Birthday Boy

17. Well, 17 plus 3 days -- it's hard to find a day when everyone can come for supper. We had such a nice time together, though.

Will (and the rest of us) loves the movie, "Up"; he had watched it on the bus on the way to Kansas City for NCYC in November. He told Clay and me that we would love it, and he was so right. We gave him a Dug dog (just like Sarah L's!) for Valentine's Day, and I wanted to surprise him with a special cake -- it's been so long since I decorated and nice cake for him -- I think the last one might have been a motocross cake when he was 11 or so. Sad.

Yeah, this cake was not at all as I had pictured in my head. Double sad. I had thought and thought and thought about this for a couple of weeks, and knew just what I wanted to do. First, I had a disaster with the baking -- the first two cakes I baked were flat and icky. So, Clay baked two more for me. They were perfect. I sliced each layer in half and filled them with Nutella buttercream. Oh. my. gosh. Is that ever good. I just used the ATK recipe (beat 2 1/2 sticks of softened butter together with 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar for 4 minutes or so, add 2 T. cream, 1 t. vanilla and a pinch of salt and beat a little more) and added a 1/2 jar of Nutella.

Then I started carving and decorating, and I don't really know where I went wrong, but it went all wonky very quickly, and there was no saving it as the clock was ticking down toward party time. Even sweet, kind, loving Clay, who would never ever hurt my feelings, said it "Wasn't my best effort."

Crap.

But Will was happy, and I guess really, that's all that matters.

Peace.