What the hell happened?

I am very capable of baking a decent birthday cake. Every year since my child was born (except one) I have made him some sort of decorated cake. They haven't all been fantastic, but I try my best and it's usually passable. For example...

This was for his fourth birthday. It's nothing too exciting, pretty basic technique and less than stellar results. But passable.



For his fifth birthday, he requested a big train cake for the adults...



and an individual mini-train cake for each child.



He was really into Scrabble when he turned seven. I messed around with a Scrabble game until I figured out how to lay out the words properly. I then took a picture of the game and used it as my reference for decorating the actual cake.



This bucket of popcorn was our compromise for his eighth birthday. He wanted to incorporate Transformers, a bucket of popcorn and tornadoes. We decorated with Transformers and I made this cake.



Apparently I saved the tornadoes for this year, because here's this year's attempt at basic, non-decorated cupcakes.



The best part was he got them the day after his birthday.