MS Walk: 2012

If you’ve been following me any, then you know that my family and I did a MS walk last Saturday.  We did one last year just after Cheri was diagnosed but it was in Highland, IN.  We had already missed our local one.  This year we got in the local one, it was much bigger than last years.  A lot more walkers.  It started on the IUSB (Indiana University – South Bend) campus and we walked along a sidewalk along the river.  Or the “River Walk” as South Bend has named it.  Probably spent thousands of dollars coming up with the name.  We got there early and got registered and got our free t-shirts (being modeled by my awesome grandmother below).  We turned in our donations and waited for the walk to start.

While we waited, we took a couple of team shots.  One with my grandma.

 

And one with my mom.

Guess none of us thought of grabbing one of the thousands of other people there to take a picture of the whole team.  It was still early, we were half asleep.

And of course the happy couple sporting the team shirts that my lovely wife designed.  The orange ribbon for MS with Team Laws across it.  And she was especially proud of how she made the footsteps start dark and big and got lighter and smaller the more they walked.  She did a great job on these.

                    

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Cheri was feeling pretty good on this morning and we opted to go for the 2.5 mile walk.  Last year we did the mile and it took everything it could for Cheri to finish it.  But she’s been doing a little better the last month or so with the help of a chiropractor.  We started off and Cheri was raring to go.  She has a much faster pace than the rest of us do.  She claims her body can’t walk that slow.  She hits that fast pace and can’t slow down till she stops because if she does, she won’t make it.

    

But in the end, we all made it to the finish line.

That’s my bald head under the F in finish and my grandmother to my left (your right).  And Trevor is leading the pack with Samantha just behind him.

I like this picture of Samantha and Trevor.  They both look so grown up.

While Cheri did make it the whole 2.5 miles, she was hurting when she was done.  Her feet were hurting (which used to be a real problem, not so much anymore) and her hand had a spasm and was froze into kind of a fist and she couldn’t move it.  After taking some meds and relaxing some she finally got her hand moving again.  But the worst part for her, is her hand has been a little swollen since the walk, so she still can’t put her wedding rings back on and that upsets her.  She needs to get those on so I quit fighting off the men trying to get them some of that.

It was a good day for the walk, the weather was great.  But the real reason we were there, was to raise money for the MS Society.  With the help of some of my blogger friends and real life friends, family and coworkers, we raised a decent amount for our team.  After everything was totaled, Team Laws ended up in 11th place for amount of money raised.  That’s pretty awesome.  And we raised close to 3 times the amount we did last year.  I believe the goal for the weekend was $72,000 but I don’t know if we reached it or not.

         

My wife is pretty amazing.  She put her heart and her feet into raising money for this.  She got our team together, designed the shirts, setup Facebook pages and Tweeted for donations.  She doesn’t get to hear it very often, but she is pretty incredible.  I’m especially proud of her for taking on the walk and beating it.

And mad props to my mom, who always supports everything we do.  Whether it be this MS walk to supporting her grandchildren at scouts and baseball/softball.  And she’s a survivor, she survived raising my brother and I, that’s amazing in itself.

And a big thanks to all of you who donated and supported this cause.  It means nothing without all your financial support.  If you’ve been meaning to donate and you forgot, don’t worry, you still can.  Click the link below for up to 30 days from last Saturday.

And lastly, as I was proofreading this before posting it, there is one thing I would like to also tell my mother.  The date on your camera is off, by a day.  You ruined my whole post, I’m so disappointed.