March for Babies 2011

Today was our March for Babies! It also happened to be International Babylost Mother's Day, which I think was a wonderful coincidence. I hope all of my BLM friends were able to do something sweet for yourselves today - each and every single one of you totally deserve it.

MOST of our team members who walked today! My aunt and a few other people had to work this afternoon so they left early, but regardless...this is a HUGE group! So amazing.

{I also want to say thank you again to http://www.danielle-moss.com/ for designing our adorable shirts for this year, and to http://www.maeandpearl.com/ for printing them. You guys are all fantastic :) }

We had amazing weather this year for the walk. Last year, it was RIDICULOUSLY cold for the end of April, and we were pretty miserable until the end of the walk when it finally warmed up a bit. We had over 30 people actually walking for our team today, plus several littles riding in strollers, and nine dogs. We also had several team members who had to work or had other family obligations and couldn't make it out, so all in all we had a HUGE team! I am almost positive that if there was an award for the team with the most dogs, ours would have won it! I was actually pretty surprised that they all behaved so well! Kurt let our puppies run and run and run in an open field for about an hour this morning while we were passing out shirts and waiting for people to arrive, which was a smart idea because otherwize they would have been ca-razy.

I want to say a big thank you to anyone who participated this year. Whether you walked, made a donation, purchased a shirt, or just thought of Olivia today, we appreciate you so much. As of right now, our team has raised $550! I have been talking all day about how blessed we are to have so many wonderful friends and family members. I just can't say it enough! We are just blessed beyond belief!

Here are some pictures from today - Oh, and our shirts made it on the news again! Haha! I didn't want to be interviewed again (I hate talking on camera!) so I avoided the guy but he filmed the back of Kurt's shirt.

Kurt and I before the walk

Kurt and our good friends Dave and Lindsay's daughter Bailey Rae - The babies who "walked" got Team Livie Bean onesies that matched our shirts, They were so cute!

My favorite part - Olivia's sign on the "Miracle Mile". I forgot that I ordered one until someone told me that they saw it on their way in! That was a sweet surpise!

I was also fortunate enough to meet two women this weekend who have impacted me greatly since Olivia died. I think I've posted about her before, but at that time, Kurt worked with a woman named Madeline. She had lost three babies - Joseph and Gracie, as well as a miscarried baby that she didn't name. Within the last 18 months, she has been blessed with not one, but two sweet litttle girls, Rylie and Halle. She was the only person he worked with that could even begin to understand what he was going through, and she reached out to him and helped him get through those initial few weeks back at work. She and I messaged quite a bit on facebook and exchanged phone numbers, but never met in person, and Kurt quit that job not too long after that. She saw my post about or MOD team on facebook, and asked if she and her family could participate. She stopped by our house yesterday with her girls to pick up their shirts/onesies, and when I met her in the driveway, I felt like we'd known eachother forever! It felt so good to finally give her a hug. After we saw Livie's Miracle Mile sign, she hugged me and we cried together. I have cried with many, many friends and received many, many hugs... but there's nothing quite like crying with someone who understands every single ounce of pain you've felt. I wish it hadn't taken us 17 months to finally get our flipping acts together and get together! haha.

I also got to meet Lia today, the amazing woman who I was randomly matched with for Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope gift exchange at Christmas time this past year. She and her husband had a stillborn daughter named Sofia Rose, and recently miscarried her little sibling that they named Sam. After the gift exchange we continued to e-mail and comment on each others blogs, but hadn't met until today! While I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get my team together for a group picture, she recognized me and stopped me to say hi! I didn't recognize her at first, but instantly saw her pin with Sofia's picture on it, and there's no way that I could forget that sweet little face! We talked briefly and had her husband take a picture of us together, but I was on a mission to find my team members before a bunch of people had to leave to get to their next commitment of the day. I feel bad because I had to run off, and I hope she didn't think that I didn't want to talk with her... I'm looking forward to hopefully getting to spend some real time together sometime soon! She hasn't sent me the picture yet, but I will post it whenever I get it.

Again, a HUGE thank you to everyone who supported our team this year! You mean more to us than you know.