Baking A Cake

Hannah wants a bakery made birthday cake for her party on Friday. Could my unfortunate problems with Katherine's cake last month have colored her opinion of my abilities? Here's my problem with her request. She is particular and that is why I have always baked her cakes. They can only be Duncan Hines cake mix. I've tried homemade and Betty Crocker and she says the texture is weird. She has lots of texture issues...LOTS. She doesn't like colored icing. It tastes funny. She likes butter cream icing and uncolored. God help our bakery. She has told me if I get it from there then she will eat it. So, here is the request she wants made for her cake - Two Tiered, White Cake and Icing and Spider Man on top. Yeah, that's my dear seventeen year old girl. She loves super heroes. Iron Man and Spider Man are her favorites. Let's hope they have a plastic something they can place on top and pray for the best. I know what you are thinking...she'll starve when she leaves home but I what I fear most is that she will never leave home!

Our Seventeen Year Old Girl

Hannah turned 17 this morning around 2:50 am. I used to wake here up at that precise time every year but she informed me she hated that about 3 years ago. I had figured I should get at least 27 years to do it since that's the number of hours she put me through Hell with labor! Sadly, she doesn't agree with me. I'm waiting until she has her first and we'll see how she feels about the tradition then.

Teaching Tolerance

I do gripe about the teenagers and their attitudes but they aren't all "bad". I've managed to raise girls that speak up for themselves and not cower in corners and I'm proud of it. While Hannah made the biggest change in speaking up for herself, it is Kate that has become a self-appointed defender of the weak or the Devil's Advocate when she feels the need. I'm big on teaching tolerance and I believe I was a bit stronger in teaching it because my Ex's family are some of the most prejudice people I know. Luckily, my Ex is not but the girls do spend every other weekend around his family and the ex will not say anything to his family about their comments. My girls are big enough now to deal on their own and they do most of the time trying to not be disrespectful.

I bring this up because Kate has been in two arguments in the last week dealing with religion. I haven't been called into the school yet but I foresee at least one trip this year for a conference for her outspoken ways. I don't mind to be honest but I think teachers do not expect girls to be so vocal. They expect it from boys but not girls. Kate took on a boy's comments about several different religions not going to Heaven because they weren't members of his church. His quoting scripture to back the comments up was what put Kate over the edge. She said she "tore" into him and told him he was misinterpreting the Bible to make his views right and that was wrong. She admitted it got ugly and their history teacher just let the debate go on for a good portion of class. Kate and the boy have known each other since they were very small and now they aren't speaking. Kate feels bad but she said she couldn't handle him saying who could and couldn't go to heaven and she knew he made several people in the class feel bad. Now he's going around calling her bad names and saying she isn't a Christian. She's hurt over that comment. We had a bad experience at our old church and she's never gotten over it completely. She's told me if this is how Christians are going act she is never going back to church. It's tearing me up to hear this but I know not all is lost. Yesterday, Kate was asked to give a description of Jesus in History class and she said "He's my Lord and Savior, the Son of God and He died for all of us so we can go to Heaven". This wasn't the answer the teacher wanted and she didn't get the answer correct. She didn't care and she says she'll be putting on the exam today too. She's given me some hard times lately but I'm proud of my girl. I really don't believe she'll be throwing me into a nursing home as soon as I hit 60 now...even though she says she's going to.