Please no rain, please no rain, please no rain

Sunday is my third 10K race. I've been wanting to do this particular one pretty much since I crossed the finish line of my first 10K race in October 2009. (Damn crutches having got in my way last spring).

I'm excited. I'm ready. I can do it. I even think I can do it faster than I did the Zoo Run in October 2010. But please, please, please weather Gods, don't let it rain. Because right now, Sunday is calling for a 70% chance of showers all day.

It's not that I can't run in the rain. I've done it. It's not that bad -- but it's not that pleasant either. Especially when a light rain turns into short downpour. Then it's just downright unpleasant. And since Ryan and the kids are getting out of bed to watch me (it's a 8 a.m. start), they might grumble if they have to get out of bed just to stand in the rain for an hour and a half.

I don't care what the rest of the day does -- but maybe, just maybe, between 7:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. Sunday morning, you could all ask the rain to stay away. Or at least stay away from Yonge Street.

I'm going to Disney World!

I may be in my thirties, but I'm not embarrased to admit that I fall into that category of honestly believing that Disney world is the happiest place on earth.

Of course, I know there's many other places to visit in this world, and I've been fortunate enough to visit some of them over the years...but Disney World is well, Disney world!

We booked the trip in early March - a really good deal that my dad found in the paper (and we're going with my parents) - but until yesterday, I've had to be quietly excited. And have had to quietly go about planning and reading up. Because the kids didn't know.

Yesterday we told the kids. They were quite muted in their excitement at first. Not because they don't know what Disney World is - because ironically, right after we booked the trip, Playhouse Disney (the TV channel they watch all the time) started showing commercials for Disney World and the kids' mouths would drop open and they'd start asking if we could go. I think they we're a little muted because they were in shock.

After about 5 minutes of Austin asking a million and one questions (when are we going? how long are we staying for? Where are we staying? How are we getting there?), he got up and danced out of the room while singing "We're going to Disney World! We're going to Disney World!"

The excitement really sunk in for both of them this morning, as they asked me another million and one questions over breakfast about what there is to do there. And every now and then throughout the day, one of them would break into song about how "we're going to Disney World!".

I'm excited. I'm really, really excited. It's been 14 years since I was there -- more than 20 years since Ryan was last there.

And even though my kids are the ones who are the kids, somehow, just the thought of going makes me feel like a kid again.

A Mickey Mouse birthday

This past weekend was Alex's birthday, and once again I created a cake for her.

Or actually, cupcakes.

Deciding what to do this year was difficult. The idea for Mickey cupcakes was actually tossed around a few months ago and then forgotten about. So as her birthday was approaching, I fretted about what to do. Having been sick for much of the week and a half before her party, the idea of doing a big cake was daunting. Yet, the only thing I could think of was to create a Belle cake (from Beauty and the Beast) because she recently developed an obsession with her.

So two days before her birthday, at 7:30 p.m., I headed over toBulk arn to see if I could get a cake pan and Barbie torso to make a Belle cake. And while I'm standing there in the store, I realize that I could do Mickey Mouse cupcakes instead. Afterall, she may be obssessed with Belle right now, but she LOVES Mickey. No characters in the world are better than Mickey and Minnie.

So now I'm standing in the store with an idea, and no idea how to go about making them. So I called Ryan and he Googled it. And together we came up with a great idea:

This website was what came up when Ryan Googled 'Mickey cupcakes' and they were really easy to make. All I had to do was ice the cupcake, dip it in Oreo cookie crumbs until all of the icing was covered and then using toothpicks, I stuck on two Oreo cookies for ears. Finally, to top it off, I added two little white dots (I used labelling stickers, but you could use chads from a hole punch too) to the front of the cupcake liner.

Ta da. Mickey Mouse cupcakes.

But why, do you ask, does that picture have one Mickey and one that looks like it could be Minnie without a bow? Because, at first, I made chocolate cupcakes in plain white liners. You see, Alex wanted chocolate cake, of course. I figured, after they were baked, I could slip the red liner on top to make the Mickey cupcakes.

It was a great plan, except for one small problem. The red liners were bigger than the white ones I had used to make the cupcakes. Oops.

So I had to make another batch of cupcakes -- this time using white cake in the red liners. But since Alex really wanted chocolate cake, I slipped a polka dot liner (which thankfully fit) on half a dozen of the chocolate ones to create Minnie cupcakes.

Which meant, on birthday party day, Alex just wanted one of each. And what the birthday girl wants, the birthday girl gets.

It's just like Christmas all over again...

...but not in the fun way where you get lots of presents and eat lots of yummy food. Instead, more like the way we spent this past Christmas.

A week and a half ago, Austin came down with a flu - fever of 102F or so for 3 days. He stayed home from school and was all around miserable. When the fever cleared, he was left with a knock-you-on-your-ass kind of cold.

By last Friday night Alex was running a fever. By Saturday morning, I was. For Alex, the fever lasted on and off for 5 days. She never really got knocked out with it - well until she got the knock-you-on-your-ass cold.

Me, I couldn't get out of bed for the first day of the flu and was barely functional for the next two days of the fever. And on the fourth day, I got 'the cold' - which, lucky for me, also turned into a chest infection.

And just when we thought we were in the clear, Ryan's gone down. He barely made it out of bed today. Friday is not looking promising.

Something tells me this family needs a lot of vitamin C in a hurry. Either that, or some nice summer-like weather.