Lily B Walkathon

John and I walked with Abigail's class and several other families this morning in the Lily B Walkathon.  As we headed out the door toward school, we heard the Paschal band playing.  They were excited.  Abigail started running down  the street, and she fell face first.  Several families and kids on their way to school stopped silent.  She was scared, a little tearful, but more worried that we would miss everything....I tried to slow her down.  But alas I did not dampen the nervous excitement...we walked on brick walls, socialized with friends, and ran again and again, up the sidewalk and back down, all the way to school.  John and I were to go back outside, sign in and get our badges and our instructions....unfortunately they had coffee and donuts for the families....this is where I lost John -- in a sea of donut sugar.....two kids down and it is not even 7:55 AM.  The band is playing, families and kids are running around, blue lights police cars are escorting us from behind....do you see the utter chaos and storm brewing...oh yes...here comes hurricane "it is a party" ABIGAIL.  Thinking the walking on all fours like a cat, cartwheels, etc along the way are going to end at the break point,  wrong idea.... she now was screaming and roaring like a dinosaur and running back up and down the sidewalk and doing random cart wheels and handstands in people's yards....on the way back after I took her away from her friends and we walked in a crowd of well -behaved 5th graders, she marched with a pouting face, arms across her chest, and would not hold my hand.  A friend's Dad called her Crabby Abi, which did not help me out much....we finally got back to school, and John gets her out of the bad mood with fun came of ring around the stop sign.  Her friends join in and we are happy and calm at last.

John drank all of Abigail's large water after his donut sugar frenzy!

Break point.  Abigail was not supposed to run past this line -- even her friends helped make it a big thick line to keep her close (it was two houses past the actually break point). 

John helping Sissy out of her funk.  

Friends join in!!!

With Mrs. Bradshaw again -- she has an amazing calming nature that really helps Abigail...Matt picked  up Abigail and she was in a great mood.  We made decorations outside and ate strawberries and hung out with the neighbors on a beautiful cool afternoon.  At six, we walked all together to the school for the family celebration night.  It was like a carnival came to the playground.  It was amazing....only one problem was that as you can see in the picture see of red.  Most of us were still in Red and so were our children.  So we were constantly misplaced.  There were three of the biggest bounce houses and slides, a dunk the teacher booth, soccer games, face painting and confetti eggs.  Abigail and Henry with Michael, Caleb, and Leah ran and played, dunked the teacher, smashed eggs and jumped until 8 PM!  Abigail said it was a night that will always be in her heart.