6-7-8

As some of you may know, Josh and I got engaged on August 7, 2006 (8-7-6). And over the course of our long discussions over a wedding date, we discussed setting the date for yesterday, June 7, 2008 because it was 6-7-8. Obviously we didn't because we just couldn't wait that long. People asked us non-stop as it was "why are you waiting so long?!" It was 16 months which was more than enough time for us. I can't imagine if we had waited until yesterday. First of all, massive temperature difference. On our wedding day we had the threat of a wintry mix, today it was code red heat. My girls wore navy blue floor-length duchess satin dresses. I suppose today they would have needed something lighter in both color and fabric. Not to mention that I was good and toasty in my dress in December, so I can't imagine being under that much fabric on a day like today. There are of course many more differences that I won't bore you with. I just thought I'd point out the fun of yesterday being 6-7-8 on top of it being a former potential wedding date for us.

Instead of getting married yesterday we went to the Westminster City Park for the annual Cystic Fibrosis Foundation charity walk. We arrived at 9:30 in the morning and it was already over 80 degrees. In the past we've worn sweatshirts to this walk. Not today. We met up with our team that consisted of our family and Gregg's family (Lacy's dad). Gregg's wife had made us all t-shirts with a "Team Lacy" logo on the front and our names on the back. They were very cute and really made us stand out as a large team (almost 20 walkers!). We raised OVER our team goal and the largest amount of money at our walk site. While this is an amazing thing, it might have felt more fulfilling if the actual walk had been a bigger success. In past years this walk has been a huge event drawing families and groups from miles around to participate. They had a DJ, tons of food and drinks (at the site and along the walk route), a volunteer who would lead the walkers in a warm-up routine, games and activities for kids, and a silent auction with really nice prizes (baseball tickets, memorabilia, art, crafts, dinner at local restaurants). This year a lot of that was missing. There was no music or dj, there was very little food and no grill (we had to borrow from a nearby church), there was nothing organized for the children, and sadly few walkers. We made the best of it and got by with what there was. We also met with the coordinator for this site and volunteered to form a committee for the planning of next year's event. Hopefully next year will be a bigger success. In related news, Inspire Pharmaceuticals has recently completed a successful trial of a new drug which offsets the basic defect of the cystic fibrosis gene. You can go to http://www.cff.org/ and click on the news article to read more about this breakthrough in CF research.

After our fun with the family at the walk, we returned to our car to go home. We actually really wanted to go to Josh's parents' house to go swimming since we'd been out in the heat all day. Unfortunately, Josh's car remote wasn't working so we had to call Amberly to come pick us up and take us to her house. She was kind enough to let us take her car around Robin Hood's barn to find the stupid battery we needed for the remote. We finally found one and got everything squared away. We made it to his parents' house and had ourselves a good long swim. After that Josh went to his old roommates' house and I spent some time at my mom's with Amberly and the kids. It was a long, but fun day.

Today I wrote some thank-you notes and now I'm going to go outside to work on my tan a little more. I think Ben is coming over later. Mostly it's a lazy day. I have two days left to teach, then a field trip to the pool on Wednesday and field day on Thursday (also a 1/2 day). I also need to completely tear down and pack my classroom this week since I'm not coming back next year. I'm trying to leave as little as possible to do on Friday (our professional day). We'll see how that goes.

This time next week I won't have the looming threat of Monday morning clouding my Sunday :o)