going to the circus

bumble has started boy scouts. they do a lot of cool activities together as a pack, and it seems that the theme of all the activities so far is "under the big top." when they all marched in the halloween parade, they had to come up with costumes that matched the theme. so what wonderful thing does my bumble come up with, was it to be the ring master or the strong man or a clown? no, not my bumble, he wants to be a dancing bear. so being the loving mother that i am, i had to come up with a dancing bear costume in addition to throwing together his knight costume that he wore for trick or treating. trust me, he looked awesome, and he danced his butt off while parading for 12 blocks.

that was in october. this month all the scouts were supposed to bake a cake that would be auctioned off to help raise money for the troop. and of course the whole circus theme still applied. now how this was really supposed to work was the scout parent, the one that went to all the meetings with the scout and helped him do all his projects for badges and the like, they were the one that was supposed to help make this cake. so technically that was supposed to be my hubby. he helps bumble with scouts, it's like their manly bonding monday night thing. well i was really hoping to be able to sit back and watch my two big men make this cake and make it look like a circus, and maybe take a few pictures because i knew it would be amusing to say the least.

again, being the lovely and wonderful mommy that i am, i said i would help too. or rather i saw the look of panic in my husband's eyes and took pity on him and kind of took over the whole project. i really do believe that bumble has helped me bake more cakes in his seven years than my hubby ever made in his entire life. really i think that would have been part of the fun, but i guess my definition of fun varies from my hubby's.

so anyway, bumble and i made the cake yesterday. and i'll admit i took the lazy way out and used a train car shaped cake pan, so we had all these little train cars that we decorated and stuck on a larger cake that we just iced green. we also used funfetti cake mix so i didn't really feel the need to ice the actual cars, especially since the pan has some nice detail to it which would have been hidden by the icing. so i piped blue icing on the cars in dots and lines and had bumble and lumpy stick m&m's all over them. we made train tracks on the base cake with gummy worms and put the cars on top. i even made an animal cage car with a gram cracker roof and drinking straws for supports, with animal crackers stuck inside.

i'll admit that i thought the cake looked pretty awesome when it was all said and done, but i was a bit worried for bumble. see, they were handing out trophies for the best cakes in different categories, and he's only a little tiger cub, which is the youngest group of kids. there are some kids in the pack that are five years older than him, and i didn't know if they could be more creative than a circus train cake, but it was possible. well, all my fears were for nothing, because not many kids showed, and so almost every kid there ended up getting a trophy. though the bumble did win the "most detailed" cake, and looking at all the rest of them, that's definitely the one he deserved.

the only down side is now we have one more baked good in the house to try and eat up before we go to j-town for thanksgiving for almost a whole week. it'll be a struggle, but i know i'll do my best.