the Turkey Trot 2016

For the first day of #LIGHTtheWORLD let’s talk about the Turkey Trot.  Because the people who helped with this thing are lighting the world, I’ll tell you that!

The Turkey Trot went off with flying colors on Thanksgiving morning.

Each year I sit in awe at that thing.

It started with our friend’s grand idea that he roped Dave into helping with years ago.  He had the idea to start our own community service Turkey Trot where 100% of any proceeds go straight to help local charities.  And one of the two charities is Families Fighting Blindness which Dave and I started to help BBS kids.

So it goes without saying that we have some major vested interest in this Turkey Trot dealio.  And we LOVE what it has become.

It started in a little retention basin at the end of our neighborhood by word of mouth, and we had a couple hundred people show up.

Since then, each year it gets a little bigger and more wonderful.  Over the years it has come to be this team of men who work their tails off to pull it off:

The amount of man-power they have going is pretty phenomenal, I have to say.

So many great ideas come from that group of men.

And they sure have fun doing it (at least most of the time…I think maybe the “fun” wore off a tad after hours of trash duty following all the hoopla…).  

The wives of those men help too, at packet/bib pick-up the day/night before and all the prep work…and the other charity that all the money goes to.  Here we are folding some of thousands of the t-shirts the day before the race:

We did a batch at Brainfood, and also did one as a giant FHE with all Dave’s family on Monday, here are some of them after we did a whole slew of boxes:

Have I mentioned how much I love them?

Dave was the “chairman” this year which meant many of the planning meetings were held at our house…and also that he was stressed a lot 🙂  But it was so fun listening in to the planning a little.  Man those are some great men!

And I know all of them feel that the stress is worth it a hundred times over in the end with those thousands of happy people gathered to give and love and be thankful and RUN.

Over the years it’s become such a fun family event.  

Not only do the registrants get t-shirts and all kinds of awesome things from the sponsors (no one is allowed to charge for anything in the Turkey Trot area so vendors come just give things away for free for advertising purposes), but they get to be together as families, and the atmosphere is pretty awesome:

 (My friend Jodee took a bunch of these photos…she rocks.)

The fun-run comes first.

 (my friend got right in there with the runners and I love these pics she got)

For the first time ever I ran the Fun Run with Lucy this year (usually I’m manning the Families Fighting Blindness stuff, but there were plenty of people there this year).

One of my very favorite things about the Turkey Trot was this idea Dave came up with last year:

Our brother-in-laws built that thing for us and my niece wrote the “I am Thankful for…” thing and people write all over it.  They painted it white again and put it up again this year.

It started out like this:

…and evolved throughout the morning.

I adore that thing and the feeling around it as everyone reflects on their gratitude.

It ended like this this year:

This family I adore all gathered from their corners of the area…and different states, and came together to help.  They put everything else aside and just gave their hearts in prep work and also on the big morning.

As I sat there looking at everyone in their glasses shirts I had this most profound gratitude come over me.

There are not words to express how I feel about that.

All these kids and families just giving their hearts to help us fight blindness.

…for Lucy as well as for kids all over the world who suffer from darkness.

It means the world to us.