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.

The prep and planning for this dealio is pretty amazing…all the website details, t-shirt orders and design, registration craziness, funding, traffic control, police on-hand to close off roads, port-o-jons, food & water stations, race route, signage, large and small complications that come up throughout…you get the idea.  But they did it and they pulled off a pretty fabulous event for a record-breaking 2,300 runners this year.
Wow.
I concentrated my pictures mostly on the Families Fighting Blindness stuff, so hopefully I’ll get more soon from the official photographer but Elle, as the official videographer got a few of the starting things.  Here’s one of registration before the mobs hit:
Here are some cutie girls waiting to hand out oranges and bananas to the runners.

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:

(I like Max’s green one up there…:)
And ended up looking 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:

Honestly, we are so grateful for them all.
My parents joined in the support and we were so glad to have them, especially since their flight was delayed and got in at 3:00am but were bright and ready to help us a few hours later at 6:30am.  
They rock.
Love this picture of these adoring cousins helping the star of the show to cheer up a little bit.  That girl is so lucky to have so much love surrounding here on so many levels.

I got fifteen posters made up to line the canal people ran down through the course of the race to introduce people to the BBS kids they were helping by running.  I never got pictures of all the posters up (Dave put them up for me near midnight the night before), but here are a few:

And here’s the informational poster that was at our photo booth:
My BBS parent friend gathered all those pictures and information and used it in their “Bring Light to BBS” fundraising events (HERE and HERE) and let me use the info. for the Turkey Trot.  So grateful we’re all in this together.
There was so much going on that I didn’t see the beginning of the “fun run” (one mile), but here are some finishers:

 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:”

…and a little portion of the middle of the “sea:”

…and two awesome turkey hats at the end of the “sea.” 🙂

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

I liked the technical way Dave kept track of the winners:
Then the runners started trickling faster:

 …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:

Dave had to be on two “teams”…the Trot Team and the Families Fighting Blindness…here he is “changing hats:”

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.

So grateful for this family of mine I adore, and that we’re all in this together.
Thank you to everyone who made a difference that day in the lives of all BBS families.

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7 Comments

  1. This was positively astonishing! We were soooo glad to have been able to be there to see it with our own eyes! That Pothier family is such an incredible team! WE LOVE LUCY!

  2. This is amazing!! As a runner I know what a huge production races are…you guys rock for making this happen! And I love the signs with the kids' info…tbh I would have been bawling my eyes out running past those. 😄

  3. I thought that the MY MOM! said Max underneath! Think that boy has missed you a bit while at college! Looks like you had a great turnout this year! Totally love that y'all do this each year. Definitely gets the info out there for many.

  4. I have been reading back through several of your posts from December & Autumn…and this one got me. It made me tear-up three different times: cousins cheering up Lucy, the signs, Lucy's 'thank you.' So emotional…you guys are amazing.

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