To Make a Cake

 1. Have a fabulous boy who is turning 3.

2. Go to the grocery in a dead run to buy ice and get it back home and in the freezer while not being late for teaching a K-3 music class.

3. Come home exhausted but put away library books, issue vocabulary test, prep for next week's school, remember that you have no coherent plan for dinner... and oh yeah, you need to start that cake too.

4. Use every last egg in the basket and set the ice cream a-churning.


 5.  Realize you need eggs for the brownies.  Your favorite recipes all use 4 eggs.  Pray the chickens are having a good day and check the pen to find 3 eggs.

6. Squeeze a few chickens.  If that fails (as is usually does), find a recipe that uses only 3 eggs and mix it up.

7. Let cute kids lick the spoons

8. Remember you also need to make caramel.  Set the sweetened condensed milk to boiling while the ice cream is churning, the brownies are baking and the pot pie you froze a month ago is popped into the oven with ice crystals still on it.

9. Bite nails wondering if the ice cream is going to finish before you're late picking up a child from preschool and charged $5/min.

10.  Pull brownies from oven, set caramel to a low simmer, check the pot pie and attempt to stash finished ice cream in an extremely full freezer.

11.  Rearrange entire freezer to make ice cream fit and drive like mad to get aforementioned preschooler.

12.  Come home, feed goats, feed chicks, pull 3 preschool boys from splashing in mud puddles. Repeat.  Twice.  Issue clean up and hand washing instructions while dishing up potpie.

13.  Eat dinner while repeatedly answering the question of where Daddy is with, "He's working late.  He'll be home soon." until its a frenzied response of, "What did I just say?!?!"

14.  Begin reading a story about a squire and promise diligent eaters a movie about knights and squires.

15.  Attempt to cut pentagonal shapes from brownies while kids get pj's on.  Realize far too late that a ruler or template would have been extremely useful.  Enjoy a cute boy dancing around you singing about his birthday cake.  Nearly blow your top when loud, unrelenting arguments arise about who's birthday it is.

16.  Set kids in front of the brain numb-er and line a bowl with plastic wrap.  Set quasi-pentagonal brownies face down and spaced out in the bowl.   Spread a layer of ice cream holding brownies in place.  Rearrange the chest freezer to find a place for this bowl.

17.  Welcome home the superhero.  Milk goats. Put kids to bed. Do dishes.  Crash in bed.

18.  Take ice cream out of freezer while enjoying a cup-o-joe with your favorite mother.  Take cake out of freezer and realize that the ice cream oozed around the already iffy pentagonal brownies to make just blobs.

19. Drizzle a layer of caramel on cake layer.  Crumble brownie crumbs on top of that.  Spread another layer of ice cream.  Probably should refreeze here. (I got impatient)


20.  Drizzle last half of caramel and use the rest of the brownie crumbs on another layer.  Spread rest of ice cream, cover bowl and refreeze.

21.  Wait several hours while mowing the lawn, building a garden fence, moving chicks out of the garage and tilling chicks' poopy paper shreddings into a garden bed.

22. Decide to give it another attempt at looking like a soccer ball and buy a tub of whipped cream.  And then feel really guilty while reading the ingredients and mentally berate yourself for not making your own.

23. Pry cake out of the bowl onto a pizza pan and frost with million-ingredients-you-can't-pronounce-and-a-few-you-don't-want-to-whipped cream. Forget to take a picture until its almost frosted.

24.  Let birthday boy lick the spatula.

25.  Mix cocoa in with leftover whipped cream and realize it tastes horrible.  Add stevia powder to sweeten it.

26. Slice 3 left over quasi-pentagonal brownies in 2 pieces each,  hamburger-wise for 6 soccer spots.  Seriously question your ability to draw so many hexagons on a pile of whipped cream and begin to wonder if it would look like a soccer ball if they're in squares instead.

27.  After freezing again, put sliced brownies on cake and refreeze to hold them in place.

28.  Put cocoa-afied whipped cream in the cake decorator and connect brownies with thin brown lines of whipped cream.  Refreeze very quickly.

29. Use the rest of the whipped cream to edge the bottom... until the tip pops out of the bag and a mess glops on the counter.  Then just finish up by glopping it by spoon the rest of the way around the ball.

30.  Stow in freezer and wait for party time!

31.  Celebrate loving family, beautiful weather, fun times and a sweet little muffin man.

32. Know that you'll go to the ends of the earth for an excited smile from a precious son and a treasured memory.

33. Eat super yummy ice cream cake!!!

Happy Birthday, Nathan!  I love you!!!