We had plans to go camping with 2 other families (call them the Smiths and the Adams). The Adams had to cancel but still planned to come up on Saturday night for dinner. Mrs. Smith told me on Thursday that it would be nice to make a birthday cake for Mr. Adams and that we could celebrate when they came up for dinner. (We were leaving the next day on Friday!) Well, I figured I'd do something fun for him. He's a painter, so I found a great b+w image to use as an fbct. It took a while because I've got 2 small children and I ended up staying up until midnight to finish it on Thursday because my 3 year old wouldn't go to sleep. Well, I got it all put together Friday morning, and it came out great! I called Mrs. Adams and asked her to bring it up with them on Saturday. I put it in a box and even taped it so she wouldn't look at it. I wanted to surprise them all.

When they came up, we realized that we didn't have anywhere to store the cake until dinner, and it was HOT (over 100) where we were camping. Mr. Adams came up with the idea to put the cake (in the box) under my sleeping bag because it would insulate the cake. (He still hadn't seen it and didn't know that it was a birthday cake for him.) At that point, I couldn't stand not showing Mrs. Adams the cake (we're great friends), so I called her into the tent to show her. Her 22 year old daughter said she wanted to see it too. They loved it! I was soooo excited to show Mr. Adams!

About 3 hours later, my DH called me over to the tent in a really concerned voice. He said, "I don't know what happened to your cake, but take a look." I lifted up the sleeping bag, and there was the box, squashed flat with a big grease stain showing through. I was stunned! As I lifted up the cover of the box, it took a minute to realize that the entire cake had been squashed flat and now the top was stuck to the top of the box. The bottom layer of the cake was still in the bottom of the box. My mind raced as I tried to figure out what had happened. I wondered had I done this without realizing it??? Had one of my kids??? Mrs. Adams came rushing to the tent to see what was wrong. I told her and she was horrified. We scrambled to figure out what happend. My DH and I had gone to take a shower, but Mrs. Adams assured me that my kids hadn't been in the tent. Then, her daughter got a seriously shocked and look on her face. She said, "You mean the cake was under the sleeping bag!!! I went in there and sat down to change my shoes when we went down to the creek!" At that point, I started laughing so much I had to walk away.

She was soooo upset, but I and her mother thought it was so incredibly funny. She said, "But all that work that went into it!"

"It's only cake." I told her. And, I did take a picture of it before it was smashed, of course! So, no worries. Her mother and father thought it was hysterical. They loved the new family story they'll have to tell for years to come.

We ended up putting the cake on the table (in the box) and sticking a flaming marshmallow stuck on skewer in it as a candle. Everyone took a bite, loved it, and said goodbye the the thoroughly smashed cake. I won't go into the jokes that were made about which parts of the cake to avoid due to how she sat on it, but it was funny!

See the pics for yourselves and see if you wouldn't have laughed yourselves silly too! Oh, and the insulation idea really worked. THe cake was still cool!

Sarah