Cakes, Kids and too Much Rain

This is the castle cake Jordan (7) and I made for Lara's 4th birthday party. It's quite the masterpiece. It turned out much better than the fire engine cake I made for Noah's 2nd birthday--which looked as if it had gotten into a crash.
I am generally quite happy with my cake making skills, however. For example, I am especially proud of:
The mermaid cake--for Jordan's 5th. That was a real beauty.
Noah's 3rd bday cake was a train. I liked this one too, but it not looking like it's ready to take off at any great speed. Moving vehicles are hard to achieve in cake making land.

Another one I really like was simple, but good. The cat cake is easy to achieve, and very fun. This was for Jordan's second.I especially like the cupcakes I made to go with it. Actually, I think the coolest cupcake, the open-mouthed scary kitty, was made by my older sister Laura, who is only slightly better than me in cakemakingville.
One of my biggest failures was for Lara's second birthdy. It was supposed to be a dog. Not good to start with, it was made worse by the fact that my REAL dog bit off its right paw. I had no more white frosting to make another paw, so I had to make it with red frosting. It is remembered as the Dog Cake with the Bloody Paw.

One of my all time favorites I can't take credit for. The pigeon cake, straight from Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems, was made by Alina for her daughter, Maria. It was a keeper, except that we ate it, of course.

At any rate, the fiesta for Lara's 4th was a success. Here she is with her cake.

And here are all three of my beauties post-party after destroying the remaining water balloons created for Jordan's roll the water balloon down the slide game. (The game was a hit, btw. Leave it to the second grader to come up with the most entertaining games...):
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Enough of kids and cakes.

Onto training.
Wow. This weekend was freaking tough.
On Friday morning I swam more than 2 miles in the open water with Melissa. We didn't stop, like AT ALL. It was impressive. It took forever. We were proud.
(and tired.)
In the afternoon I had a short, easy run.
BUT THEN on Saturday I went for a three hour run. I was supposed to go for three hours or 20 miles, whichever came first, but I had my heart set on 3 hours. (sorry, Jen.) So I ended up going 22 and a tad. The last 10K I did at a faster clip, and I was TOAST when I was done.
But then I loafed around all afternoon with the kids, and I felt better.
I got up at 5 am this morning to go on my ride. It was wet. I need windshield wipers for my biking glasses. Will it ever stop raining around here? God! Anyway, I went for a little over 80 miles in the spitting rain. UGH! But it was fine. I tried to stay on top of my nutrition, but I still didn't take in enough fluid because it was so cool and I ended up hundreds of calories short. grrrr.

Yesterday Andy did a 160 mile ride called the Brewery to Brewery Ride or B2B, as it's known around here, which goes from MA to VT. He had fun, and now I want to do it, of course! Someday, someday....

Happy Father's Day to all of you dads out there.
And happy being-a-mom day too because moms rock the house. and make cool cakes. and stuff like that.