James Class Birthday Celebration

Monday, March 7th. The beginning of the school week. The evening before I was up late preparing cupcakes. They were from the box, but James requested orange icing, and as the only icing I had in the house (premixed anyway) was pink, I put a bit of effort into making the pink turn orange. My friend L had lent me her mini cupcake pan, so instead of one big cupcake, the kids would each get two small ones. Much closer to their size. And another pan of regular sized ones came out of the batch too. So we're clear on the set up- up late Sunday, making mini cupcakes and creating orange frosting from pink. Which is more difficult than it sounds. Come Monday, I have James' library books together in his bookbag, along with some other papers in his school bag, and his "Star Student of the Week" decorated posterboard showing some things about our magnificent star boy. We take Ava to school, and as I had spaced the whole plates/napkins/cups scenario, we stopped at the grocery on our way home to get our things and head back for his day at school. We get everything together, and head (almost unsuccessfully as now he wants to stay home) out the door. It takes us several minutes to make the long trek from the house to the garage (what, 30 feet?) and now I am getting stressed as our dear boy is refusing to move into the garage. I place the cupcakes on top of the car, throw the bag of dinnerware and my purse into the car, and go get him and place his sweet limp body into his carseat. (Going limp is his latest form of protest.) I get him buckled in, look at my watch and climb into the car. I get him to calm down, and we agree that we are going to school now and we are going to have a great time. I get out of the garage, turn out of the alley and on to Curdes. Waiting for traffic on Anthony, I finally get an opportunity to turn right. Mere seconds after I get onto Anthony, I hear a terrible sound. I am scared to pieces. I look into my rearview mirror terrified of what I might see there. Do you know what it is? Go back into the story if you don't. I didn't put the cupcakes into the car-the tupperwear is bouncing down the road and there is orange covering the pavement. I immediately burst into tears- maybe from relief I didn't kill anyone/thing, but maybe because all my toiling is now splattered onto Anthony Blvd. I whipped around the block to collect the tupperwear, and threw it into the back of the wagon. I calmed myself down before telling James that we would be having a DIFFERENT snack at school today- did he want donuts or cupcakes? He called cupcakes, so after dropping him off I ran over to Meijer to pick some up. There was no orange frosting, but there was ONE package of a dozen smaller cupcakes (green for St. Patrick's Day so fun!) on the shelf which I grabbed quickly, paid for, and headed back to school. James was none the wiser. We had a great day at school, I got to see what a good job he does, and what a good listener he is. It was a full, busy day that included the first time in the year they got to go outside and play at their playground. He had a blast, and the cupcakes were for me a memory. There wasn't even any orange frosting on Anthony Blvd by the time we picked up Ava and got home!