We weren’t planning to give up our family traditions just because we moved our vacation to the lake.  Multiple pots of coffee every morning.  Talks over breakfast while T-man and Bear kick around.  The kids stay up late, and the adults stay up even later.

And cake.  Lots and lots and lots of cake.

Our vacations are filled with Cake Boss cakes, and the nature of that plural noun is your first hint at what the week holds for us.

Specifically?  CAKE.  Morning, noon, and night.

Bee makes cakes that are fabulous, not only because she makes them specifically for T-man and Bear’s requests but because they are also delicious.

I’ve seen plenty of artistic and creative cakes that are beautifully decorated, but when you bit into them they tasted like cardboard.  Bee’s cakes are special.  They’re gorgeous, yes, but they taste heavenly (which makes them pretty dangerous overall).

Bear had requested a Snoopy cake for her birthday back in May.  We weren’t able to get together that month, so Bee decided to add it on to the lake celebration.  (Because, you know…two cakes just wouldn’t have been enough.)

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a decadent red velvet cake with chocolate icing & decorative details that turned their teeth blue
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My niece cut this cake into ENORMOUS pieces. Pieces that Bear had no problem devouring day after day.

T-man, naturally, requested a skateboarding cake.  Huh?  When I e-mailed Bee the info I included a few names of his favorite skaters, mostly because I had absolutely no idea where she would go with this one.  And then she brought this to the lake:

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chocolate cake and icing, surrounded with sugar wafer stands and sour patch kid spectators
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He ate EVERY SINGLE ONE of those sour patch kids, and after he went to bed Bee gleefully replaced them with new (chewy) spectators. Ahhh, sugar.

Bee’s daughters are the only ones who can’t request cakes; theirs are always a surprise on party day, and I’ve seen some pretty incredible designs over the years.  Not only can Bee bake, but she’s learned to make delicious vegan cakes for my younger niece.  She’s a pretty talented lady.

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The shock and awe on their faces when they first see the cake is always a riot.

Bear had to tell me who this was, but even without the character’s name I could tell it was awesome.

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Apparently this is Steven from Steven Universe.

For those of you who, like me, have not yet been exposed to this show:

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Looks like a pretty good resemblance to me!

Add in the twelve enormous cupcakes T-man and Bear made for Bee and you can imagine what the kitchen looked like.  Cake here, cake there, lots of cake everywhere.

My kids spent every single day at the lake on a sugar binge.  Cake after lunch, cake after dinner…hell, sometimes they had cake after breakfast, too.  We definitely suspended all reasonable nutritional concepts while on vacation, but we achieved our end goal – nothing was thrown out and nothing went home (except the cupcake the kids had “specially” decorated for Bee’s birthday).

Another successful cluster of birthday celebrations.

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