This girl:
Turned 7 yesterday. How did I “save” her birthday?
Well, as of my writing yesterday, some things were going…well…wrong. Her cake. Her presents….
Let’s back up a while. The beginning of October, I placed some online orders…Walmart.com and build a bear.com. From walmart, I ordered her a new barbie she wanted, plus the matching DVD. From build a bear, I got her a bunny like mine, but hers was to have some pink and brown cammo jammies. ( I guess it is JUST like ME, not like MINE..jammies, tends to breed too much, military supporter lol) Anyway….
Two weeks go by and no gifts yet, then one day, the DVD shows up. Hmmmm, maybe I should get a “backup gift” just in case, so I get her a “soda pop” doll, the big one in the large bottle with the penguin. Now, if one gift doesn’t come, we’ll be set.
Or so I thought.
Saturday comes and NO presents in the mail. As a matter of fact, said gifts have been sitting in Jersey since that same week I ordered them. There is no mail for us on Mondays so Saturday was the “if it ain’t there, we are screwed” deadline.
No biggie…we decide to take her to Toys-r-us in Ktown on Saturday and we’d buy her something there, and make the bday presents Christmas presents. Wellll….
We get to Toys-r-us at 615 pm only to find out they close…you guessed it…at 6.
Dammit! Well, we’ll go to the BX and she can spend her birthday money from her Grandparents and we can come back to Toys r us another day.
She finds the same doll at the bx that I have in Kevin’s trunk, and THAT’S the one she wants to buy. What can I do, tell her no, she can’t buy it?
I’m back to square one.
We notice this My little Pony, that is overpriced, and it sings, and she sees it too..and wants it. Luckily, for us, she doesn’t have all her money with her (which is BAD too cause she LOST the other $20 bill, and can’t find it which is why she didn’t have all of her money with her….)
I make the decision to bring back the “old” doll (Monday), and buy the Pony for her birthday. But, if you have had ANY experience with military stores, you know, it’s “see today, gone tomorrow”. This was Saturday. (it was also the day I found out that Apple made an iPod just for me…purple..but that’s another story)
As of writing yesterday, I was scared to go to town with “return” doll, cause I feared “overpriced singing pony” would be gone. Thankfully, it wasn’t . Birthday present disaster diverted. Phew!
But still, there was the issue of “the cake”.
Normally, we get cakes from Target, but obviously, that wasn’t going to happen and isn’t going too for 3 years, so I become “Susan cake baker” again. I’ve enjoyed baking and decorating cakes for my children in the past and thought, well, what the heck. No commissary cake 
She wanted a chocolate cake, with pink and purple frosting and sprinkles. I can do that…. I made it….I wish (at the time) I hadn’t.
It came out of the oven with the center noticeably higher than the rest and split open like a volcano. (I have a convection oven that I’m just not used to using and you CAN NOT turn the fan off on it…)
I let it cool several hours praying that the middle will sink. It didn’t. Oh well, let me take my canned frosting and add the food coloring to make pink and purple….did you notice CANNED FROSTING? LOL, you cannot decorate well with canned frosting lol
I got it decorated and put the lid on the pan (big mistake) only to realize that the top of the cake will hit the lid…the cake is ruined. Dammit! Well, when I take the “return doll” back, I’ll swing by the commissary and get some Halloween cupcakes…who can’t use extra cakey stuff lol This leg of birthday saved.
Also part of “the birthday” was the fact that her first Brownie meeting (and parent meeting) was from 6-7 and “new leader” was making her a cake. Ok…..if you know my family, you know that “BIRTHDAYS” are family nights for us. For the first time ever in Efam history, we break tradition and go to the meeting, hubby makes dinner and we do our cake and ice cream and presents after meeting….
Here I am thinking….ok, leader made a cake. Probably a “looks like leader made a cake”..know what I mean? Um NOT..it was more like “Looks like leader made a CAKE”..a really “holy shit look at that cake!” kind of cake. A real, OMG do you EAT that kind of cake. REAL, HOMEMADE hand rolled ganache, two flavor and FILLED cake. My sucky cake at home, clearly lost…..but made for a good “omg I’m laughing so hard and crying over your bad cake story” story while eating “LOOKS TOO GOOD TO EAT CAKE” Sadly, I didn’t have my camera to take a pic of this miracle of baked confection….you can tell she loves baking…she does those cakes for fun.
Anyway, here’s a few pics of “cake gone bad”, the birthday girl who was completely oblivious to the “wrong goings on behind the scenes” of her 7th birthday, and her overpriced, annoying pony toy.
If you ask her, her cake was awesome, her birthday perfect…Mom scores! (and Kevin made an awesome dinner!!)
Morgan with present:
Happy girl with overpriced perfect birthday present:
What the hell happened to the cake?
What do you mean “wasted” frosting…there is NO such thing! 
“I wish my mom hadn’t ruined my cake” lol
Take a good look at the middle of the cake compared to the sides of it hehe
Ok, if you’ve somehow and for some odd reason stayed with me through this, there is a moral to this story.
She’ll look back at this cake and not know a thing. We “moms” are true super heros for our children, and I apparently, come from a long line of “hey I can decorate my kids cake just fine” women.
I ran into this pic while uploading a stack of old pics of myself, and how fitting it came at this time. I gotta admit, I looked at it and said “what an ugly cake”, but truthfully, now having gone through the cake dilemma, what “these” cakes represent is a mother’s love for her children.
It does not matter what else is going on in our/their lives, “mothers” do anything they can for their children for their birthdays..we may feel like screaming, crying, and laughing all at the same time because we are either crazy or our lives MAKE us crazy, but when it comes right down to it…when it comes to the kids, we put our HEARTS into everything we do
(Another lesson my mom taught me and didn’t know it)
