Guerrilla Cake Decorating

Or sometimes I just can't help myself.

As I mentioned in the post below from Friday, Max had an invite to a birthday party this weekend. Our normal modus operandi is to leave for a party about 45 minutes earlier than necessary and pick up the present on the way. I throw some wrapping paper, tape, and a pair of scissors into the car before leaving and we're good to go. This time I even had an appropriate card on hand for the birthday boy.

Max and I pulled into Wallyword and found a halfway decent spot. Max told me as we walked in that he knew just what to get his friend Tanner for his birthday. He marched us to the back of the store, looking for the LEGO aisle. After one false start he found just where he wanted to be. He quickly scanned the available sets and pointed out one.

"That one Mom, I would like to get him that one."

As I reached up I asked him "Do you want the green one or the red?"

"The green one."

I pulled down the green Bionicle and told him we were all done. He nodded his head and was happy to go.

I was shocked, I had planned 45 minutes and we were done in less than 15.

I took my time wrapping the present, but we still had almost a half an hour to kill before the party. I ended up taking him to a nearby Goodwill. He thought it was great, mostly because he found a little fox puppet to buy with his allowance.

Back in the car I saw we would only be 5 minutes early and I figured that was close enough. We headed on over to the party.

The party was at a local sports park- one of those mini golf, batting cages, and go-karts kind of places. We were directed to the right room and found Tanner's family setting things up. Max went off with Tanner and I stayed behind to meet his Mom. One of the things they were doing was putting together the cake. They had gotten a half sheet with a baseball diamond with a baseball glove in the foreground holding a ball. It was very nicely done, but there was no inscription.

They had a matching bag of frosting and they were planning on doing it themselves. I watched as they struggled to get the frosting down to the tip. It turns out they were unsure about the whole thing and I offered to help out. I excel in free form lettering on cakes. I really seem to have a knack for it, the letters come out evenly sized and spaced. They happily turned the frosting over to me and let me have at it.

It came out very nicely with the funniest moment being when Tanner came in the room. He didn't say anything, but his expression was priceless. It was basically why is Max's Mom making MY cake. He then shrugged it off and went back to messing around with his friends.

I didn't expect to help decorate a cake, but I certainly did have fun doing it.