Graduation! - The Cake

 The cake arrived in pieces and had to be assembled on location.

There's a wonderful woman at our church who makes cakes and she came up with the idea of a mountain of books.  Originally she was going to make a figure of Ben climbing the books, but she ran out of time.

 The cake was very wobbly because it was so tall.  The cake maker had to wedge drinking straws through it to hold it together!  She was worried it was going to topple over.

 Every time a kid bumped into the table (which happened quite often!) the whole thing would look like it was going to fall over!

Behind the cake is a digital photo frame which had pictures of Ben throughout his life playing on it.  While we did have a slideshow for the guests, I didn't want them to have to sit through a bazillion pictures while they tried not to nod off.  So we made the slideshow short, and put all the extra pictures on the frame.  That way, if people wanted to look at them they could, but they weren't forced to!

When the cake was finally cut, someone gave Ben the entire top book.  He ate part of it and then gave the rest to Kerry because it was too big for him to finish.  As I flew by at some point, Kerry said, "This cake is phenomenal!  You've got to try some!"  I took a bite of his slice.  It was chocolate and FABULOUS!  When I finally got around to heading over for my own slice, the entire cake was already gone!  And I only got one bite!