Ready. Set. Hope.

As promised, here are my pictures from this past weekend's AVON Walk for Breast Cancer. To see last year's walk click here. After registering at the Hyatt in Rosemont and handing in our final donations we headed to the city for our traditional RockStar team dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe.The RockStar Fans

The next morning, at the butt crack of dawn we gathered at Soldier Field for opening ceremonies. From there we began our walk down the shore line.

It is a sea of pink, and everyone gets REALLY into the whole experience. Note the dude wearing a pink tutu. He's carrying a pink ribbon banner. Every mile or so they have rest stops set up. At each stop, there are bathrooms, refills on H2O and my favorite.....
Snacks!! I especially love the fact that if you go to one side of the table the oranges and banana's are peeled for you. I felt like I munched all day long. I did as much walking as I could on Day 1. I had to stop around mile 16 though as I was having severe cramps. Apparently when my doctor said "take it easy" after this last round of insemination I thought it meant I could walk a marathon. My body disagreed with me. I was picked up by one of the many "sweeper" vans and taken to the Wellness Village where I was met up with by Spiderman to wait for the rest of my teammates. I don't have too many pictures of the Wellness Village this year because it was pouring rain for most of my time there.

Eventually the rest of my team met up with me and we crossed (me mostly hobbling) the finish line together. That evening we went out for pizza (another tradition) and back to the condo for a showers and a good night's sleep. All except for Craig and Karen who went back to the Wellness Village to camp out withe rest of the walkers. Brave souls.

On the morning of Day 2 I woke up with even worse cramping and I decided to rest the morning and meet up with the rest of the team at lunch. Let's just say Day 2 was "sponsored" by Tylenol 3. The rest of my team didn't seem to mind taking a break to wait for me at a cute little restaurant were we had a gorgeous brunch.

I had a crab cake burger. It was awesome. Then it was off to finish the walk.

There were many supporters along the way cheering us on.

Everyone in the city was supportive and many dressed in costumes again the second day.

I was able to get some really great pictures of the city while I was walking.

I kind of think the person who designed the path for the walk should be shot. Whose idea was it to put a hill at the END of a 2 day walk of 39.3 miles?

I mean, Dude. What. The. Hell? Here's the view from the top. You really can't tell how steep it actually was from the picture, but believe me. It was.

Here's the RockStar Fan's at the finish line of Day 2 back at Soldier Field. Basically, we walked from there to Skokie and back. Everyone was fine until we sat down. Then no one could get back up!

At the end of Day 2 we had Closing Ceremonies where we were told how much we raised and where the money was being distributed. In our 2 Days we raised $7.6 Million.
Many of those who walked with us were survivors of breast cancer. They were given white pom-poms to wave and they did so proudly.

For 2 Days We Walked As One.

And we made a difference.