the Turkey Trot 2015

Well, I’m sitting here surrounded on every side by boxes of Christmas gear half way strewn around the house with Christmas music jingling. We decorated for FHE last night while watching Elf, and let’s just say Elf kind of took a little bit of precedence over the actual decorating part.  I cannot believe it’s December FIRST!  What??

So I better get my booty in gear so I can document last week before it all fades.  Amidst all the other flurry of activities, it was Dave’s birthday on Sunday.  I need to sit down and write a gushy post about how much I love that man because he loves when I do that 🙂

But for now let’s just talk about how awesome he was on the Turkey Trot Team on Thanksgiving.  He and these other five men pulled off the grandest fund raiser/fun-Thanksgivign-morning event and I’m so proud to know each of them.

Brainfood (the other charity benefitting from the event) brought snow machines so people were pretty excited about snow here in the desert near the finish line.

They also worked their hearts out doing the registration.  Dave’s whole family showed up to help sort and pack t-shirts a few days before at Brainfood:

Dave, in his love of Thanksgiving and being grateful had the idea for a huge “Thankful Wall.”  He delegated the idea to his brother and brother-in-law who made the coolest humongous wall for everyone to graffiti their gratitude on.

Here’s a flashback to it’s crafting:

I think it was for sure one of the highlights.  Loved that thing that started out like this:

Love that thing.

Since we were trying to help from China last year, we didn’t get the word out as much as we would have liked for Families Fighting Blindness, so this year we were able to get the name out a little more.  We had a big back drop for people to take pictures in front of.  The idea was to do polaroid pictures with red glasses for props for donations.  That part didn’t work as smoothly as we thought it would, but man alive, we sure had a bunch of family there to help get the word out.

I have much to say about Dave’s siblings last week.  I cannot even begin to describe how full my heart was with all their help.  It started at the Turkey Trot, extended into Thanksgiving dinner, and then again surrounding Max with love at the temple, and everything in between.  They filled my eyes with tears of gratitude over and over again.  Much more about them in the coming posts, but oh boy it was so fun to have them all at the race.  We all wore the same Families Fighting Blindness shirts to help promote the cause.

Look at that group:

 Then it was time to start the 5K:

There was a sea of people starting off that race.  It was awe inspiring for sure.  Here’s a picture of the beginning of the “sea:”

At first the finishers came in one by one.  Man there were some fast people there!

 …and faster:

Loved our family of cheerers on the sidelines:

So fun to have so many friends there…some from out of town, some helping to run the thing.

 The winners got Freedom skate decks (a company Dave and his brothers bought into).

Here are the first three women:

 …and first three men:

 Sponsor gratitude:

Way to go Trot Team!

We left with exploding hearts, so grateful for so much help…so many people there joining in the cause.  I loved that my mom, true to form, stuck it out until the very end gathering all the stuff everyone left behind.