I Smell Birthday Cake

I Smell Birthday Cake

Before I start with today's tale, I just wanted to bring  to the attention of any reader, who may stumble across my little corner of the internets, that I am providing my own artwork to illustrate my anecdotes.  As can plainly be seen, not only am I not remotely an artist, but I am using a kiddie draw and color app on my nook tablet and a stylus, which is a pen with a cushy fingertip like rubbery doohickey on the end, to create my masterpieces.  I figure they will either get much better, or much worse as I go along.  Heaven help us all. And now, back to the regularly scheduled tale.

It was Christmas Eve, 1999.  My nephew Zack was 5 months old and my niece Carly was a month away from turning 3.  With a huge extended family and many many people to see and commitments to keep, ours was always a very chaotic celebratory schedule.  This particular year, my brother and sister-in-law's first in that home, was actually fairly tame.  We'd exchanged gifts and baby Zack had been put to bed and the rest of us were getting ready to head home.  Amy (sis-in-law) sent Miss Carly upstairs to put on her jammies.  While she was upstairs, Amy blew out one of those jumbo Yankee Candles  that she had burning on the island in the kitchen.  

I guess I should point out that the house had a very open floor plan, the first floor was a great room with vaulted ceiling on one side (living room, dining room, family room) and kitchen and hall to foyer on the other. The only thing breaking up line of sight was the staircase. It was a half flight of stairs with a large landing and then a turn with a second half flight of stairs to the second floor.  At the top of the stairs all of the bedroom doors were visible from the first floor.  Carly came out of her room in her little yellow blanket sleeper, ready to come down and say good night, when she stopped at the top of the stairs, sniffing at the air.  

"I smell birthday cake!" she announced loudly in her tiny baby girl voice.   

As we put on our coats and headed to pack up our cars with our gifts before heading home, there was little Carly, yelling for us to come back.  "But we didn't have cake yet."  It's true, the smell of a blown out candle should signal the cutting of a birthday cake, at least in the mind of an almost 3 year old.   How aptly that she had that thought just then.  Technically, we were there to celebrate a birthday.  We just don't usually serve a traditional birthday cake for Jesus.