Ronald McDonald and the Princesses. I had a ball.
Whether by blinding passion or raging anxiety, my leap to join the Ronald McDonald House Charity Team for the Disney Princess weekend ended up being a very, very good thing.
Last August, I signed on for the Glass Slipper Challenge — running a 10K on Saturday and a half marathon on Sunday. And committed to raise $750 for the RMHC of Central Georgia by mid-January.
Then my mind tumbled down the rabbit hole a bit further.
Why not have my youngest and I be a team? Joe could run with 10K with me?
Joe and I be a team?
I immediately dismissed that notion. My coding, gaming dojo 11 year old, sign up to go-go six miles? But then, I leapt another millimeter and contacted RMHC of Central Georgia Executive Director, Bonnie Hopkins and Development Director, Julie Wilkerson. I asked if my son and I were a team did we each have to raise $750?
Affirmative. We both needed to raise $750.
Okay. I can do this said she who trembled on every doorstep for each box of Girl Scout cookies I attempted to sell.
Just as I girded my loins with that Forest Green sash and sold the heck out of those Thin Mints, I could do the same for Ronald McDonald.
Or so I hoped.
Starting last August on the hottest day of the year, we set up our Arnold Palmer stand. We visited the house in Macon in September. And baked pecan pies for Thanksgiving. And a host of friends and family donated directly to our FirstGiving pages. Hop by hop our team raised a smidge over $1,800.
Along with way with Facebook magic, we got to meet the rest of our RMHC Team. Almost 200 members strong with runners from Hawaii to Minnesota to every burg in between, we shared our fundraising questions and running triumphs and that dreaded word . . . our injuries.
What follows are a bunch photos from the weekend. With a little explaining in between.
First we picked up our race numbers.
Then came what turned out to be the hardest part of the entire weekend. Getting Joe out of bed at 3:30 Saturday morning.
Got to our corral on time and started running.
And the best photo of the trip.
We got the medals.
The next morning, Sunday, my alarm went off at 3:00.
I made it up to the castle.
And to the finish.
My favorite pic during the race.
My favorite moment of the trip was the Team breakfast after the 10K on Saturday. Guess where it was?
It was so fun to put smiles and voices with so many people I’d come to know through Facebook. Dear Kerri Hill, who suffered an injury, and completed both races in a ortho boot! And Cassie Helmin, who was the top fundraiser with over $4,800. That’s from my memory but I think it’s close to the amount.
The entire group raised over $165,000 which goes directly to helping families off set the $15 per day charge to stay at the house.
At my fabtabulous chiropractor yesterday, I told fellow runner, Elise Faust — that I’ll have to be on the lookout for another great cause and race. There was something extra special knowing I wasn’t just running up to the castle for myself like I’d done before.
Elise agreed. Running the New York Marathon, she raised over $5,000 running for the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s charity, Fred’s Team. Named in memorial for Fred Lebow who directed the race for so many years.
She talked about the moment in the race when they ran by that great edifice of healing and saw the patients, many of them children, out front cheering. How personal and real it made the fundraising.
I hope the length of this post didn’t deter most folks from making it to this part.
My big takeaway from the last six months of association with TeamRMHC.
It’s the real deal. I had heard of the Ronald McDonald House all my life. I had seen the little boxes at the drive-thrus. But I’d never been touched by the people whose lives have been touched.
Every person I talked to that had a family member or child with a lengthy stay at a hospital couldn’t be thankful enough. Time and time again when I mentioned what my son and I were doing — people told me their stories.
Sunday after the half, I went to the hotel and sat outside having coffee with my husband. Going directly to the restaurant rather than the room, I still had my race clothes on. As we got up to leave, a couple from South Carolina asked what the “C” was for in RMHC. They explained how their grandson had a very rare from of childhood cancer at age two. He was treated at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The family stay at the Ronald McDonald House — and I was able to add I knew that house was the original house started in the 1970s, when the 3-year-old daughter of Eagle football player Fred Hill received treatment for leukemia and there was no place for families to stay to be with their child.
The gentlemen said the same thing I’ve heard over and over. “You see those little boxes — but you never know how important a place it is till your child is sick.”
Thanks to all who contributed to our quest. Thanks to the TeamRMHC staff for making it such a great experience.
What a surprising, extraordinarily wonderful chapter in my journey toward knee replacement.