For the longest time, whenever I would ask Brayden what he wanted for his birthday, he would tell me a ball cake.  Knowing him, that didn’t surprise me.  I’ve always been a make your own cake kind of gal, so  I thought that it would be easy enough to conjure up a “ball cake”.  Whip up a box of cake into a round cake pan.  Frost it with orange frosting and add some black basketball lines.  Or throw on some white frosting and add some red stitching for a baseball.  Easy, right?

Well, this make your own cake gal, for some reason always has to make things complicated.  As I was mixing up the chocolate batter, about to dump it into my round pans, I thought. . . well, what if this just isn’t enough cake?  I could make two ball cakes instead.  Nah.  I’ll just make a rectangular double decker cake and decorate it with many balls.  Yeah, that will be only a little bit more work.

About three hours later, I was ready to pick up my phone and make a call to order a professionally made ball cake for the boy, instead of this pile of goop that I was contending with.  I was near ready to give up a few times, but I was like the little engine that could–and with enough I think I cans chanting through my head, I think I ended up with a fairly decent cake . . . at least you could tell what the balls were supposed to be.  Plus, the look on Brayden’s face when he first saw it was totally worth the hours I spent on the cake.  Totally worth it. 

To go along with the cake, we threw Brayden an All-Star Party.  Nearly all of his favorite little friends were able to come.  James had planned some structured games in the gym, complete with little scorecards and game stations.  A few of the older kids actually did them, but mostly all the littles just ran around on a sugar high chasing after balloons and beach balls and having the time of their lives.  It was seriously chaotic.  But they were having a grand old time.