The Great Doorbell Ditching Cupcake Caper

We have a lot of family traditions in our clan. Possibly the oldest standing tradition is Friday Night Movie Party, dating back to the prehistoric days of our marriage when Luis would go off every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night to work, leaving me at home alone with the boy. We both missed him terribly and drown our sorrows in Disney flicks with lots of hot buttered popcorn. Even when daddy stopped working nights, Friday Night Movie Party continued, and is alive and thriving today (it even has it's own theme song..."It's a Friday night movie party! We're gonna watch a movie 'cuz it's Friday night!"). Luis picks up Andrei from his after-school program, brings him home to dinner followed by chores, then popcorn and a movie. One or both of them are asleep and snoring by the end...

This week, however, we had to cancel the movie party as the little booger was grounded for hitting a kid in school (in all fairness, the other kid hit him first, but we don't condone violence and felt that he needed a negative consequence). So he was not allowed to play outside with friends, watch tv, or have his beloved movie party.

Luis was out DJ'ing and I was kind of at a loss for how to keep the boy busy for 4 hours in between drop-off and bedtime, so I decided that we were going to use the time to perform a service project. The project in question was making cupcakes and doorbell ditching them at the neighbors. I had 3 alterior motives for this: a) I wanted him to run around a lot and get all the extra energy burnt out of his system  before an early bedtime b) I wanted him to learn a little about giving service in an anonymous yet fun way and c) I wanted to get rid of the red velvet cupcakes that have been sitting in my fridge taunting me.

Mission accomplished.

Making the cupcakes... yum yum!

Delivering the cupcakes (we only got yelled at by one neighbor but they apologized after they saw the cupcakes on the ground!)

I like this photo because he's all red and sweaty from running up and down the street like 6 times and his face is covered in frosting!

Small mountains of frosting, several vials of sugar sprinkles, and 2 dozen red velvet cupcakes later my kitchen is a royal mess, the dishes still aren't washed, and the laundry isn't put away, but I think my boy learned something about the joy of serving others; I consider it time well spent. Besides, I'm pretty sure the dishes will still be there tomorrow.

His eyes are closed because he said he didn't want to be in the picture, just the crown.

We made cards to go with the cupcakes, and he told me his feelings were hurt that I didn't make one for him. Instead I made him a crown, which we proclaimed shall officially be the story time crown, so he wore it in bed after the caper had concluded during story time. He looked rather regal in his Superman jammies.