Thursday, March 27, 2008

I Love Lucy style birthday

The yin and yang were in full swing. I know I expect to have good times mixed with bad, but couldn't we forego the bad for just one day?

I'll start by telling you the bad part, as that is always the most amusing. In retrospect, the dinner reminded me of a classic I Love Lucy. You know how that show goes? The embarrassment grows and grows until there is a final, ultimate embarrassment that makes you want to crawl under a table?

After spending the day with the kids at the science center, DH took us all out to Todai's, which is an all-you-can-eat Japanese Buffet. So there we were chowing down when DS-age 4 started complaining of a stomach ache. Hmmmm. How many times had the waitress refilled his pink lemonade? I hoped that the stomach ache would go away without incident. He continued to complain, in between sprinting back and forth and kicking up a mild ruckus with his brothers, attracting embarrassing attention as DH and I tried to rein the kids in. Then just as I was bringing my dessert to the table he told me he wanted to "spit". I was hoping he was referring to a small amount of food that may have been in his mouth. As I stood there frozen with indecision, he let loose a HUMONGOUS amount of liquid projectile vomit onto the wall-to-wall restaurant carpeting. And if this wasn't bad enough, there was a lady attempting to walk by him toward the buffet whose shirt got vomit on it. And if that wasn't bad enough, this lady was PREGNANT! OMGosh! I wanted to crawl under a rock and stay there. But NO. No rock crawling for me. I had to spring into action. There was more vomit to come. When the second volley started to show itself, I grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him headlong toward the ladies room. He continued to vomit along the way, but luckily there was a tile floor in that area. I could feel hot vomit soaking into the back rear portion of the leg of my blue jeans. I got him into a stall, but only about 20% of the vomit ever made it into the toilet. I spent the next 15 minutes mopping up the bathroom fixture and floor with paper towels, apologizing profusely to the pregnant woman in the black shirt who was trying to scrub herself. We slunk out of the restaurant about 10 minutes later, jeans cold against my leg.

Earlier in the day, though, was the trip to the science center. Miss I, the housekeeper, came with to help me with the boys as it was a work day for DH. They had done a great job updating the exhibits and it was more fun than ever. It was Crowded with a capital C, though, but I didn't mind. We didn't have to wait too long to play with things and everybody had fun. I could even relax a little since I had help watching the little guys.

Here is DS-8 on a bed of nails.














Here the boys are climbing on the rock wall.




























Here is a chair on a pulley.












The day before I had baked a batch of cupcakes for myself. I know what you are thinking. Baking cupcakes for myself? For my own birthday? Well, momma ain't here to do the job, and neither is my DD. DH could have picked up an ice cream cake, but that is *his* favorite, not mine. And I HATE bakery cakes. They are dry and tasteless in my experience. AND, the thing was, that I wanted the same frosting I had had almost every year since I was a kid, which is the world's all-time best frosting. Auntie Rosalind's Frosting. I usually put this white frosting on a yellow cake, but I decided to go with chocolate cake this time since that was all there was in the house and it saved a trip to the store. Besides, it might be an interesting taste combo. It turned out really great. And the cupcakes were a good idea instead of a double-layer round cake because they boys could have multiple portions without eating up the whole thing.














For the curious, here is the recipe:

1 cup milk
4 2/3 tablespoons flour

1 cup sugar
2 sticks butter (softened)
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt

Cook the milk and flour over the stove until it thickens. Cool.

Mix the butter, sugar, vanilla and salt in a bowl. Add the cool flour mixture. Whip until creamy.

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