Run for the Son

Ok, I have lots of blog "catching up" to do. There will hopefully be several new posts over the next few days...so make sure you don't miss one. Starting the "catch up" process is our church's annual 5K, Run for the Son. This was our 3rd year (well, the first year I ran the 5K and Will ran the Tot Trot with Wes, myself and a 4 month old Owen beside him)...Wes and I ran the 5K and Will ran the Tot Trot for the 3rd time. Owen ran the Tot Trot for the first time. We all had a great morning!! Thanks to Gram and Pop Pop for coming to hang with the boys while Wes and I ran. Here are some pictures of our family race day.

Wes and myself pre-race

At the start line (Wes in red shirt and me in black beside him)

Wes finishing

Me finishing

The boys eating breakfast while we ran ( Owen's mouth is FULL of powdered donuts and was for most of the morning...he loves those things)

Cooling off in the sprinkler before the Tot Trot

I was clapping at something Owen was doing

At the Tot Trot starting line (Will in orange and Owen in yellow)

There's Owen running with Wes beside him


Check out Will's face. He was TICKED that this girl got in his way while he was trying to run so fast...



And of course, no Run for the Son update would ever be complete without remembering why it's such an important race to our family. It was 2 years ago in August when Will was only 4 weeks out of a body cast for a broken femur (August 07). 4 weeks before this race below in August 07 (when the cast came off) he couldn't even crawl, much less walk from his weak muscles. But he'd learned to hobble along by race time and he wanted to run the Tot Trot with his friends. So we let him. Note his time on the clock (1 minutes 42 seconds). All the other kids finished in under 45 seconds. They'd just started taking the flags down when they noticed that Will was still coming from way down the street. Many of our friends that knew he was relearning to walk and knew what he'd been through that summer saw him and started cheering. The whole crowd ended up cheering and calling his name all the way to the finish. Truly a great moment for a really brave kid. He asked me this year "why did I win the race when I was a baby but don't win it now?" (now he finishes right in there with all the other fast running kids). We don't remind him that he wasn't actually running 2 years ago. We just let him think he won that year...b/c in every way that matters...he did.
In August 07 with his finishers medal

August 09 with his medal :-)