Curesearch walk Sept 24 2011

Gracie getting her medal
Watching the angel balloons

Gracie and Briley-ready to walk for a cure!

The angel balloons, for all the children lost to cancer.

Gracie and Briley waiting in line to go on stage for their champion medals.

Gracie and Danielle

Gracie's favorite nurse Andrea

The whole family after the walk!

My pictures ended up out of order, so here's my post in order :)

Briley's family drove 5 hours from Texas to be with us for the Curesearch walk. WE met them at Cook Children's back in January and have seen them at the clinic several times, and formed a friendship with their whole family. We thought it was so awesome that they drove all that way to be on Gracie's team! They could've easily formed their own team, since Briley has leukemia, but they came to support us and walk on our team. We passed out team Briley bracelets to our team to honor Briley as well. We will go down to Texas in April to walk with team Briley!! Their family arrived at 10 pm friday night and we stayed up talking until midnight. The kids had such a fun time together! They also have a little boy that is Von's age and those two were hilarious together! They acted like old friends and it seemed like they had the same ideas and thoughts at the same time. lol. We wish we lived closer and they all could play more often.

Saturday we woke up at 7 and got ready to go. We arrived at the walk at 8:45 with donuts and water and gatorade for the team. The opening ceremony started at 9 and they had the parents that had lost children to cancer, release balloons into the air for their angels. I got pretty emotional. There were just too many balloons. 1 would've been 1 too many. After that, they honored those currently fighting, and those in remission. They had each child go on stage and state their name and recieve their medal for being champions. :) Gracie told me on the way there that she wasn't going to say her own name, but she did it. It was precious and made my heart full. We had 34 people on our team and we are so grateful for all the support! This was the first curesearch walk in Tulsa, and they had hoped to raise $40,000 but they raised $96,000!!! so awesome! and 96 cents of every dollar goes to research.

The walk was 3 miles long and we pushed the little ones in strollers a lot of the time. It took us about an hour, and the weather was absolutely perfect. After the walk, we headed home and had a little barbeque with Briley's family. It was a lot of fun to visit and watch the kids have so much fun. They stayed until about 4 or 5 and made the trip back home.