Eggtastrophe

What do the police, good food, eggs, the flu, and a cake all over the back seat of my car have to do with one another; MY FAKE EASTER!!

Alrighty let me tell you all my disastrous weekend. Have you ever heard the adage "stop while you are ahead," well I did not listen to it.

Hannah got the flu the prior Sunday and was starting to get better, I thought I was going to be in the clear for the weekend but Audrey woke up Thursday night with a fever. I woke up Friday morning and could feel that I was starting to get sick. So unhappy...but I am not going to let this stop me. I started preparing the food for Sunday and make the cupcakes for the baby shower on Saturday. Everything is going well, considering that Audrey is dying on the couch and Hannah has no one to play with so to say the least cooking was not my main focus. I make the batter for the cupcakes and get them in the oven, the timer goes off and they looked like this;

Well you could only imagine my surprise and I could not figure out what had happened, so the first thought that came to me was to call Andrea, she will know what to do. She was very helpful and we both thought maybe I had put to much batter into the tins, and to try again. WHAM it happened again with the second batch, so by this time unkind words are coming out of my mouth it is 10:00 at night and I need to have these cupcakes for the morning, ready to go. Well when I get stressed I start cleaning, I was cleaning my counter and was about to throw away my egg carton when I realized the eggs that were suppose to go into the cupcakes were still in the carton. Well Duh!!! This recipe called for 8 beaten egg whites...how does one exactly skip over that step. I called Andrea back and told her that I had forgotten the eggs, she got a good laugh:) In my defense, I was making scalloped potatoes, blueberry salad and a chocolate cake all at the same time; while taking care of my sick daughter who did not go to bed on time because she was miserable. I should of taken the fallen cupcakes as a sign of things to come and canceled the weekend while I was ahead.

Those are edible flowers

My friend Janis (who is having the baby) asked me to make my chocolate cake for her baby shower, this is what Wes and I came up with.

Wes's brother and sister's family get to the house at 11:00 the next morning and everything is going pretty smooth. We leave the 6 kids with Wes and Harlan (Wes's brother) and head off to the baby shower. I have the cake in a cake holder and everything is going beautiful until I put the cake in the car and the cake FALLS out of the holder onto the cupcake holder...THANK GOODNESS!! This does not mean that there was not damage to the cake or that chocolate did not get all over the backseat of the car. Steam was coming out of my ears, but I stayed calm and collective. My sister in laws just stood there like deer in headlights and gave me words of encouragement but that did not make the situation any better, and to top it all off I had just paid to have the interior of the car cleaned. I should of know better and just kept the car dirty. So I gingerly picked up the cake and put it back in the holder and ran into the house to get supplies so I could do surgery when we got to the baby shower. No one even knew what had happened.

My nephew Ben is 5, he is the oldest child of Harlan & Lauren, I have talked about him before. If Ben is around family functions get ruined and swimming with sharks seems more appealing. Ben is the man of the house...his parents do what he wants. He has no rules, boundaries or manners. He talks like he is two and acts like it, actually I know two year olds who act more mature.

All the kids had kept Wes and Harlan quite busy while we were gone for 5 hours, the kids were quite hyper. Harlan and Lauren's way of taking care of Ben is to give him a Nintendo DSL and let him be. Ben had already thrown several small temper tantrums and they are not normal tantrums either, think of extreme and quadruple that. Bedtime was at 8:00, Ben and Emma are sleeping in the girls room and it is time to take away the Nintendo DSL. There are a few things that you need to know for you to clearly understand this situation.

-We live in a Duplex

-Children live next door, it is their bedtime too. Steven and Alex.

-We are good friends with our neighbors

-Audrey has a fever.

So Lauren asks Ben for the Nintendo DSL and tells him that it is bedtime, he started screaming so loud and stomping his feet as hard as he could. Picking up the girls toys and throwing them against the wall where the duplex is joined and is Steven's bedroom. "I WANT MY GAME" over and over and over again, and this situation is completely out of control. I go next door to apologize to our neighbors and they told me that they had called the police, not on us but on Harlan & Lauren. Literally it felt and sounded like an earthquake was hitting their house, I could not blame them at all...I was soooo embarrassed. I kept apologizing over and over and told them that I was going to try to do something. When I came back into the house, Harlan and Lauren had started fighting because Harlan thought Lauren was disciplining Ben too much (which meant she was doing nothing), Wes finally had enough and told them to sit down and that we were going to take care of the situation.

You might be asking why it took us 15 minutes to take over but Wes's family is dysfunctional in every way and it can be very detrimental to family relationships to butt in. Remember we were disowned by Wes's sister for 7 yrs (we were dead to her) for speaking are minds...so we walk on eggshells.

I went upstairs and had Ben calmed down and asleep in 5 minutes. He just needed some discipline. NO DUH!!! I called Danielle (our neighbor) and told her I had Ben asleep and they called the cops and told them we had the situation under control. All Lauren could say was my poor baby and rock back and forth and say she was not strong enough to deal with the problem. The hardest thing Lauren has been through is that she did not get to go to Europe when she graduated high school...you can see why I would have no sympathy. Lauren has NEVER been anywhere with her kids by herself except at home, either her Mom or Harlan have been with her. That includes the grocery store, post office, ANYWHERE!!! No wonder there are so many problems. Lauren has lived in the same small town all of her life (except when she went to college) and she only lives 5 minutes from her Mom. Lauren has not left the nest and she is 34, this is translating into how she parents.

We sat down for 3.5 hours and talked to them about their parenting and how they are doing Ben an injustice by giving him what ever he wants when ever he wants. We told them that they needed to stop making excuses for Ben's behavior such as; he is a boy, their most popular excuse and then they blame each other. They think our girls are so well behaved because they are girls, we told them they are so well behaved because they have rules, boundaries and manners. We talked about them taking away his Nintendo DSL as punishment and many other things THREE AND A HALF HOURS... They agreed that they were going to take away the Nintendo. We got to bed at 1:30.

It is 6:00 a.m.

All of a sudden I hear screaming the stomping again, Ben was yelling for his game. He woke up the whole house and that includes our neighbors. We all went downstairs and Ben is whining for his game and Wes had had enough and started yelling at Ben (parentingly) and told him to knock it off, Ben started crying and Lauren just started rocking him and telling him it was alright and THEY GAVE HIM BACK HIS GAME!!! This disgusted us. I should of kicked them out of the house, it would of saved the rest of the day.

I gave up...did not talk to Harlan or Lauren and just started getting everything ready for Fake Easter.

I don't know if anyone had a good time, Ben fought will the the other cousins and threw more tantrums.

I do know that people loved the food and I did get to hold my baby nephew a lot!! I loved that. While everyone was eating I held the baby and watched everyone eat, that made me happy. Wes and I did learn a very important lesson this weekend, we have to support the girls but we also have to teach them how to depend on themselves and teach them to solve problems on they're own. I refuse to have my daughters turn to mush because they are so dependant on others. We also decided that Harlan's family will not be invited back to our house until they can take control of Ben. We have done dozens of things with them since we moved to New York but this was the straw that broke the camels back. At least it was only Fake Easter that was ruined and we have Real Easter to look forward too.