As soon as we found out that Little Miss was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis we knew that we wanted to get involved. After we got home from the pediatrician visit that told us that she had it we went onto cff.org and research what we could. That is how we found out about Great Strides, we thought it would be easy enough to raise $1500 in like 4 months. Boy were we wrong! lol I don’t think i will ever go about collecting money that way again (Facebook). But now after that trial and error we are going to have next year way better than this year. We ended up hitting our goal and going over by $45 on the last night we were able to raise money!!!

So the organization of the event was a little lacking but then again i am an organization guru so i guess i probably expect too much organization from others. When we signed up for the event we had no idea what to expect. I would have imagined that the organizers would have emailed a welcome letter after we signed up giving us ideas of what to expect, what to bring, etc. But it didn’t happen until the night before and it was just a schedule of events.

My mom wasn’t able to make it to the actual event and it was harder than i thought to find people who wanted to go with us. so it ended up just being me, Nicholi, and my brother. We had to be there at 9 am and it was a maze of people already!! They didn’t have an stick organization that I had imagined you just walked up to one table and told them who you were, then went to another table and got a t-shirt. They didn’t even verify that you had raised the $150 for the t-shirt. Once we were inside it was way more spacious. They had a local radio station there and they were playing music for the crowd. They offered Starbucks coffee and donuts in the morning, plus tea and lemonade from chicken express! Yummy!! So they had a few speakers then a dance team preformed and finally they set us off on the walk. It wasn’t an official walk around a track because we were at a zoo, they had handed out a map of the route we were supposed to take but really they just released a bunch of kids into a ZOO so of course no one took the map directions and everyone just split up and went to see all of the animals. lol It was fun though, Kitty did great while we were there, she stared at a few animals and pretty much just hung out or slept.

Before we started walking a spoke with a mother that had lost two of her daughters to CF one November after another, it totally was my breaking point of the event and I started crying with her. They were both teenagers when they passed away and it just broke my heart to speak with this woman. Her daughter had always made bracelets to hand out while she was in the hospital and after she died her sister continued it, then after she died her mother and their friends now make these bracelets to hand out to moms and dads of CF children.

It seemed that most of the large groups there were there because they had lost someone to CF, it was kind of heartbreaking to see something so tragic bring all these people together to remember their loved ones. I hope that it does take someone passing on from CF before their friends and loved ones realize how important it is to find a cure for this horrible disease. If you are reading this now I urge you to donate to help us find a cure.

We left around 11:30am because Little Miss was starting to get hot and tired, all and all i am glad we went and can’t wait to do it next year. It was a great way to connect with other parents and be involved in finding a cure.

If you want to join our team next year just let me know we could always use the company! lol If you would like to start your own team in your area for Little Miss we can make a National team once we have 3 teams in 3 different areas walking for Little Miss. To make a team you just have to go to www.cff.org/great_strides and sign up as a team leader, then you will make up a team name ours is (For The Love of Khaos) then set a team goal. Finally you will set a personal goal and recruit people to join you in your walk. Our walk was from 9am to 12p and i’m assuming that is the normal duration of them. If you need more information just let me know! 🙂

We also made our own shirts, me here last minutes trying to paint 5 t-shirts and a onsie! I will have them professionally done next year. But here is what we did this year, if you would like one of these just let me know.

Kitty’s Shirt

Our Shirts