Well, I woke up this morning a little stuffy and a little sneezy. I am not surprised, though. Josh is coughing, Isabella has a fever, and who knows what the husband has, but, well, there is mucho sniffling involved. (You know that sound…the one that sounds like like a throat clearing coming from someone’s nostril? I’m hearing a lot of that right now and feel like I am the TISSUE POLICE, encouraging sickos everywhere to use a damn tissue instead of sucking the snot back up into their sinuses.) But, I kind of knew that sickness was coming after walking 3.5 miles in the pouring rain on Saturday.

(I’ll tell you right now, 100% worth it)

(also, don’t tell me that whole you can’t catch a cold from being cold speech. I have given that speech. I know all about how it works. It’s a virus…you can’t catch it from BEING cold…but if there’s a virus to catch and your defenses are down, well, you can probably figure this one out without Dr. Google. Or Dr. Ali)

(I should have been a doctor)

It rained all through the night on Friday, but The March for Babies site said the march was on, RAIN OR SHINE, so The Martells (and some other lovely ladies!) showed up to March for Maddie, because sacking up a little bit to suffer some rain is a small price. It just really is. I give my gift of my time and my $$ to The March of Dimes because they help give the gift of time to babies who are born too soon. Also, you know, I am personally invested.

So, all purpled and umbrellad we began the walk.

And things were going swimmingly until the rain picked up and the gusts of wind started blowing my children off the path. At one point, our umbrellas ended up bent over and broken, and also at Mellow Mushroom.

OH NO! Our fancy IKEA umbrellas were toast! It was still raining and cold and I was looking really windblown and super sex-ay. Whatever were we going to do? (and Mellow Mushroom wasn’t even open yet….)

Alas, the kids made an executive decision. We were there for Maddie. We were crossing that finish line. And we did just that. We RAN across that line. It turns out, though, that during umbrella-gate, we met up with the rest of the walkers and went the wrong way…so we only ended up walking 3.5 miles of the full 5. But, I can’t remember a time being so proud of my kids. It was wet. It was cold. It was kind of miserable. But they crossed that line with smiles on their faces and springs in their steps.

At one point in the last mile, these two ladies walking beside us turned to Isabella and said, “Did you walk this whole thing yourself???”

And she stopped, looked at me, looked at her, and said, “No. I am walking with my mama. And with Maddie.”