A Gr8t Mother's Day

Today was an awesome day!

It started off with a cup of tea and three hand-made Mother's Day cards from my kids. I also got a macaroni necklace (thanks Jack), a big hug (thanks Charlotta), a Kindergarten-made baby-food jar full of bath salts (thanks Ashley - although I don't know if I'll get around to having a bath in this decade) and a beautiful bouquet of flowers (thanks Steve).

I then wolfed down a bowl of porridge, donned my running gear and went to join 50,000 other Vancouverites for the 10K Vancouver Sun Run. The weather was great, my friend and I got an awesome parking spot (always important!) and we had a great run. Another member of my running group had sent an email out a few days ago with a some last-minute tips and one of them -- which I took to heart -- was hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. And although I was up at least twice a night to go to the bathroom for the past few nights, it really paid off today when I felt like a million bucks after the race and for the rest of the day. I never new what a friend I had in water!

I wanted to share a cute thing that happened as we were waiting at the start line. It's wall-to-wall people, so you can over hear everyone's conversation (but that's just an excuse, because I'm really not above eavesdropping). Anyhow, there were these two 14-year-old boys in front of us, who came to downtown Vancouver on the bus/SkyTrain. It's now 9:10 am and one boy looks at his transit ticket and says to his friend, "Hey, if we finish the race by 9:45 we can use this ticket to go home again!' To put this into perspective, the Olympic-caliber winner of the Sun Run completed the run in about 30 minutes, so it was highly unlikely that these boys would finish in 35 minutes, but I just loved their optimism and resourcefulness.

The other thing I remember about the run was at about kilometre 8.5, I saw someone holding a pink sign that said "Go, Mom, Go!" and I took it personally.

In the afternoon, my Mom came over to our house and we ate Strawberry Shortcake and drank coffee on the patio while the kids played (and fought -- I didn't say it was perfect) in the backyard. Oh, and did I mention that the weather was actually warm and sunny for the first time this Spring in Vancouver?

Here's hoping I don't have too many aching muscles tomorrow. Water, do your magic...