Is, you have conversations like this with your four-year-old:

Me: SHOULD YOU BE TOUCHING ANYTHING WITH YOUR HANDS ALL COVERED IN FUDGESICLE???

Avery: Yes? Er…no? Yes. Yes! I think the answer is yes!

Um, yeah. I’ve got a bad habit of phrasing what is meant to be a scolding correctional statement as a question. I think I probably started doing this as a means to encourage my kids to process their decisions or circumstances on their own, rather than having to spell it out for them. In reality it’s just a passive-aggressive way of adding emphasis to what I’m yelling explaining. Instead of “Do not colour on the furniture!” it is “DO YOU THINK YOU SHOULD BE DRAWING ON THE COUCH? NO! NO YOU SHOULD NOT BE COLOURING ON ANYTHING EXCEPT PAPER, DOYOUUNDERSTANDME?!!” 

Moving on…Avery’s birthday is in just 2 weeks here.  She is absolutely as wired with anticipation as an almost five year old can be.  The problem is that we have only been here a short time and really have no friends here for her to invite to a traditional birthday bash.  But this girl has been dreaming about a particular birthday cake since shortly after last year’s birthday and I’ve been feeling so guilty for the instability and chaos in their lives over the past 2 months that I’m totally caving and I’m going to attempt to make the great Candyland Birthday Cake.  Which probably serves 100 people. For just our family.

It’s not really the Taj Mahal of cakes or anything, but it requires a lot of different candy including candy canes and conversation hearts which aren’t exactly in season in the middle of summer. If anyone has any ideas of where I could purchase such a thing in the middle of summer I’d definitely appreciate suggestions. At this point I’m planning to order them online. However you can’t just order 10 mini candy canes. You have to order 100. I don’t even LIKE candy canes so I’m not going to be able to reward myself for my hard work by eating candy canes by the dozen.  

Also, the cake has a number mountains created with ice cream cones and icing.  I’m at a loss here. I’m not in my own kitchen and I don’t have any of my own bakeware and I have never been an artist with the icing like some people. I purchased some Betty Crocker icing tubes that come with several different tips and I was hoping they’d work.  I haven’t experimented with them yet. The tube says it won’t get hard (like if you put it on cookies you wouldn’t want to stack them) and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. 

So anyway, I’m busy stockpiling the different kinds of candy I need for this work of art and praying that it will work out and look something like the picture. I know I could just dump it all on there and Avery would be thrilled, but the perfectionist in me wants to get it right. I’ve already had to replace the peanut butter cups with peppermint patties because the hubby is allergic and Kieran’s peanut status is yet to be determined.  Unless I can find some kind of peanut butter cup shaped chocolate that has something else in the middle. There was nothing of that kind at the grocery store today and let me tell you I was sorely tempted to just buy the damn peanut butter cups and eat the whole giant cake without the two men in our family.