Downs Syndrome Buddy Walk

One of our neighbors has a young sister with Downs Syndrome.   Her husband is on the board of the local group and has helped to coordinate the buddy walk for the past two years.   We were invited to join them last year for the walk but had another commitment.   This year we made sure to make it.

The weather wasn't great, drizzling a portion of the time, but there was a lot to do there and we spent the time with many of our other neighbors who cane together to help walk with the now six-year-old Cassie.   Cassie came from out of state to participate and spend some days with her older sister, our neighbor, who is also a local news caster, doubling as the announcer for the event.

There were hot dogs and ice cream and juice boxes and bounce houses and a clown doing magic and balloons and it was all free.   Everyone was so friendly and happy.    I'd been to these types of "races" before, where the cost of registration goes in part to the t-shirt you get as well as covering running the event.   The remainder goes to the fundraising group.

But when we got there I realized I hadn't been to something like this before.   This wasn't a race and it wasn't a run—it was a walk around a big field at the park, and it was the last part of the entire day.    The "walk" component was secondary and not the main focus of the event.   There were no runners, there were no timing chips and no one wore numbers on their chests to make their traversal of the hals-mile loop seem more official.

I found out also that a significant portion of the costs of the event were donated so that more of the money could go to the charity—including the tips the clown was getting.

It was a fun, albeit cold, afternoon.   I didn't get a chance to meet Cassie last year but when I met her this year she gave me a big hug and a huge grin just because that's the kind of girl she is.

The Big Boy Update:  Carving knife.  Of late, my son has been using unkind words with quite some strong emotions behind them when he gets upset.   This is something we've been working on for a few months.   The word, 'kill' is used less-often when he gets angry or frustrated now, but he's replacing it with other things.   Recently, he's been saying he'll cut you up with a carving knife or some other unpleasant variant of how he thinks a carving knife should be used.   I realized today where he got it from: the song, Three Blind Mice.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is obsessed with the birthday song they sing at school.   She's been repeating it a lot lately.   When they celebrate a birthday in her class, they put a candle in the center of the group circle to represent the sun.   The birthday child carries a small globe of the Earth around the group while the class sings, "The Earth goes 'round the sun, the Earth goes 'round the sun, it takes twelve months to go around and then <child's name> was one."   They repeat the song until they reach the child's age.   The children love this.   My daughter is looking forward to her birthday in a month.

Fitness Update:  I didn't realize my iPhone 6 had been tracking every step and flight of stairs I'd been taking since I got it on launch day.  My neighbor's daughter told me I could add it to my Health dashboard and I was surprised to see I'd already racked up eight-thousand steps by mid-afternoon.    At this rate I'll be over twelve-thousand by bedtime.   Maybe I get to eat a bonus donut or something for that many steps?