Tip of the Day: Don't Let the Three-Year Old Carry the Cake!

From the archives of The Thrifty Homeschooler:

Dear Thrifty Homeschoolers,

Here is a tip that I just learned a few days ago. It was my husband's birthday and we had a lovely evening out, just the two of us.

I didn't have to pay for babysitting because I traded babysitting time with my neighbor. We didn't even have to pay for the dinner as my dad gave us a gift certificate to Olive Garden. (Thanks Dad!)

So we came home from dinner with just enough room in our tummies for delicious black forest cake, only I make it with strawberries instead of cherries -- yumcious. It was a beautiful cake, with lots of whipped cream atop the plump juicy strawberries. My three-year-old daughter must have thought so too, because she decided to carry it from the kitchen to the dining room as dh and I were walking through the front door.

The next thing I knew, my 13-year-old son came into the living room white as a ghost mumbling something about an upside-down cake. My neighbor, dh, and I walked around the corner and there was the beautiful cake upside down and our darling daughter smiling from ear to ear!

I was speechless, my jaw hanging to the floor. I looked over to my darling husband, wondering how he was going to react to the loss of his cake. Instead of being angry, he was about to bust a gut! I think that it was the best laugh that he had in along time. As he said later when telling the story to a friend, "Just the laugh at seeing the cake on the rug was worth as much as if the cake had it been in perfect shape!"

As the children cleaned up the floor and dh cut the top off of the cake, in an attempt to salvage at least part of it, I went to our extra fridge in the basement to get the big bucket of Breyer's ice cream. At least we would have delicious ice cream to go with our cake bottom. But when I opened the freezer door to get it, it wasn't there! Then a dreadful thought came across my mind and I opened the door to the refigerator. Sure enough, in helping put away groceries the day before, my 7-year-old son put the ice cream in the fridge instead of the freezer. (Thrifty Tip #2 for today - make sure that you make it perfectly clear to children that when you tell them to put ice cream in the freezer, that you mean the door on top!)

So we had ice cream soup and cake bottom for dh's birthday. We're still laughing! Sometimes you just have to flow with what life sends your way. Next time you want to blow your top, laugh instead, okay?

Blessings,
Maureen :)