Our First 5k

Have you ever heard of The March of Dimes?  They are an organization which funds lifesaving research and programs and works to end premature birth, birth defects and infant mortality. 

Knowing our story, you know that this is TOTALLY something we are all about!  Saturday our family participated in our first 5k to support the MOD and their amazing efforts to help save babies like Riley.  So we started our day at 3:30 and headed to the capitol to join the March for Babies with our friends from the NICU Parents of Sacramento.  We had a GREAT day!

Riley started out a little on the less enthused side on account of his early wake up call and the chilly weather, but he was SUCH a trooper!

 The Starting Line

It was a beautiful day for a 5k!

 We got about 1/3 of the way into our walk and it was time for a nap!

When we got back to the Capitol we got to spend a little time with some of the other families that are a part of the NICU Parents of Sacramento Group that I am a part of on Facebook.  Don't let the number of people here fool you, we had over 7500 registered walkers...not including babies and BOY oh BOY were there a LOT of babies! It was AWESOME to see so many little ones who started out as little fighters.

One of the best parts of our day was getting to spend it with the Ortega family.  Nicole and Michael have a very similar story to me and Danny.  It took both of us a long time to get pregnant and when we did we both suffered from HEELP syndrome around 30 weeks causing us to have our precious babies 2.5 months early.  Riley, and their daughter Luna, who was born 2 weeks after Riley, were in cribs side by side at Sutter Memorial.  We met up with them at the walk and share in a happy reunion of two very treasured miracles.  They are a WHOLE lot bigger than when they were last together.

At one point shortly after I took this picture, Luna, having grabbed Riley's arm decided to gnaw on it just a little.  It was adorable!  Riley didn't seem to mind or even notice really.  I hope it is a LONG time before he pays attention to girls who want to nibble on him :o)

 

The Ortega Family

We had a great day at the March for Babies. One of hopefully many 5ks we will do to help raise funds and awareness for these precious little ones.  Many many thanks to our friends and family, we were able to raise $100 to contribute to our teams goal of $2000.00.  Not only did our team meet our goal, we helped get the total to $3485.00 which applied to the near $300,000 that was raised at this event alone.

We look forward to next year's walk.  Bring on the March!  We'll bring our walking shoes.

P.S. The formatting got all messed up and after countless tries to make everything line up properly I decided to just let it be.  The ridiculously meticulous side of me had to just let it go...not happy about it, but now it's time to give someone lunch :o)