Those Were REALLY Good Cupcakes (Peyton's Birthday Story, Part 1)

Time marches on no matter how hard I try to slow it down, and as of this past Friday I have only one more year until THREE of my children are into double digits. How is that even possible? I just brought all of my babies home last week!!

Nevertheless, if you've been following the ticker that WAS on my blog until this past Friday, then you know that Peyton celebrated her 9th birthday. And while her party is not until this coming weekend, we took into consideration the fact that her birthday is usually overlooked almost entirely, and we decided to make Friday ALL about her for a change.

Randy, Sawyer and I were already planning to eat lunch with her at school, but of course we couldn't keep our little celebration private; every school birthday MUST have cupcakes! So I dutifully ran by the grocery store on Thursday afternoon and picked out 18 really good-looking cupcakes to take to school the next day. What, you thought I'd make them from scratch? You don't know me very well, do you?

The lady who checked out my groceries is becoming familiar with me and she always gives me very good service, and this day was no exception. To the bagger she said, "Now be very careful of those cupcakes. Make sure you keep them completely flat the whole time. They need to be flat-flat. Don't tip them up on their sides. Make sure they're completely . . . Auuugghh! Nope, get rid of 'em. Go get her some more cupcakes--these are ruined." She was SERIOUS about giving me pristine cupcakes! As the bagger walked to the bakery to get me TWO new containers of cupcakes to replace the ones she'd ruined by tipping them on their sides, the checker said to me, "They all think I'm mean, and then they wonder why!" It was a lot of drama over 18 little cake balls covered in an obscene amount of icing.

The bagger brought me two new containers of cupcakes and the checker deftly took them from her and then barked at her and at one other bagger who had entered the fray, "Don't TOUCH the cupcakes. They're mine." Wow. Needless to say, she handed me my bag with the three boxes packed tightly together, and I didn't let go of that bag until I'd pulled in my driveway.

You know what happened next, don't you? I mean, if you've been reading my blog for any length of time you cannot be surprised by the next turn of events. On Friday Sawyer and I prepared to leave the house and go meet Randy, where we would pick up some lunch and take it to the school where the birthday celebration would commence. I'd already sent Sawyer to the van to get himself strapped in, and without thinking I just stacked those cupcake containers one on top of another and hoisted them into my arms. So far, so good. It was the balloons that got me. I had also purchased some Mylar balloons for the occasion and when I went to snatch them in my fingers the cupcakes went sliding onto the table. Oops.

They actually weren't too badly mangled, so I set them to rights and got in the van, securing the balloons so they wouldn't be waving around in my face and placing the cupcakes between the two seats. But I hadn't even gotten to the bottom of the hill when again, without thinking (that seems to be a disturbing trend), I reached down to get something out of my purse and sent all three cupcake containers FLYING into the leg space on the passenger side of the van. OH. MY. WORD.

I called Randy in a panic and told him not to wait for us, but to go ahead and pick up some lunch while I went and bought TWENTY-FOUR more cupcakes--all they had in the store, and more expensive ones to boot. I also prayed that my checkout lady would have the day off because I was seriously worried about what she might think of me if she realized I had been cavalier with my cupcakes. She was scary!