Red Velvet Cake

For Jer's birthday, I decided I was going to make him a Red Velvet cake- his favorite. My friend Jolyn makes awesome cakes and she let me have a bite of one of hers. So I asked her to email me the recipe. The next day, Jer's birthday, I go to the grocery store, with the list of ingredients. Let me set the stage- Frazzled Lady Cindy with Crying Baby Bella running up and down aisles trying to find buttermilk. After 10 minutes, I break down and almost start to lose it. So I think, forget this, thank goodness for Duncan Hines, and buy a premixed Red Velvet cake. (Besides won't it be fun to bake a cake with the girls?) I pick up Victoria after her school and head home. We wrap Jer's present- 20 comic books that he wanted in her blanket and tie it with ribbon and place it neatly on the kitchen tablet. Then set about to make the cake. Both girls drag their little chairs over to the mixing bowl to see what I'm doing and stand right beside me. I'm explaining to them about adding the ingredients and their helping me dump the mix and pour the oil. I tell them never to play with the electric beaters. Then I show them how I turn it on and mix the cake. At this point, it's like mixing cement. I think- it's going to break the beaters- what's up with this Red Velvet cake mix? So I turn it off and reread the ingredients... Oh, I forgot to add water. No problem, I'll just add some now. And just turn back on the mixer... and... Holy !#$@! Red Velvet Cake spewed out of the bowl and hit everything at bowl level- all three of us, our shirts, our hair, the counter, the walls, the fridge... luckily it did not reach the ceiling (that'll be in a couple of years when Victoria uses the blender.) Did you know that Red Velvet cake has red food coloring in it, which is ever so fun to get out of clothes and off of the counter/walls. I finish mixing what was left of the mix, disconnect the beaters from the mixer, and then go to get a paper towel. As luck would have it- we're all out. So I go into the pantry to get some more, when I come out, Victoria has helped herself to a beater and is licking it. Red Velvet is everywhere, not like it was before. At this point I start laughing hysterically and run and grab the camera. I also give Bella a beater too who has been screaming words that what I can assume to mean- this is so unfair- Victoria gets one- I want a beater too. And click, click, click away. The cake actually turned out pretty good- it's amazing what frosting can cover up. Victoria wanted to decorate Daddy's cake with plastic dinosaurs- she saw it at her friends birthday.