Nothing brings me more joy than seeing my kids try to bring joy to others.
This is the first year Cullen has really seemed to understand Mother’s Day.
He came home from school on Friday with a plan but would only tell Corey about it. He tried all afternoon to whisper it to him and was finally able to around 8:00 at night. I heard them whispering as they went from room to room. After much hushed discussions, Cullen very coyly asked me if we had ingredients to make a cake.
“It would have to be from scratch,” I told him.
More whispering.
He came back to ask how to make a cake from scratch.
I told him he’d need a recipe.
“Just curious,” he said. “Where is your cookbook. And what page is the cake recipe on?”
“What kind of cake are you looking for?”
“Um, what is your favorite kind of cake?”
I pulled out my Better Homes & Gardens Cook Book and showed him the recipe for Angel Food Cake on page 182. He looked over it like he was genuinely asking out of pure curiosity. Nothing else was said about it for a while.
When I was putting him in bed, he asked if I would go to sleep right after he did. He said I deserved to go to bed early because I worked hard. And then he started fake snoring.
I asked Corey about it and apparently Cullen was planning to sneak out of bed after I was asleep and work with Corey to make my favorite cake as my Mother’s Day gift. I explained how difficult and time consuming an Angel Food Cake can be and Corey quickly reached out to my mom for help. In the end, Corey took Cullen and Colette to my parents’ house the next day and she walked them through making the cake. And it was delicious!
Cullen was so excited to be able to “surprise” me with my favorite cake. It was the most thoughtful gift I have ever received. He came up with the idea all on his own and did all that he could to make sure that I got it. And he tried so hard to keep it a secret. (He still doesn’t know that I figured out the surprise beforehand and I hope he never does.)
As delicious as that cake was (and they did a really good job for two guys who had never made a cake before), the real gift was watching Cullen as he pulled the whole thing together. He has such a big and loving heart and was overjoyed to be able to do something special for me.