You Can't Make Me - I'm Not Gonna Do It - At Least Not Right Now

Lydia's birthday is today. My "Miss Thing" is now 3. Abigail's birthday was 9 days ago. I had planned on a very small family birthday party here at the house for Abi. No big deal. Just a cake, drinks, and whatever gifts the aunts, uncles and grandparents might want to bring. I was asked a couple of times if we were going to combine Abi and Lydia's birthday "parties" because my nephew's birthday (same side of the family) is 2 days after Lydia's. So, for them, its 3 birthdays in about 10 days. I didn't want to but Daniel decided we would combine and that was okay. I wasn't for it but it wasn't worth fussing over.

WRONG.

We had the birthday celebration last Saturday and it was nice. But I had bought a brownie mix and some frosting to make for Lydia's birthday today. I wanted her to have SOMETHING special just for her on her day. Well, today just wasn't a good day.

It was 3:00 before I realized I hadn't sat anything out for supper. I kept trying to make the brownies all day but stuff just kept coming up. So as I was trying to make brownies around 3:00, I got a call from Abi's school letting me know that she didn't have a ride home. In the process of trying to figure that out, I skip the eggs in the brownie mix!!! DO NOT FORGET THE EGGS!!! I put them in the oven and they just weren't baking correctly! I couldn't figure it out! I kept looking at the box trying to figure out if I had the oven set wrong or maybe they hadn't baked long enough. 45 minutes into what SHOULD have been a 30 minute process, I realized I had forgotten the eggs. So I had this rubbery, greasy, bubbling mess!!! NOW WHAT?! I HAD to have SOMETHING for her birthday because I had tried to sing her "happy birthday" that morning and she told me it wasn't her birthday yet because her birthday wasn't on the table!! (no cake - no gifts) GRRRRRRRR! The three year old had no clue about combining birthday celebrations!! I knew she wouldn't.

Plan B - make a home made birthday cake. This I can do. She wants a pink cake. Ok. STINK! No red food coloring. Plan Bb - ask her to pick either a yellow cake or a green cake. She selects green. No problem.

Now on to dinner! Thaw the ground turkey for spaghetti. Set the water on the stove to boil for the spaghetti noodles - um . . . . . noodles . . . . . where ARE the noodles? No noodles. We had bought everything to make the spaghetti EXCEPT the noodles. Plan B - egg noodles. Crisis diverted yet again.

Dinner goes fine. Not really enough spaghetti sauce. Mental note to self to purchase an additional jar of sauce at Aldi when planning next spaghetti meal. Cake is done. Did not over bake. Allow cake to cool and on to the home made frosting. No real butter. Stink. Must use margarine. Not the end of the world. Mixing the frosting with the mixer when my beaters start clunking and rubbing. I stop the machine. No apparent problems. Start it back up and they started clunking together so loudly it scared me!! Mixer is now officially dead. Had to finish mixing the frosting by hand. Now need a new mixer.

Deep sigh.

I'm so glad she is only 3. I had asked Daniel to stop by the Dollar Tree to get her 2 small $1 gifts so she would have something to open, as AGAIN, she had no clue we had already celebrated her birthday the previous weekend. She was thrilled with her green cake. She was thrilled with her new coloring book, fairy doll, and Dora spinning tops. She was even happy with the birthday card Abigail had made for her.

Lesson learned through all of this - Never Never Never combine birthdays for children. It is their special day celebrating their unique entrance into this world and should remain as such.

Second lesson learned - always keep a spare cake mix in the house around birthday time.

Thank you, Lord, that my children are still so small that they are unaware of the things that are missing in their little lives.

Thank you, Lord, that today is almost over!

Thank you, Lord, for my precocious little three year old who is so appreciative of mommy's efforts.

Thank you, Lord, for all those sacrifices made by my own parents that I never saw or recognized.

(Hoping to have some pictures to add tomorrow if they aren't forever stuck on hubby's phone.)