My Its My Heart Walk

This Saturday, I walked in a charity event to raise money for an organization called It's My Heart. IMH is a support group for parents of children with Congenital Heart Defects (CHD). My goal was to raise $1000. I was only able to raise $775. So if you still feel like giving, you can mail me a check made out to "It's My Heart" or you can mail it directly to the organization (www.itsmyheart.org). Please put my name in the memo line.

I would really appreciate it if you could help me make my goal. I want to thank all of my very generous sponsors. The team who raised the largest amount raised about $3,300, so I feel very fortunate to have singly raised almost $1000.

IMH is a great group that provides support especially when you're in the hospital with your child helping them recover from their heart surgery. They have monthly meetins and also offer educational programs and scholarships to health care providers who are focusing their study on the prevention of CHDs. The event itself raised over $33,000. IMH will be able to do a lot with that money.

The walk was held at a downtown park. The weather was supposed to be very rainy, but luckily, the rain held off and we were able to do the walk and enjoy the fun activities.

Here we are with "Arty" (as in artery) for a "before" picture. E got the red hat since she is a survivor.

Here is the start banner...

And here we are on the actual walk. I'm pushing our double stroller (I'm in the turquoise hoodie) and my friend Haley is next to me in the Jeter jersey. Her son just has his open heart procedure in November. He's had multiple closed heart procedures. He is one month younger than Z. The walk was only about 3 miles. It was very humid.

Here is E receiving her medal for the walk. Z fell asleep about 2/3 of the way through (he's in the front seat).

After the walk, there were lot of activities for the kids. They had about 5 different jumpy jumpy (bounce a lots). E loves these things. They had a superhero one where you enter through a "Phone booth" and climb about 15 feet up a slope and then slide down. That was her favorite. She probably went up it about 10 times.

Here she is getting her harness on the go on another kind of jumpy thing...but it was more like a sling shot. We couldn't believe she wanted to go on this thing. She waited very patiently for about 20 minutes in line, watching each kid in front of her during their turn.

Off to the side, you can see the large poles that hold her up. She had to jump off the mat a few times to get herself going.

But soon she was flying through the air, pretty high up. She was so happy.

And then she was also brave enough to try the rock climbing wall. This was as high as she got before she wanted to come down. She got this high on her own power. We were impressed with her bravery. The man who put her harness on said "She can go on this?". And I said if she wants to. She is my little thrill seeker!