Yo Ma....

Happy Mother's Day and Happy Birthday!

Uncle Jill came up with the perfect way for us to celebrate your two special days.

She arranged for us to participate in the Susan G Koman Race for the Cure that was held during the week of mothers day and your birthday.

We had all the gear we needed from pink shoes and socks to our Marie bracelets and breast cancer pins and pink bracelets. I was even packin my breast cancer chap stick. We've become pros at dressing up for these events.

The event was held bright and super early Saturday morning at the Gateway in Salt Lake (I would like to point out that what was already an early morning event had to start even more earlier when traveling from Morgan to Salt Lake---take note mama, I love you so much that I willingly drug my bad self out of bed super early on a Saturday morning!)

We ran into Chuck and Ravonna right off the bat---they were walking in memory of their daughter Marie. Again, we have ALL become such pros at participating in these events that we should just rent out one of those LeBuses and become a traveling "Relay Pack".

The race starting line was under an arch of pink balloons.

Boy, was there a lot of people. I think the exact count was somewhere around a gajillion, but that's just a rough estimate.

The race was kicked off by the FM 100 radio people and Channel 4 News' Brent Hunsaker.

We got to wear little signs on our back showing who we were walking in memory of.
Once the race started this is a view of the people ahead of us (you can't really see it but those are little people-head-dots all the way up to the top of the picture)And these are the people behind us (again, little dot heads as far as the eye could see)
And the people that were ahead of us that had rounded the corner and were headed back toward the finish line.
We had only intended on walking the one mile portion of the race but we actually did the 5k. Following are the mile makers so that I can have photographic evidence to show Tim that I actually did it.

Mile 1

Mile 2

Mile 3

Actually, we didn't have a choice----we were just part of this compacted mass of moving bodies that was moving in one direction and we were kinda dragged along the whole three-plus miles. My mom musta sent me an extra dose of Paxil that day because I really didn't get all uptight around all of those people that were in my space and I'm happy to report that I didn't slug a single person that day. Yay for me! High five!

The race made for some awesome people watching. Here are a couple of the fun t-shirts that people were wearing

There was even some over the t-shirt bra wearing

and feather hats, fuzzy boas, and tu-tu's oh my (that's a dude in the red hat)

Along the way we were serenaded by a high school band

and accosted by the hockey bear

I tried everything I could to get on the news.

I think Brent Hunsaker was acting a tad stuck-up.

How about you, Karen Carlson, fancy-pants evening anchorwoman?
But in the end I didn't make the final cut on the evening news.
Once we crossed the finish line we were treated to water and bananas.
a survivors parade
This sea of pink is all the breast cancer survivors that participated in the event.
There was a memorial dove release in memory of those lost to cancer. Uncle Jill got a dove in my mom's memory. I think her dove is the third one from the left. Tim says that they tattooed my mom's name on her dove but they flew off too fast for me to confirm his story.

Since this is the second year that we have celebrated Mother's day and her birthday without her, we have a few choice words for Cancer.

such as this......

and this.......

and I'm not even gonna wash my mouth out with soap for saying it!