The Land of Gabe: Happy birthday to me! I am THREE!!

Gabe had a wonderful birthday weekend! Thanks to all of you that came to the party and/or helped make it so wonderful. There were some snags and glitches but the actually party couldn't have been any better. No one got attacked by fire ants, some of the kids actually used the slip n slide, the well didn't run dry, and there was plenty of food to go around. I'd say I great day for sure!

The glitches...

The first glitch was discovered Thursday evening. The playground of course was Gabe's major present from us. Well, for birthday, and Christmas and Easter next year... you get the drift! The playground is a big deal!! But the little guy needed something to open from his mama and daddy, even if he didn't know he did, he did. So I ordered him some new DVD's. One of them is "I Love Big Trains". This is one I've been wanting to get for a long time. They advertise it on his "All About John Deere" DVD and he seems like he'd like it. Then I got him a two pack of "Mighty Machines". It was a DVD of real life dozers and garbage trucks and all kinds of fun "guy" things to keep him occupied for hours. Thursday night I got them out of the box and wrapped them up tight. After I wrapped them, I realized that something was rattling around so I opened them back up to take a peek. One of the DVD's in the two pack was broken clean in half and little shards of DVD were floating around in the holder. That was not cool. I ordered them through Amazon and was able to go online right away and get a replacement headed our way but I had to pack up BOTH DVD's in that set to send back. Obviously it didn't affect Gabe any - he was none the wiser, but it hurt his mommy to not have all of his gift there and ready for him to open at his party.

The big glitch...

The cake. The weekend before the party I decided to take Gabe into Publix with me so he could pick out his own cake this year. We flipped through the book and he settled on a sheet cake with construction equipment on it... Then he saw the pirate ship. He loves pirates as there are several Backyardigans pirate episodes and one on Curious George and various other shows. He wanted the pirate ship so of course, that's the one I ordered. I almost choked when the girl told me it was a $50 cake, but anything for our little boy, right? With the party being at 10am on a Saturday I scheduled to pick the cake up the day before. Who has time to run errands on a Sat morning before a 10am party right? So that was done and I went on about my (very busy) week.

On Friday I made the trip to pick up the cake. When they handed it to me it was in a HUGE box. I'm talking a really big thing here! I told the girl I wouldn't be able to fit that box in my fridge and would it be ok not refridgerated. She looked at it and said, "yep, since it's buttercream icing it should be fine. Just keep it in a fairly cool spot". So this is what I did.

Boy Gabe was proud of that ship! He kept asking for us to pick him up so he could peer down into the box. I was pretty proud of it too and was so excited about how neat it was going to be at his pirate theamed party in the morning when I brought that cake out with the sparkler candles on it! What a sight that would be. So I kept looking at it too. One time I walked by and peered down in the box and my breath caught. One half of the bow? The stern? Whatever the front part of the ship is called had fallen over and was laying on the little toy treasure chest. I quickly picked it back up and of course made a big mess of the icing. I didn't have any toothpicks so I cut the sticks off of some of the dum dum pops (I used the brown ones... Gabe won't eat the brown ones) and tried to stick the cake back together. Of course it looked awful but we joked about it hitting some rocks or running ashore. It was all a big fun joke...until I got up the next morning. You know, the morning of the 10am party...

and found the whole back end of the ship had slid off and was stuffed against the back of the box. It's 7:30am and I'm at a loss as to what I am going to do about a birthday cake for my baby boy. I called the bakery back and they had me bring in the cake. When I got there they looked at the cake and said yep, it was beyond help and offered me a nice $20 replacement sheet cake. In my sadness and stress, I took it as being the best deal I could get. I mean the boy just needed a cake right? Why I didn't insisit I take the cake back with me or why I didn't insist on my money back, I don't know, but if you are thinking hey, she really deserves that $50 back then yes, you are right and I will be going by there today and getting it. So no worries there. But it doesn't change the fact that I cried the whole way home because all I could think about was "what do I tell him when he asks 'where's my pirate ship'". And he did of course, but we played it up about how cool his bulldog cake was and he remembered I had popsicles so he asked for one of those and all was well with the world. Not my world, I was sad and distrought about having to serve the wrong cake, but all was well with his world and that's all that mattered. The irony is that it is now Tuesday and he still is yet to have eaten ANY of his cake. I guess he's just not a big fan of cake?

The success...

The birthday party itself was a huge success! I think I counted 14 kids, including Gabe and 22 adults all total. Everyone had a great time and like I said earlier, no one got eaten by fire ants which was a blessing. Some of the kids (not Gabe of course) actually participated in the slip n slide and everyone really enjoyed the playground. Gabe got a lot of nice new toys but not too many which is nice. You CAN have too many toys, believe me you can! But his loot was just perfect and we thank everyone that came and/or sent gifts or good wishes! A few small glitches aside, it really was a wonderful day.

This what the cake should have looked like. I didn't take pictures of the wreck. I wasn't thinking clearly enough but it would have made for some good pictures! Isnt' that a cool cake??!!