The mayor turns 39 today and fun me thinks that we should be dancing in the streets or maybe have a small parade.
But alas, no. Tired, old, and boring me thinks instead of a parade, he will get handmade cards, some haphazardly wrapped gifts in boxes from the recycling bin, and an ugly cake.
This is all I got. It is ALL I can muster right now. It’s a box white cake mix with canned icing. I don’t even really care what Shawn thinks. He’d eat week-old cake with crusty edges and call it good, just happy to keep the chef in his good graces. So I ain’t the least bit worried about what he thinks.
But I’d really like to impress my mother in law, Becky. She is the queen of confectionary perfection. The wedding cake expert. The apple pie connoisseur. I care what she thinks. I always want her to think I am doing a good job. I don’t want her to think that Shawn and the kids starve, that I can’t keep a good home, or that I am a complete dingbat.
Turns out that dingbat thing is hard to hide, so maybe I’d settle for two of the three.
When it comes to baking, I care what my mother in law thinks because she has set the bar high. So high, she won’t give her apple pie recipe away (and rightly so). It’s the recipe she used to win the apple pie contest at the local festival for so many years that eventually they stopped letting her enter.
Here is my awful secret. I HAVE THE STINKIN’ RECIPE. ME. I have it. And I use it. Guess how many times I have won in the last 12 years of entering that dang apple pie contest with the best apple pie recipe in the world?
ONE TIME.
I am beginning to think that Becky has a bag of magic under her sink and when she bakes she adds as little and everything turns out amazeballs.
I need to add that my mother in law, Becky, is nothing but supportive. Tonight she watched me pull this 5th-grade level cake out and told me it was a great cake and that it was very moist. Then when I asked her point-blank if she could tell the frosting wasn’t homemade she gracefully told me, “No.”
I couldn’t even tell if she was lying.
When you get married, you don’t marry a person, you marry a family and I got a good one.
Shawn is a ringer. He does not quit, on anything, ever. He gives 110% at being a husband, Dad, employee, and mayor. He’s the ultimate guy with a work ethic out of this world and a personality to match. I could not have gotten luckier when God picked my mate. My lot in life is better than I deserve. Tonight I am celebrating him, his 39 years on earth, and the wonderful woman that raised him.
Cheers,
Stef