Turning 5 in Robot Style

Our oldest son turned 5 on Monday. To celebrate we did the usual small party consisting of close family. Long before the planned date arrived Nathan was already making big plans...all centered around robots. So robots it was!

I have mentioned before that my parents are missionaries in Mexico. If you know anything about Mexican birthday parties you know they aren't a proper party without a pinata, so my parents had some good friends of theirs make him a robot pinata. Wow, was this thing amazing! And S.T.U.R.D.Y. I am talking dozens of whacks with a bat sturdy. I am talking our middle son is still wearing bits of the pinata as a costume sturdy. Unfortunately this will not be a yearly occurrence because despite the fact my mom was smart and just sent money so that I could fill it, the thing still cost an arm and a leg to ship. Oh well, it was definitely memorable!

We decided to have the party at my brother's house since all of our family who attended lives within minutes of his house. That and we love to do an outdoor party seeing as his birthday falls at the end of August and our own lawn has been completely neglected seen better days. Not only was my brother kind enough to offer up his pad for the party but my sister-in-law agreed to make the watermelon robot I had found here. She even went a step further and added a cantaloupe friend. Aren't they awesome looking?

And then there was the cake. Oh, the cake. Let me tell you that up until the day of the party I thought I had gotten off easy. Everything had gone smoothly up to that point and I would even venture to say that I was not the least bit stressed. As far as my kids parties go, I really made this one easy for myself and was feeling good about everything. I should have known I wouldn't get off that easy!

To ensure that I wasn't running around like a chicken with my head cut off the day of the party, I had baked the cake the night before. I did a double batch of rice crispy treats to use as the base of the robot and used my 8-cup glass Pyrex measuring cup to bake the head. I left it cooling on a rack on the counter and was going to wait to frost and decorate it until we arrived at the party location so there would be no travel mishaps. I woke up bright and early the next morning to find my two oldest up and watching cartoons, the typical start to my day. I walked into the kitchen to get breakfast going to find that one side of my cake was mangled and a trail of crumbs was all over the kitchen floor.

My brain literally could not process this information. I couldn't begin to fathom what had happened. Did the cats jump up on the counter and do this? Would I find them in a chocolate coma somewhere? No, as I was thinking this they were both doing their usual morning thing. So I ask the kids who did it. "Not me, not me!" I heard over and over.  Wanting to believe my sweet little angels I again examined the cake, the crumbs, even eye-balled the cats once more. I then began listening to my kids and could tell that Nathan had not done it  so I excused him from the crime scene. And I don't know how this brilliant idea came to me, probably all these years of crime television paying off, but I decided to look inside Jordan's mouth. And what do you know...chocolate cake in his molars. He instantly started crying and apologizing. Turns out he got up before anyone else, saw the cake and decided to have an early breakfast. Can I tell you something? I wasn't even mad. The whole thing was so crazy and unbelievable I couldn't even be mad about it. Of course Jordan knows better then to touch anything on the counter without permission and we wanted him to realize that he had not only put a damper on his brother's birthday but created more work for mommy so his punishment was no cake at the party. After all, he did already have his fair share of cake for the day!

Having solved the mystery (oh no, now the theme song to Busytown is stuck in my head!), it was time to solve the cake problem. I tried making a second one but it stuck to the bottom of the Pyrex and was almost worse then the original. So I took both mess-ups with me and decided we would work it out at the party site. Luckily I had my clever sister-in-law to team up with because as we began putting it together and frosting it one side completely crumbled and instead of being stumped she instantly came up with a plan. All in all, I think it turned out okay. Nathan liked it so I guess that is all that really matters. And if nothing else we have a story to tell for all of time!