterating because I wasn't expecting her to do that, and after all I'd been through with the cake, if someone were going to break it, it had to be me, because I can get mad at myself. Oh well, I'll just put that one on the bottom, I thought to myself, after getting over it. So then came time for the icing. I bought marshmellow cream to mix in with it. I thought it would be yummy. Well it seemed to give the icing this runnier conistency. I kept adding cream cheese and icing sugar to make it thicker, but it wasn't happening. It tasted good, but because my cake was now three round circles high (I kept one from the night before, because it was still good), it was just falling off. I finally gave up because I ran out of cream cheese and it seemed a little thicker. Well I didn't just want the icing, i wanted to put strawberries on too. That seemed like a yummy idea but it just made the icing fall off even more, and because of the broken piece, the cake was a little lopsided, causing all the icing and strawberries to fall off and goop onto a big pool around the cake. I kept having to scoop it up and slop it back onto the top and sides, causing the white icing to turn pink, and to cover the pretty strawberry bits so that they just looked like lumps. It looked terrible! I took a picture, but for some reason, my memory chip isnt working right now.
So that was the cake.
All week I had been worried about the weather, but we woke up to sunshine on Saturday. The weather forcast had said isolated showers. Whatever that means. Slowly as the day progressed it turned into clouds. When it came time to go, the clouds were pretty dark. I didn't really have a back up plan either. I didn't want to come back to my house because of the cake thing, it was really sort of a war zone. Not ready for guests at all. We got there and started setting up. It wasn't just cloudy, it was really windy and cold. Oh I forgot to mention that the party was taking place at the water park. It seemed like a good idea at the time we planned it because that's when it was really really hot out and Adriel loves the water park sooo much. Kyle and I were sort of laughing at ourselves as we set up saying things like "yup a perfect day to lounge around at the water park" or "nothing like a strong gust of cold wind to get you in the mood to get wet" I was fully dressed and wearing a sweater and I was cold. However, the kids all went in or a brief while, surprisingly. It was soooo cold. The clouds got darker. Also there weren't very many people there. Just leah and her kids and a boy we invited from Adriel's mother goose. Then the rain came. My poor cake after all it had been through, was now getting rained on. I was trying to think of where we could go, because we were'nt going to stay in the rain. Leah suggested the church, which sounded fine for me. I called Katie, who wasn't there yet (and we were 45 mins into the party). She wasn't home. I knew she had forgotten. I phoned the cell and she answered. They were shopping at Supterstore, and she said she'd meat us at the church. I believe one of the first things I heard from her was a comment about the cake. She laughed when I told her about my cake woes and said the same sorts of things always happen to her too. We decided that maybe it was because we only make cakes a few times a year.
At the church, we played with a parachute that Ann brought in the gym. The kids loved it. Then they ran around and played for a while. Adriel was running, and stepped on the parachute, as one could imagine, the combonation of the slippery parachute with the gym floor resulted in a wipe out. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, and I was holding Sloan, but I ran over to him, and blood was pooring out of his mouth. Kyle was in the hallway having a conversation, and I gave him a look and he came over and said "What do you want me to do?" hello!? I said "he's bleeding, you need to take him and clean him up, or at least take Sloan, so I can do it. " There was brief hesitation and he turned to me and took Sloan. Nice. But I didn't have time to worry about the fact Daddy wasn't being very daddy-ish because blood was really coming out. So I carefully carried him to the bathroom. I was wearing a white zip up of course. It took a while to finally figure out that he was bleeding from the inside of his top lip because he wasn't all that keen on me probing through his mouth. I rolled his top lip up and there were two gashes from his bottom teeth. Poor kid. At his own party too. I cleaned him up, and his mouth, and he got over it. His top lip was fast becoming fat though.
The rest of the party went pretty normally. Kids ran around and played with Adriel's new toys. Adults sat around and talked. We cleaned up and came home. Did I make dinner? No. Wasn't hungry and didn't feel like it.
I'm just glad it's over. I have to get better at this!
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Sarahstottle posted @ 7:35 PM