Every year the Turkey Trot seems to expand and morph into something bigger. 

And I love watching the growth as my heart swells with ever more gratitude for all the people who put so much work and love into that thing.

I think there were 3,700 runners this year…we’re growing out of this venue but it sure is fun to be packed in there with so much love swirling around on Thanksgiving morning!

But before we dive into that, let’s talk about the PRE-TURKEY TROT stuff for a minute.

These are the notes Lucy handed over to Dave and I a couple days before the big day. 

HA!  I laughed out loud at the fact that she thinks I’d “rather be talking with other moms” than running with her..I better work on that one.

We had red shirts with white glasses this year and we talked about how cool it is that maybe the white glasses represented her first year running with a white cane 🙂

Seriously are you kidding me on that??  Sometimes I can’t stand how much I love that sweet girl of ours.

Dave’s brother always takes charge of our “thankful board.”  Another brother-in-law helped build that thing in the first place (thank you Dan!) and now every year he brings helpers and paints over all the old thankful stuff to get it ready for a new slew of thankful things to be written all over it.

This year we had to scrub some of the marker that wouldn’t cover very well with paint and had to paint like four layers of new paint.

But it worked, and those things were ready for the big day.

There are thousands of turkey trot t-shirts to be rolled and organized before the big day and this group of honors society kids came twice to help out with that:

And a bunch of my family members were in town early enough to help with the assembly of the “swag bags” to be given out at registration.

 …we worked as the turkey trot team put in their last planning.

 Oh man those are some good men right there!

 Loved having my family mingle with so many good people who help every year on this from BrainFood.

Jeff helped steam out the storage wrinkles of the good old Families Fighting Blindness banner:

 My niece came over after the white paint was dry and wrote her traditional “I am Thankful for…” words on the thankful board:

 …and then it was registration.

 I wish I had a picture of the work of art people have made this become.  It runs so smoothly.

But instead of an overall picture I have all these cute cousins who were helping.

 …these ones sold Families Fighting Blindness t-shirts this year which was kind of a fun thing to add.

 And here’s the clean up crew:

These nephews were there at the end helping sort out the remaining t-shirts.

That night was filled with Thanksgiving and trot prep activity.  But one thing I will remember the most is cramming in this ranger car with all my family who wasn’t busy with babies to go set up the BBS kid signs along the canal.

It was a two-person job but everyone wanted to help so much that we all jammed in and my cheeks hurt so much from laughing in that thing with everyone that night, with the cool air whipping through our hair and the warmth of everyone wanting to help so much.


(we have 16 of these signs introducing the BBS kids along part of the 5K course so that people can know a little more about who they are helping by running.)

 Yeah, memories…

 We also stopped by my favorite tree to grab tree branches for table decor the next day…

And then it was on to the real-deal.

The beginning of the thankfulness emerging:

With cousins galore.

 We were especially excited to have Bo join in the festivities this year 😉

 HA!

Fun to have so many of my family members intermix with Dave’s who are always here.

I had grand visions of hanging with each of them making sure they got to know each other but I was pretty much just running around.  LOve that some of them got to visit.

ANd I can’t really look at this picture without tearing up because that is just love right there.

Love through and through.

Elle’s friend sang the national anthem from up here this year:

The rest of these pictures are going to be totally random order because my computer mixed them up, but they will give you the basic idea. 
I’ll let them tell the mixed-up order story 🙂

 


So full of gratitude for that fabulous morning!

6 Comments

  1. Ah thank you, sweet readers! I'd love to send out any extra t-shirts we have:) The black ones with the red glasses are the ones we had made to help fundraise. We requested a $20 donation in exchange for a t-shirt at the race, and to send them in the mail it would help to add another few dollars. If you're interested, email me at sepphotography at gmail dot com and I'll check to see if we have the size you want.

    Thank you for the support!
    xoxo

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