Awesome...3000!

Last weekend was Bella's third time and Nathan's first time participating in the Awesome 3000 in our town. It is run by the local education foundation as a fundraiser and this year there were over 3,200 kids ages 3-13 that participated.

Nathan's race was first. He participated in the Special Needs category along side kids with all kinds of different abilities.

There were kids that participated with and without assistance, and Nathan, by far, was the youngest (and smallest) one!

When the gun first went off, Nathan just kind of stood around, watching everyone and taking in all of the sights and sounds. He really wasn't interested in walking with or without his walker. We picked him up and carried him a short distance and then set him back down to walk with his walker. He then switched from hand held walking to walker walking to carrying on and off the entire way. When we reached approximately 25 yards before the finish line, we set him down with his walker and gave him some room to see what he would do on his own. The crowd immediately erupted in cheers and his full attention went up to the stands to see what the big fuss was about. He continued to be more interested in checking out the crowd than he was walking to the finish line (who can blame him!).

At this point, Bella came on to the track to help motivate him to move forward, and of course, he did. He will do anything for his sister! We had to help him guide his walker and make it move because of all of the distractions, but we were determined to help him reach the finish line on his own two feet. After a lot of coaxing and a ton of cheering from the crowd, Nathan finished with pride and Mommy finished with very wet eyes and smeared mascara.

There was so much symbolisim to this race, I am still too emotional to write about it.

Next was Bella's turn. Most of the kids had their parents run with them; however, Bella was determined to run by herself this year now that she is a big five year old. She kept pushing her hand out telling my mom (who was right next to her) to go stand "over there" because she was going to do it by herself.

Unfortunately I was unable to snap many pictures of her because as soon as she decided to run by herself, I took off across the field so I could get pictures of her crossing the finish line. BUT, due to the masses of kids crossing the line at the same time, I could not find her. I was sooooo bummed! After a few frantic moments of looking for her, we finally found her as she was getting her medal of completion. We were able to capture a few post race photos of her being cute as ever!